Stuck in middlegame - Positional play

Hi All

So I'm somewhat ok at surviving the opening of my games, I don't blunder any pieces/pawns, I try to control the center, try to develop my pieces nicely and this seems to be going ok. 

Once the middlegame starts, I hit a complete wall with no idea what to do next.  I have no idea how to progress further into the game and this is where things usually start falling apart. 

It's been hinted that I need to work on bettering my positional play. 

Question is, where do I start with this? 

Lots of questions start coming to mind like.....

• How do I analyze a position to determine where the best squares are for my pieces.
• How do I identify my opponents weaknesses and capitalize on those weaknesses.
• How do I identify quiet moves that improve my position. 
• What's entails a good position. 

This for a simple example as White - Everything seems fine here, nothing has been blundered but how do I progress from here - Where do I start looking to better my position and generate solid plans. 

Most of my wins have come from my opponents blundering badly and not from me really outplaying my opponent - Obviously I'd like to remedy this. 

Thanks

your dark square bishop is bad

Most of my wins up to 1800 were from my opponent blundering, not any outplaytion on my part, so what you are describing is very common.

Anyway, the general rule I use is this: "Pieces First, then Pawns."  Put your pieces on the best squares you can, and when you can't do that anymore, start pushing your pawns.  This will open lines or create new weaknesses, which you can then use your pieces again.

Great explanation!! 

Middlegame Planning:

1. Expand your position:

a. Gain more space.

b. Improve the position of your pieces.

2. Decide on what side of the board to play.

a. Queenside: a-c files.

b. Center: d-e files.

c. Kingside: f-h files.

Compare, space, material, and weakness(es)

Play where you have the advantage.

3. DO NOT HURRY.  Regroup your pieces, and be patient. 

Read my lecture in this thread, and play through the illustrative games:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/gm-larry-evans-method-of-static-analysis

Good Positional Chess, Planning & Strategy Books for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/introduction-to-positional-chess-planning-strategy

Also, you might check out this instructive article relating to play after the opening...
Maximize The Usefulness of Your Moves...
http://www.mark-weeks.com/aboutcom/aa06b18.htm

 Read a book on the middlegame like Pachman's Modern Chess Strategy.

 It's a combination of experience and book learning.

Generally speaking there are two types of advantages: dynamic (short term) and static (long term).

A good piece is one that participates in tactics like winning pieces or checkmate (dynamic) or pressures weak pawns / threatens to infiltrate (static).

There is some overlap between the two, but since beginners usually understand tactics well enough, the part that seems mysterious to you is likely associated with infiltration / pressuring weak pawns.

For example

 Generally a weak square is one that:

 - can't be defended by pawns
 - is useful as an infiltration point i.e. a piece on that squares can attack surrounding weaknesses.

The easiest example of this is a rook on the 7th rank.

Notice that it's impossible for pawns on the 7th rank to be defended by friendly pawns.

Sometimes this is very hard, but the simple kind just increase the number of squares a piece controls (squares that are empty, or squares with an enemy piece are preferable as squares with friendly pieces just block you).

These are moves that don't require some grand plan. They're simple moves that can be played by making simple observations.

For example

A safe king and good pieces.

A safe king usually means castled to a side where none of the 3 flank pawns have moved from their original squares.

Some general attributes of good pieces are:

 - centralized
 - defended
 - control many empty squares (i.e. highly mobile)
 - attack weak enemy pawns or pressure infiltration squares
 - defend weak pawns or infiltration squares

In the middlegame, you (almost always) have to play a pawn break to open lines.

Imagine a chess game where it's illegal for pawns to capture each other. It would just be a boring draw.

In the position you posted:

White's pawn breaks are e4 and c4.

Because black defends e4 so well, white's general plan to generate play involves c4 with subsequent play in the center / queenside.

The maneuvers to facilitate this pawn break, and the timing, is what separates the different levels of skill, but c4 is the obvious idea in this position.

I said earlier to read a strategy book. This is true, but at the same time, it also takes a lot of experience. Play a lot, analyze a lot, and view GM games. You don't have to understand every move a GM makes for this exercise to be useful. Just get the basic ideas like:

 - After the opening, which area do they seek play on (kingside, center, or queenside)

 - How do they do it? (pawn breaks or piece play)

I really like the way you presented your question, but I think that you are focusing on the wrong thing. Middle-game and positional play are not really the things that you need to work on at the moment. I went through your latest reasonably long game (39 mover), and during that game you made 10 blunders. You did actually win that game, but one should never expect to win a chess game like that. Luckily for you, your opponent made 11 blunders. That was one more and at the same time one too many.

On move 8. f5 was actually a good move - responding to a threat with another threat. However as soon as your opponent moved away from the threat, you forgot that your piece was still attacked. There is almost nothing going on the board, just one threat and you missed it. You follow it by taking your queen out, and then giving a check in a square where your queen can be captured by a white knight. For some reason your opponent decides to block the check, instead of taking your queen. Your opponent gives you a bailout to trade queens in this position, but instead you dive deeper with your queen. Allowing opponent to create a mating threat (with Rd1, forming battery on d-file), forcing you to give up your queen to stop it. Instead your opponent doesn't want to do this, but offers you a queen trade again.

Move 16 your bishop is undefended and directly attacked by rook, instead of defending or moving the bishop, you make a pawn move that doesn't threaten anything. You lose the bishop. On move 24 you grab enemy rook with your queen, giving white a forced mate in 5. White doesn't want to mate you, instead wants your pawn. Move 25 your rook is undefended and attacked. Instead of saving your rook, you move your king. Move 32 your queen is undefended and attacked by enemy queen. Instead of saving your queen, you move your rook. White doesn't want to take your queen, instead checks. By move 37 white is completely winning, but instead of winning, he plays h4, letting you win the game instead.

I don't mean to pick up on you, we all were beginners once, and there are always someone better than me or you out there. Still I think that you have a serious trouble of not seeing simple one move threats, leave pieces hanging and don't recognize opponents hanging pieces. There is absolutely no use for you to study middle-game plans or positional play, before you start seeing and responding correctly to the free material on the board.

When it comes to chess fundamentals, I suggest you check out this video:



Good luck, you're on the path of becoming a much better chess player!

I am going to disagree slightly with @Taskinen, despite agreeing with virtually everything he says.  The middlegame is EXACTLY what he should be looking at, though not necessarily in a positional or strategic way.

Let me explain.

Most chess instruction, especially aimed at beginners, tends to be negative in nature.  That is, we are told what NOT to do: DON'T move the same piece twice in the opening, DON'T move the pawns in front of your king, DON'T hang your pieces, DON'T waste time, DON'T leave your pieces protected, etc.  This is all good advice, but it's hard to know what to do when we only know what not to do.  And how are we supposed to remember all these rules anyway?

Said another way, in the opening, we know what to do: develop and castle.  Great ... but what do we do next?  All our pieces are developed, but what now?  That list we just looked at is great (Don't move pawns in front of the King, don't hang pieces, etc), but it doesn't tell us what to do.

THIS is why so many beginners blunder.  They don't know what to do, so they do something randomly, generally the first thing that comes to mind ... and of course the blunders come.  If you have a general framework, chess becomes much easier.

Opening: Just develop your pieces.

All developed?  Find something to attack and attack it.  Win material if possible.

Up material?  Or lots of pieces traded?  Take a pawn and push it to make a Queen.

If you take those three things and add some basic tactical vision (seeing one move threats and common motifs), you have someone who is approaching intermediate level.  Yes, I agree, you need lots and lots of tactical practice... but if you don't know what to do, even in general, tactics alone won't help.  Or, if he reaches a position without tactics and doesn't know what to do, he shouldn't accept "Don't worry about it and just do more tactics."

If you have even the most basic understanding, you at least know what you SHOULD be doing, and that helps immensely.  I have coached a few beginners, mostly children, and I've seen the best improvement, and increase in enjoyment, by using this approach: develop, then attack something, then promote.

I agree with the suggestion to identify targets.  But first you have to define the term "target."  And why a target is a target.  Which means defining "weakness" or positional weakness.  And then you might as well go on and explain about some common methods of creating targets.

All this discussion and explanation of targets will then help in middlegame planning, and to answer the question of "What do I do next after I develop my pieces, fight for the center, and get my king to safety?"

SeniorPatzer, I hope this in some way helps explain how to determine what a target is.  I make no claims this was correct, or my thinking was accurate.  Its just what i came up with.

Might want to look at a sample of the contents in order to get a feel for whether or not the book is something that you want to try to work on at this time.

http://store.doverpublications.com/0486202909.html

Thanks IM Bacon.  I appreciate it.

I don't see anything in that link that gives a preview.

If you look at it on amazon you can see the table of contents and the first few pages

https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Chess-Strategy-Ludek-Pachman/dp/0486202909

When I was pretty new, I asked a stronger player to analyze my game. I said I didn't know what to do in ____ position. He pointed out my opponent's doubled pawns and said to attack them.

But that was completely confusing to me, because if I attacked them, he'd obviously defend them... and then what?

Umm... I guess the point of the story is it's hard to teach chess

For example when someone says target, I think of static weak points... in other words something that can't easily run away. A pawn, a king, an infiltration point.

But not just any pawn or king or square of course. It has to be one that your pieces can touch, and not many enemy pieces can touch.

That's basically what a target is I'd say... although I don't know how helpful just reading that is for someone.

(Oh, and an infiltration point is only useful when it can be used as a post to attack stuff)

An easy example is a rook on the 7th rank. It's almost always useful because there are almost always pawns on the 7th rank... and pawns on that rank can never be defended by pawns, so they tend to be vulnerable.

Did you try the Google Preview button?