Temposchlucker

The post about the problematic initiative revealed a major flaw in my chess education. I'm sure that I fail quite a lot of positions because of this flaw. The position in the post can of course be solved with calculation. But I try to get rid of calculation whenever possible. If I can learn the essential patterns, I should be able to get rid of the flaw, making it possible to see the solution of such positions in a glance, without any calculation. My approach is to generalize the idea, so that it becomes loose of a specific position. At first glance, this might look a boring approach, but if you make the effort to dive deep into the matter, it might very well prove to be very exciting! I use white and black circles, which represent pieces of equal value. I should rather not have used a board as background, since that leads to associations with a position. But, well, I used it anyway. White to move The arrows show the mutual contacts between the pieces. In this position t...

This is my 1000th post. Time to look back and to look forward. It all began way back in 1998, when I started to play chess again after a hiatus of a few decades. After a few months I witnessed how our club champion got is ass handed by a 14 your old boy. The boy didn't use much time, and he even seemed to have trouble to concentrate on the board. At that moment it dawned upon me that his performance was simply based on some kind of super trick. I decided that I wanted to know how this trick works, and I wanted to learn the trick myself. And so I started my investigation. Soon I discovered the ideas of prof. Adriaan de Groot, and the experiments of papa Polgar. It soon dawned on me that the trick had something to do with pattern recognition and the subconscious. The question became, can I replicate the results of papa Polgar as an adult, with myself in the role of guinea pig? I bought Polgars first brick and started to solve mate problems. After the brick I continued...

I have pruned the tree of scenarios drastically, and added the initiative as branch.

The PLF (PoPLoAFun) system is very useful for certain types of position. But there are positions that remain to cause problems. Especially position where making moves that maintain the initiative are paramount. I clearly haven't grasp the full idea of the initiative. Diagram 1. White to move r3rbk1/1p3ppp/2pn1qn1/p2p1b2/P2P3P/2PB1NB1/1PQNRPP1/4R1K1 w - - 1 1 [ solution ] Feel free to comment already. That is helpful. I will update when I have learned something from the position. I have elaborated a lot on the initiative in the recent past. But it has become still no skill by far. I feel dumb. I can only talk about the initiative. UPDATE It took me quite a while to understand this position. After a few days it starts to dawn on me. I have been struggling with intermezzo moves and desperado's.  I have been struggling a lot in the past, and the final conclusion back then was that the length of the series of captures was paramount, in combination with who starts with ...

Robert Coble said: "The exploration of the PoPLoAFun approach has produced some surprising results! Temposchlucker has noted that we seem to follow a “spiral” of increasing sophistication as we learn more about how to “see” the critical aspects of any given position. We start at a very simple level, eventually embed the necessary “lessons” in LTM for that level, and then move up a level of abstraction. Some of us progress rapidly up through the levels until we reach a pretty high level of skill. Others of us advance to a certain (relatively low) level, and seem to get stuck at that level. Let’s begin at the beginning – the formal rules of chess. We have a very clear-cut goal – checkmate. We have very specific rules for the movement of the pieces. But nowhere in the formal rules do we have anything that tells us how to get from the formal rules regarding piece movement to the ultimate goal checkmate. We “discover” that mathematicians have developed relative values ...

My failures are used to hang as examples in the tree of scenarios like balls in a Xmas tree (see the links) Tree Of Scenarios target status Is hanging or outnumbered neutralize counter attack defend after capture Has lack of space cover flight square bishop on backrank bishop on backrank weakest defender pry the box open block flight square with his own piece chase target into the box squeeze the box chase target into a line of attack cut off from defenders Is defending Is target of duplo attack Is B.A.D. Remove defenders Defender has other duties deflect are the defenders potential targets? add attackers with tempo can the opponent add defenders? duplo attack it Is attacking point of pressure status Is outnumbered ready for use Line of attack to PoP is blocked clear with tempo Is of 2nd order attacker status Has defensive duties remove counter attack...

 I reshuffled the tree of scenario's It is more logical now. Time to put it to the test.

After a little break, it is always a bit difficult to get back on track again. But let's give it a shot. I was busy to reshuffle the tree of scenario's It is logical to start with determining your targets. A target is always (nearly) outnumbered. What does that mean? It is either: Hanging (outnumbered, LPDO) or B.A.D. (Barely Adequate Defended, nearly outnumbered) or Of high value. A king is always outnumbered when you attack it So we start looking for (nearly) outnumbered targets. But what happens if we don't find one? There must be at least one target. Otherwise there can be no combination. Diagram 1. White to move 4r1k1/pqr1pp1p/p1Nn2p1/3P4/5QP1/8/PP1R1P1P/4R1K1 w - - 1 1 [ solution ] We already talked about this position before. The point is, that the black queen has lack of space. But I did not see that. Only when I realised that b8 is a convergence point of the second order of  the white rook and knight, I saw that the black queen is actually a...