Applying Simplicity to Chess

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Simplicity is conceptual minimalism, meaning fewest concepts needed to master.

Chess is a battle of ideas. Ideas are relative to a position's elements. Chess games have three stages—opening, middlegame, and endgame—each defined by a characteristic set of elements.

In all stages of the game, always keep your eyes peeled for tactics. Tactics are just ideas that ought to be prevented. You ought to prevent your opponent from using a tactic, and you ought to use a tactic should you have one. A good example of this is a forced checkmating sequence.

In the opening stage, you should play moves that:

  1. develop your pieces;
  2. get your king to safety; or,
  3. fight for the central squares.
Alekhine—a former world champion—argued that the opening shapes the middlegame, and the middlegame shapes the endgame. At the highest level, this makes opening theory critical. Below the master level, opening theory rarely decides the game. But the concepts still matter for everyone. Piece development, king safety, and central control set the whole chain in motion.

In the middlegame stage, you should play moves that:
  1. finish your piece development;
  2. expand your foothold in the center;
  3. create a weakness for your opponent; or,
  4. target your opponent's weakness.
If your opponent's position is passive but solid, expand your foothold in the center and activate your pieces until you can create a weakness. Otherwise, create and attack weaknesses directly—an exposed king, a misplaced piece, or a weak pawn structure. Here's a secret: attacking the king isn't always about checkmate; often it's just a way to create a different kind of weakness elsewhere.

There is far more advice for the opening than the middlegame. So, leverage these middlegame concepts to your advantage. One of my biggest improvements came from learning to finish development by the early middlegame. I used to think that if I wasn't playing the most incisive moves, my opponent would seize the initiative and never let go. While this possibility exists in some positions, there are times to punch and times to duck. 

In the endgame stage, you should play moves that:
  1. execute a mating maneuver;
  2. promote a pawn;
  3. create a passed pawn; or,
  4. win a pawn.
If you cannot make any of these ideas in the endgame, then revert back to the general concepts from the middlegame. That is to say: look for ways to activate your king, activate your pieces, create a second weakness, or attack targets.

Know these concepts by heart. You can do this by looking over your own games or other's games and thinking through the concepts. But when you play a game, don’t consciously run through stages and ideas. If you do, you’ll suffer "paralysis by analysis" and burn mental energy on moves you’d normally play instantly. Instead, just let your intuition guide your candidate move search, then calculate one at a time. As Carlsen put it: look, then look one step further—that’s how you get an automatic positional evaluation. 

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