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Chad Lieberman

You can read many different chess books and learn a lot of great tactics and strategies that will certainly help your tournament results. There is no better way to learn new ideas about chess than discovering them by oneself. I find that this is the best way to absorb any material.

An effective way to do this is to play through the games printed in this column as well as any other games you can obtain (online, ChessLife, etc.) and pay close attention to the game. First, identify the decisive advantage. Then, once you understand why this advantage leads to a win, see if you can find how the player achieved that advantage.

By simple experimentation you can observe the characteristics of a position in which a certain strategy may or may not be effective. Try using the strategy in your games and track the results. How can you adjust your strategy when the position changes and other strategies seem to be more appropriate?

In this week's featured game, white obtains a huge advantage in space on the kingside and the obvious breakthrough is the f5 push. White maneuvers until his position is well prepared for this breakthrough, all along considering the possible outcomes of the push (capture, further push, etc.). He finishes it off with a beautiful rook sacrifice!

White to mate in two moves.
Link to solution at the bottom.