Books to help with piece coordination - Chess Forums

K_Brown

Jan 9, 2023

0

#1

I am looking for an improvement method on finding somewhat subtle differences between moves that I tend to miss. These moves seem to have a theme of piece coordination. Unfortunately, I only have 2 examples of this from recent observations and game play.

In this example I played Qd2 fairly quickly because I didn't instinctively look a little deeper. It seems like Qe3 is nice because it gives white the option of rerouting the dark square bishop to D2 via Be1 and Bd2. This is the kind of stuff that I think I am missing and studying these types of subtleties would lead to improvement.

This is a game WFM Anna Cramling had in the Rilton Cup. GM Hammer was commentating. Anna played Qe2 here. Hammer then posed that they liked Qc2 better. I quickly started to analyze, trying to see if I could figure out why before the answer was revealed. I couldn't. The answer was simple though. Amongst other things, Qc2 allows the queen to watch over the b2 pawn after white plays Nd2. It seems so simple in hindsight! I want to be able to incorporate such logic into my games!

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Can anyone please recommend a book or other resources for improvement that focus on this topic?

Feel free to post other examples as well. I would love to see more positions where the difference between 2 seemingly equal moves has a subtle positional difference.

Also, please note that this isn't referring to subtle tactical differences between 2 moves as I am often able to find that. I am referring to long term differences that save future tempi by accurately putting pieces where they belong to allow for better piece coordination and thus not have to unnecessarily move the piece again to achieve your goal.

RussBell

Jan 9, 2023

0

#2

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

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

IpswichMatt

Jan 10, 2023

0

#3

Good post @K_Brown! If you find an answer please post it here.

I suppose you are talking about post-opening positions where there are no forcing tactical sequences. I doubt if there is a book dedicated to this - it might just be that you need to look for such moves in grandmaster games and form your own collection.

AfricanAlekhine

Jan 10, 2023

0

#4

One day in the 90s Bobby Fischer was chatting with Lajos Portisch about a game in the ruy lopez they played in the 70s, Bobby was very critical of Lajos' piece play so he asked him, "how many Wilhelm Steinitz games in the ruy have you studied?" Lajos said probably 100, Bobby told him immediately that he has studied more than 1000 including simuls, Lajos asked him how is that even possible, Bobby just laughed and shook his head. Lajos Portisch wrote this on his book "my secrets in the ruy lopez with black"

Chess is about pattern recognition, the more patterns you know the better, if you play the ruy lopez with white, its probably better to check games by Capablanca, Geller, Bobby, Kasparov and Stein, that way you get a feeling on where the pieces go, its probably possible hammer knows the idea of nd2 in the kings indian thats why GMs play bullet with so much accuracy, its not that they calculate they just know where pieces go, Capa is probably the only GM who was born with this natural talent, probably there are books that will teach you how to coordinate pieces in the middle game but its good to check GMs games(before engines came) in the openings you play to see who they navigate the openings till endgames, that way you save a lot of time trying to find a move that has already been played

K_Brown

Jan 10, 2023

0

#5

AfricanAlekhine wrote:

One day in the 90s Bobby Fischer was chatting with Lajos Portisch about a game in the ruy lopez they played in the 70s, Bobby was very critical of Lajos' piece play so he asked him, "how many Wilhelm Steinitz games in the ruy have you studied?" Lajos said probably 100, Bobby told him immediately that he has studied more than 1000 including simuls, Lajos asked him how is that even possible, Bobby just laughed and shook his head. Lajos Portisch wrote this on his book "my secrets in the ruy lopez with black"

Chess is about pattern recognition, the more patterns you know the better, if you play the ruy lopez with white, its probably better to check games by Capablanca, Geller, Bobby, Kasparov and Stein, that way you get a feeling on where the pieces go, its probably possible hammer knows the idea of nd2 in the kings indian thats why GMs play bullet with so much accuracy, its not that they calculate they just know where pieces go, Capa is probably the only GM who was born with this natural talent, probably there are books that will teach you how to coordinate pieces in the middle game but its good to check GMs games(before engines came) in the openings you play to see who they navigate the openings till endgames, that way you save a lot of time trying to find a move that has already been played

I have done this to an extent but was wondering if there was a collection of exercises that could be similar to tactical puzzles but in regards to piece coordination.

It has been very difficult to gain anything tangible from this. I think for me personally, I would benefit greatly from a collection of specific examples.

I may have to create it myself but that comes with the risk of having misconceptions about the moves and not to forget about the immense amount of time that I would probably take me to find subtle examples like this. It would be amazing if a GM had material on this.

RoaringPawn

2 days ago

0

#6

Chessmen coordination, the essential feature of playing (good) chess.

For Capablanca, coordination of pieces is the central principle throughout.

Chess dynamism?

This term doesn't say much and cannot be a synonym for piece coordination.

Much more helpful may be a definition like "pieces working together toward the established target, goal, or strategic idea." (Capa's expression above is missing that intention, purpose, the ends part of the equation)

Below is a graphic from David Bronstein's Self-tutor (chapter on Piece coordination). Doesn't seem to depict the idea quite correctly, looks like they are engaged in a sort of defensive task--but no dynamism