Please, help me to understand the strategy of Chess game

I'm a bad player... I do one-two-three blunder in every game but I wanna ask not about tactics but about strategy of Chess game.

Anatoly Karpov explained that in the begging of Chess game you should develop your pieces.

In the end of the game... as I got it myself... you should try to make your pawn - Queen... or to eat your opponent's pawns.

But I don't know what you should do in the middle of the Chess game ?

Should I try to checkmate my opponent's King ?

Or should I push my pawns and minor pieces forward ?

Should I do something else ?

What is my main task ?  And what is the best strategy for the middle of the game?

Help me, please.

To tell the story of a chess game, from a bird's eye view, is to tell a story of piece activity. From piece activity you can derive all manner of short term and long term strategic considerations.

I describe it with 4 levels of piece activity. Note you don't necessarily go from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4. You may go from 1 directly to 4 and then back to 3 etc during the course of a game. The hierarchy is only meant to show which is most favorable. (Just to be clear, pieces are non-pawns. Usually just the knights, bishops, rooks, and queen). 

 

1) An inactive or badly placed piece. An easy example is any piece in the starting position. It has few or no squares it can move to, friendly pieces are blocking it in, and it is far away from threatening any of the opponent's pieces.

2) A mobile piece. Mobility means the piece has the option of moving to many different squares. It's useful because you can think of increasing mobility as increasing the probability the piece will do something concrete later (like tactics or checkmate). In the opening you do this by bringing pieces towards the middle of the board, or by putting bishops on long diagonals, rooks on open files, etc.

3) Infiltration. A highly mobile piece becomes even better after it uses this mobility to find a good post. A good post can be defensive in nature, but I use the word infiltration because I'm telling the story from the point of view of the winning side... so often a good post will be in the opponent's territory. This disrupts the opponent's lines of communication and starts to let you build up threats.

4) Finally, in the last stage, the piece comes into contact with real weaknesses. Often the most effective weaknesses to attack are the slowest... the pawns and/or the king. When you start making real threats you're more in control of exchanging one type of advantage for another (like space, material, and time). This is where you can jiu jitsu your way to a decisive advantage or outright win. This process usually culminates with a tactical sequence.

 

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Having said that, it's good to remember that during a real game you're almost never purely maneuvering pieces. Short term tactics mix with long term considerations. A strong player's moves will make sense in both worlds simultaneously.

And what you usually see from inexperienced players is they try to jump to stage 4, or to winning tactics, right away. Their play appears impatient to an experienced player.

... but of course... chess is tricky  I'm always impressed by GMs knowing when to strike, and when to wait. What's the old saying... a chess master is a combination of a monk and a beast of prey. But I wouldn't be surprised if an inexperienced player could improve their results by challenging themselves to build up their position more.

Another saying... amateurs play by moving their best pieces. Masters play by moving their worst pieces. Experienced players are acutely aware of all the inactive pieces on the board, they work to improve theirs, and when possible to prevent their opponent from doing the same. Experienced players know that once they fall too far behind in piece activity, tactics start to pop up everywhere for their opponent.

Many books have been written on middlegame strategy. For example Pachman's Modern Chess Strategy, but trying to answer your question on a forum I think this is the best way to summarize it: piece activity.

Oh llama… Yours are very useful advises for me. ))

Very often I don't know simply what to do after my first ten moves when I developed all pieces and made a castle.

So I should... as I understand you right... start to maneuver my pieces... a kind of overdance my opponent.

I try to play as you said. )

 

 

Thanks  

Maybe my advice is too general, so let me help a little more by being specific.

Usually a player will select an area of the board to seek an advantage: kingside, center, or queenside.

Usually you choose the area where you have an advantage in space and/or active pieces. Once you select an area, often a pawn break you should go for to open lines for your pieces. Opening lines help make your pieces more active.

For example

 

 

Improving Your Chess - Resources for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/improving-your-chess-resources-for-beginners-and-beyond

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell

your question is one of the hardest ones to answer and i think a lot of us struggle with making plans

once i stopped making catastrophic blunders with annoying regularity i would get into games out of the opening relatively in tact i found it difficult to figure out “what next”

practically, what i try to do foe immediate plans is to see if there is a weakness in opponents position

can i team up on a pawn or piece and get a quick tactical strike?

did i develop quicker and get castled with a chance to catch opponents king in middle? is there a pawn break to facilitate such play?

if things are not so concrete i would employ a “mini plan”- of trying to limit opponents knights from finding available squares in my position: i was always struggling against opponents knight moves in my territory so i would base much of my late opening and middlegame just trying to thwart opponents knights

you will get better advice on this topic but it is a difficult this chess thing nevertheless

I think "positional chess" has largely replaced "chess strategy". (It's basically the same thing, but in positional chess, your more focused on getting long term benefits from moves that might seem minor or not important to a weaker player).

There is a lot to chess strategy/positional chess, but I suppose it means a person has an understanding of lines and diagonals. Tactics is like individual battles, strategy is understanding how your pieces, and your opponent's pieces effect lines, diagonals, space, and territory.

 

More traditionally, positional is short term non-forcing and strategy is long term non-forcing.

Easy example of positional is rook belongs on an open file.

Easy example of strategy is, as early as move 5 or 10, you're aware you should avoid a lot of minor piece trades in an IQP position because heavy piece endgames are unfavorable.

llama, it's a good advise for me too... 

But really the nightmare for me is the middle game.

In the end of the game it's more clear where you can seek advantage... And I start to understand a little who... I or my opponent... has a better position. 

 

 

https://youtu.be/FcNeEapxr0w Although you might already know the cambridge springs trap.

daxy, I play only this way... As you said.

In the middle of the game I make only "mini-plans" for me... and as rule I lose if only my opponent doesn't make a blunder.

 

Usually I hope only on his (her) blunders.

 

I don't have other way to win. (

No... I never play with traps for my opponent.

I can't remember the sequence of the moves. )

and what is this IQP position ? )

Isolated queen pawn. It arises from tons of different openings. The player with the IQP has some middlegame advantages and the player playing against the IQP has some endgame advantages.

Like any regular chess position it's a draw with best play, but both players try to leverage their trumps to win the game.

Strategy is another term for plan.

The plan is to capture the other players King. 

To achieve this goal, the plan is to move the pieces and pawns -  Forward

Winning space allows for opportunity of making threats that eventually can not be parried. 

You can develop strategy by reverse analysis!

 

Repeatedly play the same opening and estimate your winning chance from your experience.

 

e.g, I have higher winning chance by pushing open, " c" file in Sicilian, then it is the strategy for that opening. 

Play a lot and estimate your winning chances eh?

All you need is a large enough dataset right? Maybe add some nice TPUs, and you're good to go.

@korotky_trinity

Everything you are asking is apart of the learning process for any beginning chess player and while there is no one answer there are ideas for improving.  While there are general Chess principles and rules there are also reasons to not follow them.  However for a beginning player, if you stick to some basic ideas it will help you improve.  The game is roughly divided into 3 areas, the Opening, Middlegame, and Endgame and I will address each one, as well as answer your questions you had propsed in the original post.  Just remember these are basic guidelines that need not be followed in every instance, but for starters it gives you something to go by until you start to improve and understand more about the game.  

 

Opening: The basic idea of the opening is simple, you want to get your pieces out onto better squares and get your King to a safe spot.  Castling is usually the best way to insure your King is safe in the opening.  Most of the action happens in the middle of the so putting your King in the corner is usually the best way to go.  Anatoly Karpov is correct, you should develop your pieces, meaning get your Knights and Bishops off their original squares.  Try to avoid moving a pieces two times in the first 10 moves unless you absolutely have to.  If you have developed all your pieces and castled you will more often than not enjoy a good game.

 

Middlegame: This is the hardest part of the game and its also the most difficult to learn.  Since by the time you reach the middle game you will most likely be "out of book" and be relying on your own chess intuition.  Here you are trying to gain an advantage which will help you win the game.  It can be as simple as being up material to the more complicated just controlling a certain square on the board.  For a beginner its hard to come up with a "plan" to move forward.  The best advice I can give you is look at your pieces compared to your opponents and look for the imbalances (ie: Bishop v Knight, etc) and try to use those imbalances.  Try to come up with a plan, even if its a bad plan its better than no plan at all.  Don't fall into making "one move attacks" develop a plan and stick to it.

 

Endgame: Once you start playing a little better and don't make as many blunders (and we all do it to this day, even Grandmasters albeit not as much as us amateurs).  Endgames become a matter of technique where you can convert your advantages from the middlegame into wins.  More often than not you will have endgames with pawns and maybe a minor piece or two.  Here your King becomes a very valuable piece which needs to be brought into the game.  Essentially you want to try to convert push your pawns towards the 8th rank and promote them.  The endgame you really want to hang onto every piece you have and slowly move them forward in coordination.  

 

Here is the answer to your questions.

Should I try to checkmate the opponents King? - Depends on the position.  The presence of a mate threat can often lead to winning pieces or gaining an advantage.

Should I push my pawns and minor pieces forward? - Depends on the position.  If you can't see a good reason to push your pawns forward then you probably shouldn't.  A lot of times the pawns wont move much after the opening as they are keeping the opponents pieces from invading on your camp.

Should I do something else? - It depends on the position.  

 

If you want a mini-plan here is the simplest form in 1-2-3 (Opening, Middle, End)

1. Get your pieces out and Castle (develop)

2. Make a plan, find something weak about your enemy and try to exploit it.

3. Get your King involved and try to move your pawns towards promotion.

Oh... thank you.

Then it's not so complicated as it seems.

) I hope that you are right.