Almost as soon as I had learnt the moves, I conceived the idea that a player's consistency in chess would be greatly enhanced by his following a set system in thinking out his moves. My original system was extremely rudimentary. It consisted of the following pair of obvious questions:
1. What is his threat?
2. What can he do if I do this?
As years went by, the system developed into the quite ponderous series of questions given in the A.C.R. of December 1931, at the cost of the main part of our series "How to Improve at Chess," which ran through 1930 and 1931.
The system made a considerable impression on thinking players in various parts of the world. In England in 1934 someone started a correspondence chess school, which announced that it was based on the following three things. I quote in full because it will help our discussion.
(a) The "Steinitz System," as explained by Dr. Lasker in his Manual, which advocates positional play and the accumulation of small advantages as opposed to the constant search for winning combinations. As Dr. Lasker puts it, "When the position warrants it, the combination will present itself." This helps to avoid premature attacks, and the waste of time and energy in hunting for possibilities that do not exist.
(b) How Not to Play Chess, written by Znosko-Borovsky, where constant analysis of the position as a whole is the main theme.
(c) A series of articles on "How to Improve at Chess," by CJ.S. Purdy in The Australasian Chess Review, in which he suggests among other things a number of questions which the player should constantly ask himself. These soon become automatic, and so waste very little time, as they can usually be done whilst waiting for your opponent to play. This habit once acquired will enable the player to avoid many oversights and mistakes, and save much time, besides being an aid to the development of "chess sense."
The above is well put, for the most part. However, as regards (c), it is an exag geration to say that the questions can "usu ally be done while waiting for your oppo nent to play." It is very true that you can often carry out a very full reconnaissance (the most important part of the system) during that time, which will be of great service if, when he does move, you ask yourself in what ways his move has altered
the position. But the system itself is based on the idea that your opponent has just made a move.
As regards (a), this sounds very well, but it is an example of how small parts of a book can be quoted in such a way as to give, quite unintentionally, a wrong impression of the work as a whole. Quite rightly, "The Steinitz System" is put in inverted commas. It should be called the Steinitz-Lasker Prin-
ciples. Lasker has been much too modest in giving so much credit to Steinitz. One will search in vain in Steinitz's own writings for anything like the exposition in Lasker's Manual.
I am, however, unable to find that either Steinitz or Lasker made a fetish of discouraging the search for combinations, which a player should never omit. It is true that a combination will arise naturally only out of a positional advantage. But it may arise through an error by your opponent at any time, and you must ever be on the alert for such errors.
Steinitz himself was a master of combi nation, and so is Lasker. Steinitz won more brilliancy prizes than most of his "brilliant" rivals.
True, Steinitz concentrated on the po sitional side of the game in his writings, because the players of his own day searched for combinations automatically. They did not need to be told to take this side of the game seriously. Moreover, it was not then thought possible to give any instruction about combinations.
Lasker in his Manual devotes a whole section to combination, and all subsequent books on combination are merely develop ments of it. The command to look for these "combination motifs" is really implicit in Lasker's book. But it is not explicit. There fore, it did not help players as much as it might have.
I say all this because I do not want students to think my ideas are in defiance of Steinitz and Lasker. They only contradict subsequent writers who have studied Lasker's book without devoting any origi nal thought to it. If Lasker had seen any of my own writings on the subject, I do not think he would disagree with any of them.
A valuable article bearing on some of these points was published by G.F. Mcln tosh, the Sydney correspondence player, in
the 1937 booklet of the Correspondence Chess League of Australia.
Mclntosh advocates, for correspon dence players, a positional reconnaissance taking in the following five points:
1. material; 2. development; 3. space;
4. weaknesses and strengths; 5. possibilities for a breakthrough. Further on, he writes:
But besides the five factors we men tioned, there are other factors which may modify your judgment of a position, al though they always arise out of the posi tion. They are the tactical possibilities. Some players prefer to look for them first. But it is better in the long run always to look at the position first; because then, when you do find tactical maneuvers, or combinations, as they are called, you will imperceptibly learn what type of position they arose out of; and after a while you will almost automatically know whether there is a combination to be found in a certain type of position and, if so, of what type it is likely to be.
So always seek to grasp the essentials of the position first. Then look for combinative possibilities arising out of the position, such as:
{a) Forks . . . ;
{b) Attacks along lines . . . ; {c) Loose pieces . . . ;
{d) Confined pieces . . . {especially King) . . . ;
{e) Pieces which have a double func tion . . ..
In over-the-board play, the positional reconnaissance can be carried out during your opponent's turn to move. And at that time it is not possible to make an exact tactical reconnaissance, because your op-
ponent's move will probably upset any tac tical possibilities there are. A positional re connaissance deals, in its nature, with the static elements of a position, and a single move does not radically upset it, as a rule.
Consequently, Mr. Mclntosh's remarks apply to over-the-board play even more cogently than to correspondence play. Your positional reconnaissance must come first.
Then, when your opponent has moved, you first finish your positional reconnais sance by asking yourself how his move has changed the position. You then examine his move for threats and objects.
The next step, assuming that the posi tion is not so simple that your move can be chosen without it, is the tactical or combinative reconnaissance, to see if there is a good combination available.
If there is none-and there usually is none-you must be resigned to trying for some small, unambitious objective (only a combination can give a substantial gain), and must make a plan.
That is my system, put broadly, and the only remaining problem is to boil it down to a series of simple questions that can be memorized without effort. The se ries published in December 1931 was too unwieldy for convenient use.
Let us be quite clear. First comes the rough "positional" reconnaissance, then the tactical or combinative reconnaissance-then the search for possible combinations, and finally, if no good one is found, the forma tion of a plan, for which we use data found in our original "positional" reconnaissance. Before leaving the citation from Mr. Mclntosh's article, I would suggest that, after having seen my articles on "jump moves," he would probably be willing to scrap "(e)" in his tactical reconnaissance in favor of a search for "jump mates," etc. For it is not possible to see that a piece is pre venting a certain move unless you have first
visualized that move. At the same time, "jump moves" help in the search for the other kinds of combinations as well.
Mr. Mclntosh states that the article in question was developed from my own se ries published in 1930 and 1931. His devel opment consists partly in a simplification for memorization. It is a well-known psy chological fact that the mind can keep five units before its attention at the same time, but rarely more than five. Hence the desir ability of grouping points into groups of not more than five.
But he has made a definite addition to the positional reconnaissance by making the possibility of a "breakthrough" a special feature. One should certainly know the points on the board where a breakthrough may take place, as they are of immense strategical importance.
In no game does "form" vary more than in chess. Some "Rook" or "Knight" players will occasionally break loose and play a game that, if published without names, might be credited to a first-class player. You can never safely bet on a game of chess. If a player is in Class 3, say, it means that his form varies between Class 2 and Class 4, while a Class-4 player is one whose form varies from Class 3 to Class 5. When these two meet, the Class-3 man may play in his Class-4 form, and the Class-4 man in his Class-3 form. Then the Class-4 man will win.
"Form" in chess depends partly on health and the other external factors, as in other games. But it varies chiefly through sheer accident. We all make oversights at times, which are not only avoidable by us but are unworthy of players many classes below us. Sometimes fortune smiles on us, and we play a whole game without any such oversight; other times, we make several.
Why is this? It is simply because in chess we have to keep so many things before
our attention. In tennis, there is just one thing for a good player to attend to-the ball. All his actions in hitting the ball are mechanical; and he has already decided where to hit it. Even in bridge, a little analy
sis will show that there are far fewer things to attend to than in chess.
The greater number of things we have to deal with-assuming all the things are different-the greater the chance of a mis take. In business, mistakes are reduced to a minimum through card indexing, double entry bookkeeping, and systems of all sorts. Without such order and method, a business of any magnitude would rapidly fall to bits. But in chess, most of us use no method or system at all. It stands to reason that no system can make a bad player into a good one-only the acquirement of further skill can do that. But might not a good system enable that Class-3 player always to play in either his Class-2 or Class-3 form, and avoid those graver blunders that put him some times in Class 4? Of course it might, and thus put him automatically in Class 2-112. Might it not even enable him always to play in his Class-2 form, and thus raise him a whole class? Certainly it might; more than that, it actually has done that, and more.
To quote one example with a flavor of romance about it: a young girl of 15 who played in the Women's Championship of New South Wales some years ago was at tended by a young man who informed me that they had taken up the game only a few months before, and had been studying it together-entirely from the "How to Im prove" series in the A. C.R. and Znosko Borovsky' s little work, How Not to Play Chess. The young man had slightly simplified the system given in the A. C.R. of December
1931-thereby showing a commendable ini tiative so often lacking in students-and the girl was religiously following the system in her games in the tourney, which was her
first attempt at playing against other oppo nents than her friend.
There were 14 players, most of whom had been playing for many years, and I was anxious to see if the girl could manage to break 50 percent. She gained fourth prize, with 10 points out of 13! It was an example of a player starting off on efficient lines, without first having to "unlearn." Sad to say, chess has seen no more of either the girl or the efficient young man, though when I saw them both accidentally some years later, still together, they expressed a hope that they might someday return to it.
After one game, which the heroine of this tale played in a nice, combinative style, and which a newspaper found good enough to publish, it was amusing to hear her in quiring of her friend, with girlish enthusi asm, "And did you notice all the function motifs?" Terminology that gray-beard play ers would have thought sheer gibberish though familiar enough to students of Lasker's Manual, which formed the founda tion for my system.
Students will remember that the idea of "function" may be profitably replaced by my new idea of ')ump moves."
By a system, I do not mean here a system of chess strategy, such as that put forward by Nimzovich in My System, but just a set order of dealing with the problems that arise in chess positions generally. Such a system was given me by my schoolmaster in an elementary chemistry class for analyz ing an unknown salt. First one applied the physical tests of sight, smell, and taste-then tested for flame calor in a Bunsen burner then applied certain chemical tests- all in a certain order.
Being convinced of the value of method is a different thing from being naturally methodical. And I must confess that, being unmethodical by nature, I have never been able to train myself to use my own system
throughout a game! However, as I said in the A. C.R. of February 1931, "I have some times drawn up a list of the mistakes I have made during a tournament, and have proved every time definitely-to my own satisfac tion-that the system would have saved me from more than half of them!"
The new, simplified system put for ward in this article, however, will be found quite usable. I admit that the one given in 1931 would be found irksome to 95 percent of players.
The system consists of a series of ques tions which a player is to ask himself at every move. Of course, if he finds the best move with certainty before he has asked all the questions-as he often will-he does not need to complete them.
It goes without saying that you do not use the system in the opening while you are following a predetermined line.
I might remark that it is vain to imag ine that one can keep the system for impor tant match games and not bother to use it at other times. One must train oneself to use it. The questions now follow. The student might copy them out on a sheet of paper, and keep the sheet standing up facing him when playing over master games, on which he should practice the system.
The questions or self-commands are given in italic type, and explanatory matter in regular type. Of course, full explanations can only be found by reading previous ar ticles in the series.
THE SYSTEM (I: My turn to move.}
1. What are all the moves I have to con sider?
This may seem a strange question to ask first, because it is usually unanswerable at this stage. lt is very useful, however, if the choice is clearly limited to two or three
possible moves, as you may be able to "spot" a commonsense way of choosing the right move without following out the rest of the system or going into much analysis. Or there may be only one possible move, ap parently; in that event, look hard for some thing else you might do first, e.g., after 1. e4 Nf6 2. Nc3 d5 3. exd5 Nxd5 4. Bc4 Nxc3. Now don't impulsively play the apparently forced recapture 5. bxc3, but first 5. Qj3!, which gains White a bit of advantage. Most play ers would see this move if they looked for it, but 95 percent of players would not look.
In most cases, the question is supposed to remain incompletely answered for the time being, to be returned to after Question 5.
2. How has his last move changed the position? What are his threats? What are his
objectives?
If you have carried out a full reconnais sance while he has been thinking out his move, the first part of this question enables you to bring it up to date. The other two parts are also important. It is obviously vital to be aware of any threats. But if there are no actual threats, don't leave it at that. Still try to fathom your opponent's objects in playing the move. Capablanca, in an inter view, attached the utmost value to this.
Don't forget, of course, that if you see a threat, your first reaction should not be to search for a defense to it but rather for a way of ignoring it.
3. Complete your reconnaissance if not al- ready done:
a. material; b. � positions;
c. weaknesses and strengths; d. development;
e. Where could either side break through?
In counting material, notice such things as "two Bishops," As on opposite colors, ft
majorities.
Notice everything you can about the positions of the \tls-is either exposed, or does it suffer the reverse disability oflack of flight squares?
Weakness are: weak fts, weak squares, confined pieces, a generally cramped game. Strengths are: larger space or terrain, greater mobility, well-posted pieces, com mand of central squares.
To compare development, count the number of moves needed by each army to complete its development. Credit one tempo to the player whose turn it is to move. We have written several times on the value of a tempo in the opening-roughly, it may be rated at a quarter to a third of the center ft , and up to half a flank ft .
Breakthrough points after, say, 7. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 are f5 for White, and c5 and f6 for Black. Both players' plans in the open ing often hinge on such points.
4. Have I a good combination? To help in this, look for possible combination motifs:
a. geometrical; b. nets; c. jump moves; d. zugzwang; e. stalemate.
Of course, (d) and (e) apply only to endgames. ft promotion is omitted for sim plicity, as being always obvious where it is present at all.
5. If not satisfied that the answer to (4) is yes, what is my best plan?
For this, you use the reconnaissance. What are all the weaknesses and strengths of each side? How can I best exploit his weaknesses, establish my strengths, elimi nate my weaknesses, and reduce his strengths, or do as many of these things as