Keep Your Cool- Have Fun

Chess should be fun. Like life most people perfom best when they are calm and collected. Happiness people say is for hippies, but to me happiness and good results go hand in hand.

Tips of the day:

1. A calm mind perfoms better than a stressed out one. Stay calm, and focused on the game, not on your emotions.

2. Enjoy the game, being happy is great, let other be stressed out and unhappy if they want to be.

Winners have fun!

Watch those Holes - Mate that King (intermediate-advanced)

Note the squares are laid out on a grid, if you need help

reading the notation email multilingualbooks@gmail.com and we will

send you a guide to it.

In this exciting game played on-line, El-tio (an expert) allows holes in his king-side to be exploited.

The main problem is that the white light-squared bishop is on the d3 square and is not able to defend the hole around the black king. It is black to move, please take a minute and see if you can visualize how to mate white.

In some variations white survives but the main line that was chosen in the game led to a quick checkmate for black (me).

In the diagram position on the right, white is in serious

trouble. Black played the correct Bg4 threatening White's queen and getting into position to cause immediate disaster for white.

Now in the game white moved the queen which loses fast, lets look at that line first.

2....Qc2 ???

3. Bf3!

After this move it is curtains for white. If the Knight moves black plays Qh1 checkmate. If the knight stays put black plays Qg2 checkmate. Either way it is the hole on the g2 square perfectly used by black that was whites downfall.

Tomorrow we will look at what happens if white plays the tougher defense 2...Qe4 or 2...f3!?

Pawns are Good. Everyone Work Together.

Welcome to a fun project, everyday another tip will come your way. In addition my twitter account is plugged in here to provide additional tips and other random game news.

Tips will vary in strength and some days we will have an advanced and a beginner tip. For those that need chess materials, I have built an affiliate game store through amazon, with the best chess books, and other game books in print.

Tip One: In this position white has mate in one, it is because White's pawns and bishop can work together to mate the black king. Notice how blacks pieces are not really doing anything constructive. (Answer below)

When playing chess try to keep your pieces working together. In this problem when white plays mate, each of the three white pieces (other than the king) are playing a part. Pawns while the weakest of the pieces can be used to defend each other, control parts of the board (so that no opponents pieces can find home there) to promote to a queen or to mate the king.