How to think ahead in chess

What Hacker News says

1. geebeeOct 2015
   Love it.

   That said, I consider many of these "tricks" to be the absolute opposite of playing chess like an asshole (though I understand that's part of the joke here). But the reason I take the statement seriously is that I once tried to genuinely play chess like an asshole, and there was a very intelligent guy who was able to thwart it.

   I read a book called "how to think ahead in chess" and discovered that I could lock down the game against a computer by playing queens pawn, building what is called a "stonewall" defense, and then slowly maneuvering along lines that I understood. It was a good way to play against a computer, because it limited the options to the point where I was better able to see one or two moves ahead by reasoning only along a couple of lines, whereas the computer (this was back in the late 80s, I think) still needed to crunch a bunch of unnecessary numbers.

   The guy who could beat me? When I played queen's pawn, he played king's pawn. Go ahead, take it. One pawn sacrificed to blow the game wide open, and all of a sudden, creativity, the ability to see lots of positions and opportunities? Easy.

   The reason I say I was playing chess like an asshole was actually documented in Martin Amis's book "the Information." There's a scene where one writer decides to essentially crush the other's self esteem by beating him at all the games they play (tennis, chess). He hires a chess instructor, and the chess instructor, teaching him what I think is pretty clearly the queen's pawn stonewall, reflects that what he is teaching almost feels more like how to cheat at chess than really play it.

   It works, unless your opponent is much better at the game and realizes that giving up a pawn and a bit of position early on is a small price to pay to take you out of a game that you know very well and throw the entire board into chaos ;)

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2. dfanMay 2014
   Was that book with the Stonewall Attack "How to Think Ahead in Chess"? http://www.amazon.com/How-Think-Ahead-Chess-Techniques/dp/06...

   I don't think that the current popularity of 1.d4 is due to playing against computers. The main reason it is currently more popular than 1.e4 at the highest levels is that Black has found a very effective way to counter 1.e4 (the Berlin variation of the Ruy Lopez) that makes it difficult for White to achieve more than a draw. This high-level popularity then trickles down to lower levels.

   It is definitely true that the style of play has changed somewhat due to computer engines, but it's not so much the result of playing against computers (top players generally don't find that very rewarding), but of analyzing with computers. You can play through a game or an opening and explore variations, with the computer constantly telling you what it thinks the best moves are and who is winning by how much. As a result, players become trained to evaluate positions closer to the way a computer would. One example is that computers don't mind grabbing material and defending an unpleasant position for a long time if they don't think that the opponent can break through. This has given players confidence to be more materialistic than they were in the past.

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