Middlegame .. How to improve ؟

@Timewaterfallll said in #20:
> I understand.
> I started very early. I started to get frustrated with myself and my chess very early on. I came back too late.
> I'm tempted to be deeply sorry, but that's life.

Regrets are useless. Too, regretting not spending enough time on chess is... well, it depend by how you spent your time. There're many things in life much more important than chess. If you spent your time on having fun, building your future, playing an instrument, writing a book, playing sports and I can make 100 other examples... well, you shouldn't regret you didn't spend that time playing chess.

Chess was made to be just a game, the ones who invented it didn't imagine it would become like this, an hyperstudied thing, where people train, study and spend hours to improve. I don't know how much that makes sense, too, and the one saying this is one who spent A LOT of time with it (just the games, I played over 35000 since 2009, most of them 10 mins).

@Basch_of_Dalmasca said in #21:
> Regrets are useless. Too, regretting not spending enough time on chess is... well, it depend by how you spent your time. There're many things in life much more important than chess. If you spent your time on having fun, building your future, playing an instrument, writing a book, playing sports and I can make 100 other examples... well, you shouldn't regret you didn't spend that time playing chess.
>
> Chess was made to be just a game, the ones who invented it didn't imagine it would become like this, an hyperstudied thing, where people train, study and spend hours to improve. I don't know how much that makes sense, too, and the one saying this is one who spent A LOT of time with it (just the games, I played over 35000 since 2009, most of them 10 mins).

What you mentioned is a very basic and fundamental question. I doubt that this feeling of regret can be removed no matter what we have done.
Maybe everything we do is to escape from a more important issue or something problematic.

@Timewaterfallll said in #22:
> What you mentioned is a very basic and fundamental question. I doubt that this feeling of regret can be removed no matter what we have done.
> Maybe everything we do is to escape from a more important issue or something problematic.

I don't know if everyone has something to regret. Me, surely I've a lot, I wasted my youth.

Many people escape from issues, I did too. It's one of the worst thing one can do. There's no place far enough to escape your issues, they will reach you. Issues have to be faced, escaping or lying to oneself is very detrimental.

@Timewaterfallll said in #1:
> In many of my games I get opening advantage. I'm not bad at endgame either. But I can't control the chaos in my middlegame.
> Do you have a suggestion? An effective book or ... anything else
A very easy issue to solve .....The list is long but I can give you my personal 10 middlegame tips and ideas that can help you out well they're just my take tho so don't solely depend on only those since they're more than 10 anyways so

1.Look for moves that improve your position (controlling open and semi-open files those kinds of moves)
2.Complete Your Development(for example you got to a middlegame and there's a bishop or Knight you haven't moved since you started ..get it out)

3.Look for weaknesses in your enemies position (these are squares that can be potential outposts for your pieces such as the Knight)

4.Look for Potential pawn breaks and add more pieces to support that pawn break(these moves usually change the board state and can open up the game more for other ideas)

5.Do Some prophylactic moves like h3 or something to prevent Back Rank mate...you never know when you'll be back rank mated without even noticing or you could be so focused on an attack but the back rank mate threat slows you down

6.Rerouting pieces to the squares they're most useful (for example when you see some GM games or even IMs you mostly would see them moving their Knight's or Bishops to various squares but all they're doing is just maneuvering those pieces and placing them to squares they can be useful

7.Look For Hidden tactics(3-4 moves later kind of tactics)This basically means you have to be very keen in the middlegame many people underestimate a position and think there's no tactic but when they analyze their games they find there was a point they had a +5 advantage if they only looked closely they would have seen that fork or pin that they missed

8.Look for Forcing Moves,this basically means look for moved that limit your opponent move varieties and this will also give you less to think about since you just know they'll have to play these certain number of moves if not they lose a piece or a valuable square or something

9.Try Castling Queenside.... sometimes you may feel you keep getting boring positions all the time and they don't have a thrill to them so castle queenside and let the pawn storm do the job I think this one or the easiest plans that you have whenever you castle opposite sides

10.Make beneficial trade I know maybe you know this but most people trade without even thinking about what that piece could have been doing if it wasn't traded ...some pieces people trade actually end up being a very useful piece later on in the late middlegame but since they just wanted to trade everything they lost an opportunity to use that piece effectively in that position

So yea those are my 10 middlegame ideas and plans I hope it also helps people who just read through the comments

@ArchivedChats said in #24:
> A very easy issue to solve .....The list is long but I can give you my personal 10 middlegame tips and ideas that can help you out well they're just my take tho so don't solely depend on only those since they're more than 10 anyways so
>
> 1.Look for moves that improve your position (controlling open and semi-open files those kinds of moves)
> 2.Complete Your Development(for example you got to a middlegame and there's a bishop or Knight you haven't moved since you started ..get it out)
>
> 3.Look for weaknesses in your enemies position (these are squares that can be potential outposts for your pieces such as the Knight)
>
> 4.Look for Potential pawn breaks and add more pieces to support that pawn break(these moves usually change the board state and can open up the game more for other ideas)
>
> 5.Do Some prophylactic moves like h3 or something to prevent Back Rank mate...you never know when you'll be back rank mated without even noticing or you could be so focused on an attack but the back rank mate threat slows you down
>
> 6.Rerouting pieces to the squares they're most useful (for example when you see some GM games or even IMs you mostly would see them moving their Knight's or Bishops to various squares but all they're doing is just maneuvering those pieces and placing them to squares they can be useful
>
> 7.Look For Hidden tactics(3-4 moves later kind of tactics)This basically means you have to be very keen in the middlegame many people underestimate a position and think there's no tactic but when they analyze their games they find there was a point they had a +5 advantage if they only looked closely they would have seen that fork or pin that they missed
>
> 8.Look for Forcing Moves,this basically means look for moved that limit your opponent move varieties and this will also give you less to think about since you just know they'll have to play these certain number of moves if not they lose a piece or a valuable square or something
>
> 9.Try Castling Queenside.... sometimes you may feel you keep getting boring positions all the time and they don't have a thrill to them so castle queenside and let the pawn storm do the job I think this one or the easiest plans that you have whenever you castle opposite sides
>
> 10.Make beneficial trade I know maybe you know this but most people trade without even thinking about what that piece could have been doing if it wasn't traded ...some pieces people trade actually end up being a very useful piece later on in the late middlegame but since they just wanted to trade everything they lost an opportunity to use that piece effectively in that position
>
> So yea those are my 10 middlegame ideas and plans I hope it also helps people who just read through the comments

I appreciate it very much. To make it easy to remember, I will summarize your comment in 10 points
1 Improving position 2 Completing development 3 Searching for weakness or potential weakness 4 Searching for pawn breaks (or potential) 5 Preventive moves (h3..a3) 6 Rerouting pieces to the more useful squares
7 Attention to actual or potential tactics 8 Look for Forcing Moves
9 Queenside (oppositeside) Castell 10 beneficial trade

Thanks again.

..... (I would like to add some discussion about tempo. Imagine that in one game you make 2 unnecessary preemptive moves and also an unnecessary castle. This is enough for your opponent to make a dangerous attack.)

@Timewaterfallll said in #25:
>
Yea true as I said those are just ten of them and can still be added on but those are the ones I can tell that work for most rating levels and also solves the question (okay I'm done with the opening what next?)I realized most people have this question all the time and then they just waste time in meaningless piece movement instead of planning their attack or defense if they're in a position that requires them to sturdy up their defense and counter attack later anyway I'm glad I could help and also thanks for summarizing

@ArchivedChats said in #26:
> Yea true as I said those are just ten of them and can still be added on but those are the ones I can tell that work for most rating levels and also solves the question (okay I'm done with the opening what next?)I realized most people have this question all the time and then they just waste time in meaningless piece movement instead of planning their attack or defense if they're in a position that requires them to sturdy up their defense and counter attack later anyway I'm glad I could help and also thanks for summarizing

Of course, you helped me and many players. Giving your experience to others in an understandable way is more valuable than some general advice from books.
I just said one of my considerations that comes from my experience and imagine that everyone adds a part of their lived experience in chess to this discussion. It gets better and better.
Also about trade, which is a very important topic and I haven't understood it yet

@Akbar2thegreat said in #4:
> Winning Chess [Strategies by Seirawan (with Silman)],
www.amazon.com/Winning-Chess-Strategies-Everyman/dp/1857443853?asin=1857443853&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1
@Akbar2thegreat said in #4:
> The Art of Middlegame by Kotov,
store.doverpublications.com/0486261549.html
@Akbar2thegreat said in #4:
> Mastering Chess Middlegames by Penchenko, ...
www.newinchess.com/media/wysiwyg/product_pdf/9017.pdf
@TheBlunderingNerd said in #10:
> ... Chess Strategy for Club Players by Herman Grooten ...
www.newinchess.com/media/wysiwyg/product_pdf/9042.pdf
@ThunderClap said in #13:
> ... Zlotnik's Middlegame Manual ...
www.newinchess.com/media/wysiwyg/product_pdf/9104.pdf
@ThunderClap said in #13:
> ... The Sherevesky Method ...
www.newinchess.com/media/wysiwyg/product_pdf/9056.pdf

@Timewaterfallll said in #27:
>
Well I can give you a detailed explanation on how to carefully choose beneficial trades and when to evade from potential trades made by your opponent for example in the case of the Bishop pair a topic widely talked about and how it's better to always preserve your Bishop pair and whatnot but sometimes there are cases where your Bishop pair is completely useless and this occurs especially when the opponent realizes ...you only got bishops so I have a simple plan I just have to close the position and your Bishops will be useless and basically the guy who grew up worshiping the Bishop pair is now regretting basically what I'm trying to say is don't take every chess advice at face value instead be flexible and adapt to each game as I've mentioned a player who has no bishops and has Knight's should consider closing up the position so that the bishops can become dormant and someone who has a bishop against Knight's should try as much as possible to keep the position as open for the Snipers to do their job without pawn hinderance.Now back to how to make good trades first you should note which piece is likely to just be worse in the future as per your long term goal say you want to make a pawn chain on the light squares so obviously you'll have to trade your Light square bishop before doing that since if you do that while your Light squared bishop is still in the game it's just like digging your own grave and diving in another thing you should avoid is unnecessary trades most of the time your opponent can offer you a trade but how will that trade benefit your position....in most cases it actually helps your opponent for example a player once offered me a dark squared bishop and all their pawns were on light squares so that bishop was obviously a menace but I guess he didn't understand that and he lost a valuable piece in his army so before making trades ask yourself what role is this piece going to do in my long term plan or goal if you can't figure that out just look at the pawn structure ....trust me the pawn structure literally tells you how the game will go and I'm not just saying what every other GM or IM would say (go solve puzzles and bla bla bla) Your Pawn Structure decided which piece is valuable and which one is just a sitting duck so study more about your pawn structures especially the ones you get commonly in the openings you play they can help you know which piece is useless and should be traded immediately you get a chance ....good trades is a wide topic and it's something you develop over time after knowing what your pawn structure is and how it's contributing to my trading of pieces anyways idk if that helped but that's all I can tell you since I'm not even titled lol anyways good luck on your journey on discovering new ways to play the Middlegame

@ArchivedChats said in #29:
>

How great and responsible.
I clearly understand the relationship of bishops with the pawn structure. Also the relationship of rooks with pawn structure.
But how is the ratio of Knights to pawn structure understood?
(By the way, it doesn't matter what your title is in chess. The important thing is that you can convey your experiences to others with great clarity and simplicity).
I feel you can be a very good teacher