How chess games work
People
have always wondered, “How to play like a grandmaster?” But when the question is
“How to get into IIT?” the simple answer known to everyone is study hard and
solve all problems; also make sure you solve them on time during the exam. But
when it comes to chess, I found it really hard to come up with “what do players
actually do to win the game?” Or what causes a grandmaster to play better than
anyone? If the question is about IIT-JEE, the simple answer would be, “Just
know them all, and solve problems on time”. Nevertheless when it comes to
chess, it is quite hard to determine how a good chess game should be played.
Chess
is a battle, where you mustn’t make mistakes. You might already know that any
standard chess engine running on an ordinary machine would easily defeat the
world’s top grandmasters. If you have tried playing with one such chess
engines, you would think “Fine, that’s obvious. The computer is unimaginably
strong. Beating it is impossible”. Not so soon; if a super grandmaster plays
ten games with the computer, he is bound to lose most of them. But not all of
them! This clearly shows that not all chess games played by a computer is
unbeatable. If you are someone (like me) who have tried to improve your chess
by trying the beat the engine, but failed unbelievably but finally managed to
bring the game to a draw, after several “reverse moves” and finally realised
that you have mistakenly set a lesser “fixed search depth” value; and badly
want to know how chess works. You have come to the right place.
So
what is so different about chess grandmasters? Or perhaps, any strong player
(especially if you have got the awesome opportunity of playing chess with a
chess grandmaster, being an ordinary player). Let me tell you the secret. You
need to always make sure that you do the following each time you play: