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How to think

How to Think in Chess 🤔 with GingerGM Simon Williams!!

• Never drift. Always act with a purpose. Improve your position. Ask yourself what are your good pieces and bad pieces. Have a plan and follow it.
• Always go for the most critical move. Take the bloody pawn. If it works, it works. If you don't see reasons why it won't work, do it. Back up your capture with concrete calcutation, not being afraid of ghosts.
• When creating a threat, ask yourself whether it really achieves anything. Don't go for 1-move threat. Move for a purpose.
• If opponent is not doing anything, don't need to rush, but play with a purpose.
• For every opening move, ask you why you make this move? What does it bring to you, to your position. Also, ask yourself what are the plan of the opponent.
• In every opening, ask yourself what you want to achieve, and what are the positions you want to avoid.
• You need to know your pawn breaks, you need to know your middle game ideas.
• Don't force things unless you double-check your ideas with calculations.
• Pawn structure = the skeleton. The pieces = the organs.

Important to play on the side where the skeleton is the strongest.

• When analysing a position, looks at the skeleton first. Look at pawn breaks. Pawn breaks change the nature of a position. Look at pawns that are locked, that can't moved.
• When having the advantage (of one pawn for instance), all we have to do is to block all the counter play (like block pawn breaks), and later on use the advantage (advance pawns for promotion).
• Typical mistakes of low-rated players:

• Try to force things without concrete calculations
• Not considering about your opponent's possibilities.

Tips

• Try to play on the side on which your bishops aim at. [1]