What's the role of logic?
In order to educate the vulture, it must look over the shoulder of system 2. That only can be propitious when system 2 does something useful. The PoPLoAFun system is helpful for a logical approach to a problem by system 2. How does that work?
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| Diagram 1. Black to play |
4r1k1/pp3p1p/5Qp1/5n2/3B4/3R1K1P/P2R1P2/2q5 b - - 0 1
[solution]
The king is in a potential killbox. As long as you are not in check AND you are able to give checks yourself, you can ignore your opponents static pieces. Only the dynamic pieces that can interfere with the lines of attack need to be considered. But I bet you aren't able to ignore the mate in 1 from white 😉
The first thing is to prevent the escape from the white king to g2. So you look for a check that covers g2 at the same time. There are two moves. 1.. ... Qc6+ and 1. ... Qh1+
White can have an influence on the former by 2.Qxc6, so let's consider the latter.
1. ... Qh1+ 2.Kf4 leads to a simple mate in two with 2. ... Qe4+ 3. Kg5 h6#
So let's consider 1. ... Qh1+ 2.Kg4
Again 2. ... Qe4+ looks tempting. but now white can interfere with the line of attack by 3.f4
And it is not easy to see how to get any further.
Let's have a closer look at the defender f2. It has a duty to interfere between e4 and g4. How can we annihilate the defender?
By overloading it. With 2. ... Qg2+, white must interfere between g2 and g4. The only way to do that is to place a rook on g3
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| Diagram 2. Black to move |
What you can see now, is that f2 is overloaded. It must stop the line of attack along the g-file by supporting the rook on g3 AND it must interfere with the 5th rank when the black rook invades to e4. It can't do both.
In fact you do the same as with trial and error. But now based on logic reasoning. This totally differs from trial and error by system 1. With logic reasoning, the lines are pruned radically along the way. But when the vulture starts with trial and error, there is no pruning. So it must fail in complex positions due to too many possibilities.
Temposchlucker wrote (in part):
ReplyDelete“And it is not easy to see how to get any further.”
THAT is one of the salient “clues” that a “stepping stone” position should be created. Back up to the last stable point (preceding the move which began the cul-de-sac variation) and clearly fix that intermediate position in mind (System 2). Block the erroneous variation move out of mind. Then restart the process of logically examining from the intermediate position. There is no need to go all the way back to the beginning position whenever a roadblock is encountered; it just wastes time and brain power.
BTW, I only became aware of the White mate threat (Qh8#) AFTER I had solved the problem and was reading the rest of your commentary. While solving, I ignore any and all threats from the opponent, simply because of the time factor. If I have the move, the only thing that the opponent’s threat does is to engender a sense of urgency to the variation(s) (forcing moves MUST be made, preventing the opponent from executing his threat).
DeletePrinciple of military strategy (falsely attributed to Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest):
"Get there (in the fight) FIRST and with overwhelming force (and you will dominate the battle)."
The essence of the post: logic guides the vulture AND it prunes the tree of analysis.
ReplyDeleteI have pretty much absorbed all patterns related to the nine most frequent occurring mates with 3 moves. During the process I noticed a cumulative effect. That was for the first time in 18 years. I always expected that to happen at some point, but it never manifested itself. Until lately. Meaning that the absorbed elements of the mates reoccurred in the yet to study mates. The seeing of an anvil is useful in many mates. So is the sacrifice and invasion pattern of the previous post. And there are a lot more of these patterns that are mate independent. Like clearance with check and the magnet drawing the king into the abyss.
ReplyDeleteI continue to ingrain these patterns more deeply. But at the same time, I added a problem set with mate in four moves, with a rating above 1900. Like the one in this post. To solve these, I must definitely make use of logic reasoning, but I'm happy to see that the knowledge of the 3 movers is not wasted.