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Once you have progressed beyond the point at which you are annihilated within ten moves, you need to master the middle game! In other words, you're well on the way to having mastered some openings, and you're also well on the way to becoming a good chess player.

At any point in the middle game there are usually many legal moves you can make. Mastering the middle game means mastering tactics and strategies that involve more than just the next move, and it means being able to recognize patterns and the possibilities they represent. You need to learn to develop a game plan and stick to it.

The middle game is where the game is most often won or lost, and the player who can see the possibilities, think ahead, and develop the best game plan will be the player who wins (barring catastrophic blunders or well-matched opponents.

In order to see the possibilities, it is necessary to learn to see the board in terms of patterns rather than individual pieces. A simple way to improve this is to look at a chess position after the opening (either on a published game, or an Internet game). Look at the board for a minute or so, and then set up your own board to match from memory. Better players can do this faster and more accurately than weaker players, and by practising this, you will learn to see the pieces as parts of patterns rather than as singletons.

Next, you need to practice playing the middle game. Apart from the obvious, which is to play as much chess as you can with players of various standards (and with computers), beginning a game after the opening is completed lets you concentrate on the middle game. Chess games on the Internet, such as at http://www.chessgames.com/ are a good resource. At this site you can select an opening, then select a game, and view successive moves. Set your board up to match a position on the game after the opening, and play from there.

Try to think ahead and develop a game plan. Are you aiming to checkmate your opponent? If so, with what pieces? Or are you going to aim to keep the most material for the end game? How do you plan to gain and keep control of the central squares on the board? Try to imagine what your opponent's goals are as well.

When you have a plan, stick to it and don't drift from one attack to another, and back to defence. When you've played out the possibilities you can think of (setting up the board again in between), then compare what you have learned with the game that was actually played.

Read about chess, study published games, get yourself a chess trainer (PCT.exe is a free one you can download from http://www.download3k.com/Pers onal-Chess-Trainer/Download-Fr ee-PCT.exe.html). But most of all, have fun playing chess!

References:

http://chess. about.com/library/ble66ndx.htm

http://www.chessgames.com/

http ://www.markalowery.net/Chess/C hess_intro6b.html

Learn more about this author, Lin Edwards.
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