a great lesson !
3 Common Chaturaji Mistakes to Avoid - PART 1
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Great lesson! I agree, i see so many players who advance their pawns very far and utterly cramp my position, only to be wiped out by the player on their right because they over-extended.
nice!
And here are two games that kind of help demonstrate your opponent with your bishop to trap them. https://www.chess.com/variants/chaturaji/game/33644666/54/1
https://www.chess.com/variants/chaturaji/game/33477268/23/3
In the first game bullfake plays this bishop check as green, and although it doesn't trap yellow's king, it stops their attack in its tracks and yellow ultimately ends up with green attacking them and taking away their moves!!
In the second game, blue overextended against me, trying to attack while ignoring their own king safety, and this allowed me to play Bd8+ which basically kills blue.
I have noticed that this club and the chaturaji community does not have very much instructional posts that will help you improve, and this post is designed to do just that. I will be covering 3 common types of mistakes that I see even many top players make (myself included). Hopefully no matter your skill level you will learn something from this, regardless if it is the fact that life is meaningless (a good lesson to learn) or incredible chaturaji strategy. Feel free to post any questions, feedback, or anything else you want to add on to make this as useful as possible!
#1. Opening Mistakes
Chaturaji opening theory is very, VERY repetitive, but probably for good reason. Many times straying from conventional chaturaji theory results in the player being absolutely murdered or getting a losing position from the opening phase. I would first like to talk about a few opening traps worth keeping in mind when playing. The first one as shown below:
is probably the easiest and most avoidable trap, and is demonstrated by blue's and red's first move. If you fall for this as blue... well let's just say you have a long way to go until you become a master of chaturaji. The reason this is losing for blue is because of 1. Bd2+ Ka4 followed by 2. b3+. This is why you should NEVER PLAY THE FIANCHETTO OPENING (knight pawn opening) WHEN THE PLAYER BEFORE YOU PLAYED THE KING'S PAWN OPENING. NEVER!
The next trap is very similar to this one, and isn't super common, but does still happen quite often. It is shown below.
This trap functions very similarly to the aforementioned one, but green is the only one who would have to face it. Green tries to escape Yellow's bishop check with f3, but it is met with Bf4! Blocking green's king's escape route from the wrath of yellow. This means that if red and yellow both go for the kings pawn opening, green's most objectively sound response is actually 1. f4 which looks ugly for green but is actually completely fine. One thing I would like to mention about this is that many times red and yellow will miss this idea to mate green, and some players even believe it is unethical to play, so many times f3 is entirely possible for green and they will be completely fine. If your red and yellow opponents are high rated, it might be good to consider f4, as if red and yellow both work together to trap you then you will almost certainly lose.
Another less common "trap" more so a blunder, that can result in the loss of one's king is demonstrated in the below position.
As you can see, green has just played the horrible move e2. I see players do this somewhat frequently. They neglect their king safety and start to overextend, allowing red to kill their attacking player: green. Be1+ by red in this position essentially kills green. A good way to avoid this is by extending and taking space with the rook pawn instead of the knight pawn and also considering a move like Kg2 in green's case, allowing them to more safely push their paws towards red. There are a few other opening traps that I could think of, but I would say these are the most important and most common ones.
Okay so now that I've covered some of the more basic opening mistakes, I can talk about more positional and advanced opening errors. Blue demonstrates this error in the picture below with their choice of 6. c5.
Now obviously this move by blue is in no way a clear cut horrible move, or one that makes blue lost by any stretch, but I would argue that this move is a dangerous mistake for blue, and one that they will probably end up regretting later throughout the game. Why? Take a moment to observe and consider red's attacking potential against blue. By pushing c5, blue has just made an ENORMOUS concession. Red's a and b pawns now are almost unstoppable, and blue has no pawns to protect them from the oncoming onslaught of pawns red will likely unleash on them later in the game. With no pawn protection against them, red can squish blue against their opposite wall as their king and pieces are pushed away by pawns or force blue to give up sometimes multiple pieces to stop red's pawn storm. Consider this recent game for example: https://www.chess.com/variants/chaturaji/game/33539840/34/3
In it VEPOS decides to play f4 similarly to blue's commitment shown previously, and as such allows me to push my pawns into his territory which ends up making him lose a knight. This isn't the best example as I am immediately rewarded with the knight, so if anyone has any better games to demonstrate my point I would be happy to put them into this. So? Should you never play a move like c5? No, but in many positions it greatly weakens your ability to defend the incoming attack from your right, especially in positions where you go for the bishop's pawn opening. There will always be positions where it is actually good to play c5, but many times it unnecessarily ends ups weakening your position as your right attacker can force you into a very tight position. When playing a move like this, make sure to consider how your opponents can take advantage of it, especially in the long run.
And finally, the last positional opening mistake I would like to talk about is shown below.
7. a5+ is a mistake that I consider to be absolutely HORRIBLE AND DISGUSTING. It may look attractive at first because red creates an attack on the blue king, but in reality it is only a foolish 1 move attack that destroys red's hope of attacking blue and pushing your pawns. After blue responds with 7. Kc7 there are simply no future prospects for red. Red is now paralyzed and there is simply no good way forward. in order to make any significant progress against blue, the only direction they have any hope of moving forward in, is by playing c4, but that move requires preparation that is much to slow, and blue can easily ignore this and they can continue to direct all of their moves to attacking yellow, as red's attack on them is about as intimidating as a cute puppy. Something else worth mentioning is that when faced with a move like a5, it is usually better to blockade the pawn's movement forward with the bishop instead of the king.
In this very similar position to the other example, blue can either play Ka6 or Kc7 (Kb7 just blocks the blue bishop in and wastes a move, as you will end up playing either Ka6 or Kc7 in the future), but Kc7 is MONUMENTALLY SUPERIOR to Ka6. If Ka6 is played, blue's king will be very passive, and if red can get a knight to c5, they could cause some very pesky problems for blue. Kc7 also helps to launch an incredibly powerful attack against yellow as red playing a6 scares literally no one, and the bishop will soon come back to block red's progress forward and protect the key b5 pawn. One might complain that the bishop would be passive on a6, but you need to realize that the bishop will not do anything to help blue's attack; the king is a much more powerful attacking piece in that situation. Blue will play Rb8, Nc7, and d6 and yellow can only plead for mercy as red's attack on blue is almost nonexistent. By the time red has made any progress, blue will already be steamrolling yellow completely unfazed by red.
So! I hope you enjoyed the first installment of three common chaturaji mistakes. Obviously it is not finished and I will update it later with the two other things that I wanted to talk about, but that will take a little while to write, so I figured I could post this now and come back to it as sadly I have more important things to do in the real world :,C. Hopefully it was interesting, slightly entertaining, and a little insightful into chaturaji. I also ik I skipped over a TON with this, there were other opening traps I didn't talk about and many other positional mistakes I see players play, but I didn't feel like adding them all (sorry to disappoint :c ). The two positional mistakes were the big ones that I have noticed, but there are tons of others. Feel free to add anything you want on the subject of this! And I will finish this with the other two categories very soon, so make sure to read it again when I do!!!!