visualisation

this is an exercise to improve our ability to calculate. i'm giving the moves played and your goal is to visualise and understand them (by imagining the moves in your head). this is something we should try to practice often. this position occurred in a game in the czechoslavakian championship in 1972.



white now played:
1.c5! (he's obviously trying to promote a pawn on the Q-side) axb5
2.a6 bxa6 (stop here and make sure you can 'see' where the pawns are now)
3.c6 Nf6 (attacking...)
4.Rd4 Ne8 (the attack on the rook was to get a tempo to move the N to a good defensive square)
5.Rd8 (pinning the N) Re7 (defending and looking at white's weak back rank)
6.c7! (ignoring the attacked N) Rxe6
7.Kf1 (the back rank needs to be dealt with) Rc6 (trying to cover the promotion square)
8.Rxe8+ Kf7
9.c8=Q Rxc8
10. Rxc8 1-0


how did you get on with this? it' a 10 move combination so congratulations if you followed it. if you had trouble, was it the visualising or understanding the move? it's useful for self-improvement to know why you have difficulty calculating variations. if your problem was in understanding the moves, play through this variation on a real board and see why white's moves are enough to promote the pawn and win the game. if you had trouble 'seeing' the position in your head then go back to the last move where you can visualise the position. think about how the pieces connect. which pieces are defended/loose? which pieces are attacked? now go one move forward in your head and try to see how the position has changed. what are the consequences of the last move? new threats? piece defended? file cleared? etc. it's worth spending 10-15 minutes practicing this sort of thing. here i've shown an endgame (taken from van perlo's book "endgame tactics") but it's important to practice this for middlegame positions too.