Temposchlucker

Quite some time ago I was working on sacrifices at f7 from a chapter in one of Papa Polgar's bricks. I wanted to define a "grand scheme of sacrifices on f7". I had figured out that in order to make such sacrifice work, you need three pieces that work in a tandem: a knight (on g5 for instance), a bishop on the diagonal a2-g8 and a queen ready to jump on that diagonal. Further e6 should be underprotected, for instance because there is a black knight at d7. The targets are: Mate Smothered queen Ra8 via a knightfork at c7 At the time I was very proud of it, and over the years I have used the knowledge two or three times to judge a sacrifice. It might have even won me a game, I can't remember. So when I had memorized 178 high rated games lately and decided to categorize them, I was very optimistic. You probably have seen that character trait of mine one or two times before :) What I found is that the positions simply are too different to push them in a conce...

I have invented the category "incomprehensible" It contains problems with moves that I will not find in an OTB game since they don't make sense to me. Take for instance this problem: White to move. You can find the solution here . The first move is Rcd7+ I am not able to formulate a narrative that describes in a positive way why this move is so good. What does it accomplish? I can only formulate it in a negative way: every other move is bad. Such moves simply blur my mind. There is no way I can find such moves myself as long as I don't see what it does.

Today I finished to memorize a problemset of 178 high rated problems at CT. I used two methods: verbalization by narratives and mentalization by diagrams. With verbalization I recalled 24% of the solutions while with using diagrams I recalled 91% when using short intervals (1-3 days). With long intervals (>10 days) these figures became 8% vs. 68% respectively. In the end I made use of SRS which works well. The problemset comprises almost every important trick under the sun. What I want to do now is to work on the transfer of these combinations to the game. There are categories in memory like (hattip mr. Z.): Encoding Retrieval (cues) Rehearsing Processing Organization and connection In order to improve retrievement during the game, the knowledge has to be processed. The more you process knowledge, the more cues are formed and the more chunks and templates are created. One way of processing knowledge is to organize it in a hierarchical way and to connect identical ide...

In the previous post I ended with this conclusion: If there exists something like prelimanary tactics we have to look in an area with the following characteristics: Attacker placement (since you are only allowed to move your own pieces). Based on specific considerations (otherwise it would be positional). Non forcing (otherwise it would be a mature tactic). After some thinking I identified the following categories: Mobilization of attackers. Multiple attackers . Binding defenders. Mobilization. There are situations that a certain configuration of targets is already in place, but there is no attacker in the neigbourhood to make use of it. In that case to have to bring your attacker closer to the attacking square first. You can think of the following constellation of targets: Targets at a knight fork's distance. Targets in line ready to be skewered. Loose pieces. Weak backrank. Targets at a pawn f ork's distance. Etc.. The preparation then consists of m...

When I thought for the first time about the preparation of tactics, I thought that there would be a whole new area ready to be explored. But the analysis of the game that lead to a combination in the previous post forced me to write the following conclusion down: Make sound moves based on simple positional considerations. Have a keen eye for the consequences of the moves of your opponent. In other words: nothing new under the sun and don't forget to look for the seeds of tactical destruction. Before I can archive this conclusion as definite, there are a few loose ends that must be tidied up. I don't know beforehand what I'm going to write, or whereto it will lead, if anywhere, so please have a little patience with me. Is there really nothing that you can do that encourages your opponent to jump into the abyss himself? I analyzed the game with the aid of Houdini. That shows a more or less balanced game until black made a blunder at move 22. The gradual manifes...