Chess for Beginners

Fritz: Tactical, but positionally sound. Well rounded.

Hiarcs: Positional and human-like play. Good in unbalanced positions.

Junior: Very tactical, sacrificial style play.

Rybka: Strongest chess engine. Excellent positional understanding and human-like play. Excellent evaluation of dynamic positions. Great for analysis.

Shredder: Very positional and solid. Excellent endgame play.

Zappa: Human-like play, aggressive. Very strong, catching up to Rybka.

Fruit: Well balanced positional play.

The following endgame example illustrates how to turn a one pawn advantage into a win:

The conversion of an extra pawn falls into three phases: 1) the King is activated. 1.Kf1

1…Ke7 2.Ke2 Kd6 3.Kd3 Kd5 2)Mobilization of the majority. 4.b4

Mobilize by moving the “candidate”, which is the unopposed pawn.4…Kc6 5.Kc4 h5 6.a4 h4 7.b5+ Kb6 8.Kb4 g5 9.a5+

9…Kb7 10.Kc5 Kc7 11.b6+ axb6+ 12.axb6+ Kb7

3) The King goes to the Kingside to gobble up the Black pawns (transformation of one advantage to another):13.Kd6 Kxb6 14.Ke7 f5 15.Kf6+-  .

I need help in trying to compile which attributes chess players need in order to master an existing class level (from Class E to Expert+)based on their rating.

For example Irina Mikhailova has cataloged these attributes and states that a player rated ~2100 should know the following:

At this stage a chess player must have a successfully tested opening repertoire which includes 2 openings as White and 2 openings with the black pieces. The chess player must master tactics (60-70 per cent of a success rate solving problems of an intermediate difficulty), acquire a firm knowledge of the basics of chess strategy, ie. How a position’s evaluation is developed and what are its components, familiarize with about 15-25 common plans from the chess classic examples, know typical chess endings: evaluation, plan of play and standard tactical methods for approximately 250 endgame positions. It is necessary to acquire the skills of working with a computer and with chess software.

Knowing what knowledge is critical at each class level, can help improving chess players focus on those elements of chess knowledge that will bring the most benefit.

Round 1 game of the September Standard Tourney on ICC.