I am always approached by people to teach them a system that can be based on pawn structure for white and black. They want an easy to remember and solid system that can be played against anybody including Grandmasters and have it hold up. I found such a system by playing over games from the early 1900’s. The system seemed to be adopted by all the great Grandmasters at some point or another. I started recommending this system to my students in 2004 and soon saw its strong benefits. I gave it to my number one 1st grade student at the time and soon saw his rating rise from 600 USCF (United States Chess Federation) to 1300 in less than two years! He stopped playing in kid tournaments and started playing adults. He never lost a game in under 30 moves to players sometimes ten times his age. After a while I found it hard to beat him in our regular 5-minute battles we would have before and after our lessons. I was some what embarrassed as I taught him “too good” so I could not checkmate him like I used to. This not only improved his confidence rising him to the top of his age group and the undisputed all-star in his grade, but allowed both of us to build a repertoire against any and all circumstances. I wrote a book on this called “The Solid Axe System” and I now present to you the introduction to this book.
If you can understand and play out the moves to reach this position you are already on your way to mastering a system that can be played throughout your chess career against anyone, no matter what your opponent’s rating is. Take a DEEP look at this position, print out the article from my website, cut out the diagram and carry it with you everywhere until you memorize it! I always have been a firm believer in the power of your subconscious mind and my chess skills and rating sky rocketed by using the techniques I give before you now. This “trick” is also recommended by the trainers at the famous Soviet School of Chess. They recommend that you draw ( to help imprint it in your brain a bit more) diagrams of important positions under certain categories; for instance “attacking the kingside versus pawn on h6”, “attacking the opponent when he/she castles Queenside”, “important them in the King’s Indian”, etc. Soon you will have a file cabinet or notebooks filled with important positions that will keep your chess strength strong and ready for tournaments. The notebook(s) should be reviewed right before tournaments to help bring up all the games, ideas, themes, tricks, traps, etc from your subconscious memory. When you play your next tournament your opponent will not only be playing against you but against all the Grandmasters that you have studied, imagine playing against Bobby Fischer or Kasparov?
1.d4 The queen pawn game leads to a different strategy than a King pawn game. The battle will now be fought for space advantages and some key squares on the board. 1..d5 Black answers with equal force and claims his territory on the key square e4. 2.c4 White tries to distract Black from guarding the e4 square and claims space on the Queenside. Notice also that the Queen has the d1-a4 diagonal open now so the c4 pawn is immune from capture ( 2..dxc4 3. Qa4+ White puts the Black king in check and captures the c4 pawn the next move, 3.e3 and 3.e4 also wins the pawn back).
