Kids are very used to solving tactics, so they often attempt to treat instructive positions as if they were simple tactical exercises: "Takes, takes, bang". But real life doesn't work that way! Your opponent also has the right to exist, and will try to fight against your ideas. Anybody suggesting the sequence starting with 1.Qxd3?? is playing what the famous teacher Dan Heisman calls "hope chess" - making a move and hoping it works.
I wanted to share another interesting position for you to think about. I have been using this with a wide range of players during lessons and finding the resulting variations very instructive.
Even at the beginning level, many chess players pick up the excellent habit of looking for undefended pieces. It is less common for young players to notice what I call 'underdefended' enemy pieces - those which are only being protected as many times as they are being attacked. Just like undefended pieces, underdefended (or badly defended, if you prefer) pieces contain the seeds of tactics for the opponent.
I wanted to share an interesting position from the PanAmerican Intercollegiate Chess Championships. The game was played between National Master Adarsh Hullahalli from the University of Texas at Austin and Grandmaster Nicolas Checa from Yale.
Hi everyone! Matan here. I wanted to tell you about commentating on the PanAmerican Intercollegiate Chess Championships for chess.com this past weekend.
