I don’t know if this is the right forum to put this in. But here we go.
…
To understand the following ‘advanced chess theory’ ideas you first need to understand the following:
- how the pieces move
- basic rules of the game (castling, etc)
- basic chess tactics and strategy
- common opening theory
- common endgame theory
- tempo and time control
Ok, you’re still with me. Good.
Advanced chess theory begins after you have more or less mastered (habituated) to the above steps. Now, you may be stuck at a certain rating level threshold. Could be 1500, 1600, 1700. Depends on the website you are playing at, or real world ELO.
Oh, there is one more thing you need to know/master before getting into it:
- able to know and apply all of the above 1-6 steps quickly and with minimal thinking
…because if you can’t do (7) then you will keep spinning your wheels at 1-6 trying to get ahead, but generally going nowhere.
I will also add (8) which is: know common GM advice. If you are a serious chess player then you already know some GM advice you have seen or read online or in books. Make sure some of this sticks in your mind and you memorize it.
Let’s move on.
There are two points of advanced theory I want to focus on here:
Playing future positions
and
Collapsing stacked attacking positions via Order of Operations in forcing moves
The first one is basic, you need to see the next 2, 3, 4 board positions before they are realized. Then you become able to play the game with those future positions in mind. You are not playing what is on the board right now, you are playing to prevent or actuate certain future board positions that have not yet come to pass. And you are stacking tiers of future board positions in your mind, competing them against each other to find the best option given what your opponent is doing. EDIT: what is really fun is when you get to the point of playing future board positions at minimum several iterations deep and your opponent is doing the same thing, and you two are both aware that you’re both doing it. In my experience being able to play like this represents holding between 2000-2100 rating on lichess (beyond that I am guessing things like having a huge amount of memorized patterns, tactical motifs, opening theory and memorized games from the past is what gets you solidly above 2100). It is actually really surprising how different it feels from typical chess play. It gives me an appreciation for how GMs must see the game and what is really going on between two GMs playing a game of chess.
The second one is more tricky: here is the kicker for this topic. You need to realize that chess at higher levels is usually won by stacking potential attacks (but not realizing them yet) and then, once two or more are stacked in potentia into the future board positions, you trigger the attacks (exploiting forcing moves where possible) but only in a certain order using order of operations logic to make sure you engineer the final outcome to be what you want.
Collapsing tension in the wrong order can negate any benefit to you and even cause benefit to your opponent. Bobby Fischer liked to say keep the tension on the board, and instead of using it just add more tensions… yes, but then the next step is: know in what order to collapse the tensions once you choose to do that, and at the same time make sure to stack the tensions in such a way that if your opponent chooses to initiate a collapse you will end up with the advantage.
The logic of order of operations is key, but ONLY after you have already mastered all of the preceding steps of knowledge first. What goes along with this then, at this level is… patience. You must be willing to wait. Not only for your opponent to make a mistake, but also for the exact right stack of tensions threaded into the position in potentia and the precise moment you can make the move to collapse those tensions for good.
