In no particular order:
- Postponement moves
- Additional punch
- Losing a tempo
- points of pressure must be B.A.D. (Barely Adequate Defended)
- lines of attack as cannons
- change of target
- hierarchy of threats
Postponement moves
Postponement moves are designed to solve your problems without losing the initiative (the "additional punch"). Your main threat perseveres until you have solved the counter threats against your pieces. Postponement moves which lose the initiative can be pruned from the tree of analysis.
Additional punch
Your moves must have an additional punch. An additional punch is:
- a duplo attack
- an attack against an immobile target
- a desperado
- an intermezzo move
Losing a tempo
In most problems you don't win a tempo, but your opponent loses one. We must develop a sense for that. When you opponent loses a tempo, all other lines can be pruned from the tree of analysis.
Points of pressure must be B.A.D. (Barely Adequate Defended)
Otherwise the lines of attack that make use of the point of pressure can be pruned from the tree of analysis. If they are bad in stead of b.a.d. it is even badder.
Lines of attack as cannons
Lines of attack can be seen as the artillery pointing in the direction of targets. Only lines of attack with additional punch deserve attention. The rest can be pruned from the tree of analysis.
Change of target
The move sequence 1. ... Ng3+ 2. Qxg3 in the previous post changes the main target (the initial cash cow) from Bd2 to Qg3. That means that the tree of analysis must be reevaluated.
Hierarchy of threats
Your punch must be harder than your opponents'. Otherwise you can prune the line from the tree of analysis.
I played a blitz game this morning. https://lichess.org/Z4IlF0y5aDgD
ReplyDeleteIt is White to play and win, you have to find White's 19th move.
For me, this is how studying Averbahk's book on tactics has helped. One can compose their own tactics puzzle. This answers the question of _when_ to solve a position as a tactics puzzle, whenever you can create a puzzle. I had correctly figured out the solution to this puzzle when I played the move. It's really just stitching together the forcing moves. I didn't see all the sidelines, but the most critical line was enough.
White's position is so dominant, and Black's development is so mangled, that is hardly surprising that White can play the way he did. The most important thing is choosing to make this type of move (perhaps many of you would play this in a normal blitz game anyway, without many qualms).
That Woodpecker board looks a bit silly, a 1600 player jumping on the tactics bandwagon because of a bad Open tournament. Of course, he/she should be on that bandwagon anyway for skill purposes.
ReplyDeleteHere is a what a typical sub Class A USCF loss would like: https://lichess.org/9LuU7ft5
This is a blitz game that I just played as Black. When I took on c4, I needed to follow up with ...Bd6. Instead, I played a positional blunder ...Nb6. My opponent smells something is wrong, and goes into the classic "amateur overpress" mode, where LPDO. LPDO would have happened to Black instead, had White played positionally at a higher level, trapping my light bishop with g and h-pawns, and if I play ...e6, then Qxe6+.
There really wasn't a single tactic in this game. This game was lost due to positional impatience, in a vain search for immediate tactical gratification. Of course, I have been guilty of this as well, the point is that at a certain level of chess the problem isn't skill so much as mental discipline was what was lacking in this instance.