Trading secrets : When to Hold'Em, When To Trade'Em
Chess Strategy can be resumed into a balancing act between your strengths and weaknesses. Against decent opposition, you will always have to give something for something else in order to improve your position and judge whether the new arrangement suits you better. If it doesn't, stay where you are ! This will become even more relevant in a further series about pawn structures, but trades are very concrete in nature.
A common misconception is that by trading, you should focus on what left the board and the value of the dead pieces. This makes absolutely no sense to me. Try trading a dead rat for a dead lion, provided you can't eat them or use them for decorum (or whatever things people do with dead animals). Does one useless thing have more value than another ? Come on, it's useless anyway !
Trades operate exactly the same way. Look at what would remain on the board while considering a trade, or even better, right after the opening, ask yourself what pieces you and your opponent can and can't do without. Keep it in mind and you might find attractive ways to operate favorable trades.
I firmly believe in simplified not-to-do lists for explaining the cons of chess decisions, so that our brain rejects automatically after some practice those very decision hence here it is :
When NOT to trade :
-You would miss a defender of weaknesses, be it squares or pawns
-Your other pieces' coordination depends on the traded one
-Your piece performs a critical attacking task
-Even though the evaluation remains the same, you are not certain of how to conduct further actions
-You have no idea how to evaluate the trade and have other options
-One of the opponent's best pieces cannot be challenged anymore
-Your piece allows for more flexibility of plans
-Your piece restricts or pressures the opponent's weaknesses
Okay, that's a lot, so to make it more concise still, I'll simply say that trading should allow you more opportunities to either survive a worse situation, convert a better one or provide something that corresponds more to your taste, provided that the evaluation does not suffer from it.
I also believe in examples at least as much as words, so here are some game excerpts based on Vladimir Kramnik's practice, two wins and a loss.
If you'd like more exercises on this subject, please check out the links in my profile or even better, contact me for coaching. See you in two days for my next article !
