The fundamental framework that I’m trying to develop for my thought process in chess is based on the SWOT methodology. SWOT analysis is a strategic planning method used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats involved to help with matching resources and capabilities to the competitive arena.
Strengths and Weaknesses would be those found within your own formation, while Opportunities (opponent weaknesses) and Threats (opponent strengths) would be the inverse of those as applied to your opponent.
To evaluate both your and your opponent’s advantages it helps to break things down into a few simple categories to determine value:
King Safety: The most important aspect – you must keep your king safe while looking for opportunities to put your opponent’s in jeopardy.
Quantity: Referring the material advantage, but more importantly to the local superiority of forces to focus on offense/defense in a contested area.
Piece Mobility: The flexibility of a piece as determined by it’s capacity to move around, unobstructed, into a stable square that is not easily attacked. This is largely influenced by spatial control and direction. I find it helps to try to picture the pieces with vectors coming out displaying their options.
Piece Interaction: The role that a piece (or the pawn structure as a whole) plays that can be defined by the following interactions between pieces:
- Out of play or en prise
- Defending an allied piece
- Interposing or blocking an enemy piece from attacking an allied piece
- Limiting or restricting an allied piece’s movement
- Obstructing or blockading the movement of an opponent’s piece
- Attacking an opponent’s piece
- Combinations of more than one of the above
Initiative: The possibility to create immediate threats to pressure your opponent to reduce his options. This is largely determined by proper development and making economical moves.
Once can then derive a mental matrix to formulate a tactical action plan moving forward.
Strengths Weaknesses
Opportunities: S-O strategies W-O strategies
Threats: S-T strategies W-T strategies
S-O strategies: pursue opportunities that are a good fit to your strengths.
W-O strategies: overcome weaknesses to pursue opportunities and take advantage of your opponent’s weaknesses.
S-T strategies: identify ways to use your strengths to reduce vulnerability to threats.
W-T strategies: establish a defensive plan to prevent your weaknesses from being highly susceptible to external threats.
Of course, each time your opponent makes a move, you will want to perform this type of reconnaissance, particularly asking what has changed with his last move. It’s important to rank the items in terms of severity. When looking for candidate moves, you will want to execute that move in your head, looking at the post-move board (performing the same analysis again) to see if you have managed to increase your advantage over your opponent.
EXAMPLE:
The following is an example of the above principles (being used, and ignored) from an online game last week where I played as black. It's not a spectacular game filled with amazing tactics, but does serve to illustrate the basic principles.
The position was reached after:
The position was reached after:
- e4 e6 (standard opening, simple defensive development)
- 2Qf3 Nc6 (white makes an aggressive move bringing the queen out early, I continue with a developing move that will protect a queenside fianchetto and the a5 square if I castle on the queenside)
- c3 b6 (white pushes the c-pawn forward not opening up any lines, I set up for a queenside fianchetto)
- Na3 Bb7 (white brings his knight to the flank severely limiting it’s scope, I complete the fianchetto pressuring the kingside)
- d3 NF6 (white supports the e-pawn and opens a diagonal for his bishop, I make a simple developing move attacking the e-pawn and dominating the centre)
- NH3 d5 (white makes the same knight move to the other side looking to attack on the flanks, I push my d-pawn forward protected by the e-pawn, f-knight, queen, and indirectly the fianchetto’d bishop)
- e5 Nxe5 (white pushes the e-pawn attacking my knight, I capture for free with the other knight and attack his queen and d-pawn)
- Qf4… (white attacks my knight which is currently unsupported…)
It’s fairly obvious that white has made a few poor moves, while black has focused more on coordinating the pieces together. Looking at the SWOT matrix we can come up with the following, simplified analysis:
Strengths:
A number of pieces protected at least once
b-Bishop indirectly controls the long diagonal towards the kingside
Knights are well placed controlling the center
e-Knight is ready to launch an assault if supported
f-Bishop ready to develop
Pawn structure is solid
King is currently safe
Weaknesses:
g-pawn, h-Rook, e-Knight and b-Bishop are undefended
f7 pawn is defended only by the king
King is open to attack along the a4-e8 diagonal
Opportunities:
White’s knights are limited in scope
Both rooks are unprotected
The King is unprotected and somewhat open
Early Queen development could be a liability
Bishops are currently blocked by white’s own piece/pawn
Threats:
Queen is attacking the e-Knight
The items that stand out from the above list are that his King is open and unprotected, my Knight, which is under attack by the open Queen and undefended, is able to jump to an attack to force him to react, and my development is superior. I can use my Knight to attack his King and force him to react to that threat, gaining initiative but the problem is that, right now, that initiative does nothing for me. However, if I move my f1-Bishop, to d6, I can protect my knight, with a possible discovered attack on his Queen, and maintain the attack on his a-Knight. His best option after will be to move the Queen to a4 (another wasteful Queen move without fully developed forces) to check my King, but I can easily interpose a protected piece in front of the line of attack.
So, I follow up with:
- … Bd6
- NG5 Nxd3+ (white didn’t see the threats of my move and moved his Knight into my territory, I take his d-pawn and fork his King and Bishop)
- Bxd3 Bxf4 (White’s only viable option is to take my knight with his Bishop, I get to take his Queen)
Of course, on the next move white took my Bishop with his c-Bishop, but I won a Queen and a pawn for a Knight and a Bishop and white is left with rather limited mobility and piece quality (while I’m ready to advance my d-pawn and spear his h-rook if he doesn’t pay attention).
As was fairly obvious, white made some poor moves that, while attacking, limited his scope of action while endangering his safety. He was moving, intent on forcing his strategy to work, without letting the board tell him where his pieces needed to go.
As demonstrated, a simple, logical thought process based on sound evaluation and analysis can only benefit your game!
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