Naturally at every move of every game you play, you must make sure that you are not committing some elementary blunder such as leaving a piece where it can be taken - this is obvious. Moreover, at every move you should make as exact and deep a calculation as you can to determine what your opponent's most likely reply move will be, how you will an swer it, and so on. When calcula tion reveals clearly that you can win a piece, or may lose a piece, or mate your opponent's king, or something equally drastic, your line of action is clearly indicated, but in the vast majority of cases, decisive 'combinations' like these will be lacking and you will be adrift on an immense sea of possibilities. Many great players have attempted to supply a rudder
for your boat and of these I think that of a well-known American player, Weaver Adams, is sim plest.
He holds that four things are worth striving for: Power, Mobil ity, Options, and the avoidance of Weaknesses. P, M, 0, W! Learn these four letters and you will rarely forget what they stand for (I found them easier to remember as a pronounceable word 'POWM').
Power. Easy! The more squares and the more important squares a piece commands, or the more im portant the hostile men it attacks, the greater is its power. Try to . place pieces on squares where they are most effective, i.e. most pow erful.
Your men gain in power as they
advance
closer to important enemy units (these two state ments are amply exemplified by the cocky little pawn in Diagram42,
which by throwing itself at the enemy king, has won the game).A cruder aspect of power, but one which it is possible to forget in abstractions, is the fact that - a pawn is a pawn, and a bishop is a bishop! To have won one of your opponent's pawns is a solid achievement and has in itself brought you nearer to victory. As a rule beginners fmd it much more difficult to appreciate posi tional factors such as well-placed pieces, an exposed king, and such like, than material factors such as
the
loss of a piece or pawn; so all elementary text books deliber ately stress the former at the ex pense of the latter. Occasionally they swing the pendulum too far, and the learner acquires a mis taken disdain of material power; he gets into the habit of sacrific ing a pawn or a piece for almostnothing. A positional advantage
is not an advantage at all until you have learnt what to do with it; and my considered advice
(which I should be prepared to
argue out with anybody though it
runs contrary to the general run
of text-book instruction) is to husband your men pretty parsi moniously until you have begun to 'get the feel of them' and have had a few chances to exploit positional advantages whilst free from disturbing nervous tension engendered by starting the whole operation a piece or a pawn to the
bad. Otherwise, whilst your
games may be bold, original and interesting, you may lose far too many.
A pawn's a pawn, for a' thatl
Mobility.
Noris
this difficult.A man is well-placed where he
has freedom of action, badly placed when he is hampered and cramped by other men, whether friends or foes. The effect of lack of mobility can be drastic, as
Diagram
133
illustrates. HereWhite, with rook against knight, would normally win. But he ac tually loses on account of the lack of mobility of his rook, which,
impeded by the pawns, cannot be saved from the attack of the knight.
Diagram 133
Remember to consider the mobility of other men besides
the
one moved.
Diagram 134
For instance, White decides, in
Diagram
134,
to develop hisbishop. It would actually have the greatest mobility on the square
marked with an
'X',
from whichHow to Make Good Moves
99ten different squares; but on that square it would rob the white rook of access to five important squares. A better square for it is the one mar ked with a circle where, though it has not quite the same mobility itself, it does not detract from the mobility of any friendly piece.
Options.
It pays to conserve valuable options until you are in a position to make the best use of them. For instance, one of your pieces might have the option of moving in either of two ways, each of which might cause your opponent trouble. Either of these might be a better move than any other you could make, but it might yet pay to hold the option in reserve for the moment, to keep your opponent on tenter hooks. Perhaps on the very next turn to play, you may find that one of them now wins outright - you would feel silly if you had made the other, and achieved nothing by it!Conversely, if there is any move you obviously
must
make sooner or later, it usually pays to do it at once, otherwise you might have to make it later on when you would desperately like to make another. In doing this you will be conserving optional moves.Weaknesses.
This should be clear. A move, however good in other respects, might have to be avoided if it creates a weakness in your game, or allows your op ponent to force one.These four factors must be weighed up one against the other and also considered from your opponent's point of view. Thus if you can force weaknesses, or re strict the mobility of his men or rob them of some or part of their power, you are doing just as well as you would be registering posi tive improvements in your own P,
M, 0, W factors.
Thus, turn to Diagram
134
again. In that position, the black bishop is pinned (confirm this). If White moves his bishop to the square marked with an 'X', he
unpins
the black bishop, i.e. re leases it for the pin, enabling this piece which previously could not move at all, to go on at will to any of the five different squares. On one of these squares, White's queen stands, and could now be captured! We see that a wretch edly bad move might be made, quite unsuspectingly, through failing to take the wide view. Consider your forces as a whole!Consider the situation fre quently and habitually from your opponent's view as well as your own. Whilst waiting for him to move, rise from your seat and (all this as unobtrusively as possible, of course) go round behind him and have a quiet look at the game from his side. You may see at a glance strengths or weaknesses in his game you had not previously suspected. Watch his demeanour - a worried look may reveal that he has difficulties you had not
noticed.
Above all, keep an
elastic
outlook. Those P, 0, M, W factors are to be considered only in the light of every other possibility.
In
Diagram135,
White's obvious selection for either Power or
Mobility would be a move with
his rook on to one of the open
files. This would give the rook seven more squares to operate on than he has now. But the serious
weakness this would allow Black
to force by taking the knight next move, saddling White, on recap turing, with doubled and isolated pawns, compels postponement of the rook move in favour of mov ing the knight so as to avoid this capture.
Diagram 135
In another case, the opposite
might hold; it might be worth
while submitting to a small per manent weakness to seize the chance of getting in a move which represents a great incre ment of power.
The Weaver Adams formula applies whenever clean-cut com binations are not discernible.
If at first it seems a bit hazy to you, or you cannot see exactly how it works, don't worry; use it
as you play actual games and you
will gradually realise what a help it can be.
Even a sketchy understanding
of the principles outlined in this
book will give you an inunense advantage over the 'natural' player and after a few dozen games you may fmd yourself beating people who have played chess half a lifetime.