Cara Menjadi Master Catur Chapter One

What Matters  Most 

The biggest difference  between  you and  a  master is  not his deeper opening knowledge.  It  is  not  his  endgame  skill.  Or his  ability  to  calculate  further.  The biggest difference is  that he knows what he wants. Yes,  I  know what  you 're  going to  say: You  also know  what  you  want. You want to  deliver checkmate .  We all want that. But  mate  typically  comes  20,  40,  even 60  moves  into  the  future  of the position you 're  looking at. A master looks at the board and knows what kind of position he 'd like to  play two or three moves from  now. That 's hard for non-masters to  do because in any position there are  so many things to weigh. There is material to count, king safety  to evaluate, weak squares to  consider,  as  well  as good and bad bishops,  outposts  for knights, and so on. A master can figure out  what future position he wants to play because he can isolate the  one or two  factors  that  are  most important:  He knows what matters most.
Do's  and Don'ts 
Figuring out what matters most is hard.  What makes it hard  is that from our first days of  studying  chess we are  bombarded with do's and don 'ts. At  first,  these  tips seem  like  a  godsend .  They  give you a  way to evaluate positions.  You  decide  to  advance  a  knight  because  you  were  told  the  value  of outposts.  You  shift  a rook because you read about how  good  it  is  to control  an open  file. But  after  you've  digested  another  bushel  or  two  of do's  and  don 'ts  you realize  that  some  conflict with  others .  You can 't  obey  all  of  them  in the  same position . As a result, you can find yourself  more confused than you were before you  had  any  advice.  This  is  painfully clear  in  the  games  of some  novices  who talk  themselves  out of  winning a knight because  it  would mean  doubling  their pawns.
Priorities 
All  players  set  priorities.  You  do  it  in  some  positions,  such  as  when  you choose  between  a  two-move  win of  a pawn or  a  three-move  sequence  that  forces checkmate.  Yes,  the two-mover  is shorter.  It's  easier  to  calculate.  There 's  less chance of  an  oversight. But  it's  obvious to  you that  the three-mover is  more desirable.  Mate counts more. As you  face stronger  opponents  on your road to  masterhood, you  don 't get such  easy  choices. To break 2200,  you need a  more refined sense  of  priorities. You  need  to  appreciate  how,  for example,  a  single  misplaced  piece may be decisive.
Prioritizi ng Practice 
A  good  way  to  develop  and  refine  your  sense  of what matters  most  is  to examine early middlegame positions from master games. Your aim  is  to  figure out what are  White's priorities, what are Black's and why some  changes  in the position  will  favor  one  side  significantly.  If a  position  in  an  annotated game changes  from  unclear or even  at  move  15  to  a  plus-over equals  at  move  20  or 25, try to  figure out what changed. That will li kely tell you what mattered most. One approach is  to  focus on middlegames that arise from opening variations that  are new  to  you,  ones  you 've  never  played  or studied  before.  A  Catalan Gambit  or  one  of the  sacrificial  li nes  of the  Queen 's  Indian  Defense  may  be useful for a  I  e4 player

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