In the comments of the previous post, I mentioned the PoPLoAFun system to be a single branch idea. It is a line from attacker to target. The mnemonics describe the different elements you can encounter along the way.
The study of Vukovic had learned me that the PoPLoAFun system is especially suited for a description of the kingside attack. Where the end of the line of attack is the king, and an invasion square is a point of pressure.
But I'm not sure whether it is the most adequate way to describe all other tactics. Let's have another look at this diagram.
 |
| White to move |
2rr1bk1/p1nq1p1p/1p1N2p1/3QP3/8/6B1/PP3PPP/2R2RK1 w - - 1 1
[solution]
What is the chain of logic here?
- First of all, The white Queen is under attack. So it seems logical to save the Queen with an additional punch.
- The white Knight attacks the rook on c8, which is the defender of the Knight on c7
- So it is logical to place the white Queen somewhere where it attacks the black knight too
- Hence Qc4 and Qb7 spring to mind
- The rook on c8 cannot move, so black must look for a way to remove the attacker of Rc8
- Hence Bxd6 springs to mind, removing the attacker of c8
- If you started the branch with 1.Qc4 (which I did not), here the branch ends. You have to prune the branch and go further with 1.Qb7
- Qb7 pins the black knight against the black Queen
- The black Queen itself is not in danger, which is a subtlety of this specific pin
- But it makes Rd8 overloaded
- Hence Rc8 is under defended
It is not rocket science. First of all you must SEE all the salient cues easy. Without that, you must calculate everything, which goes easy astray. Besides that, you must be able to reason logically and consequent.
Only when I fiddled around with the pieces, I was able to make the story complete.
I’m leery of any strictly linear process. That said, I do think that GM Tisdall’s ”variation processing” approach (which is very similar to GM Botvinnik’s “escape from the swamp” approach) seems to work fairly well across disparate tactical situations.
ReplyDeleteLook at what is immediately obvious (salient cues), pick the most promising direction and start moving. Observe the salient cues in the new position by “LOOKING” for additional signposts, evaluate progress, and make adjustments [“fiddle with the pieces”] after each step to either (1) continue in the same direction until an intermediate (or the ultimate) goal is obtained, OR (2) terminate further movement in this specific direction and retrace some (or all) of the preceding steps back to the point where an alternative direction is available.
BE FLEXIBLE!
Yeah, I know: this approach seems to “violate” GM Kotov’s stricture regarding not repeating lines. [SHRUG] “Rules” are made to be broken. It’s okay to repeat some portions of a variation, perhaps even the entire variation, if it helps bring clarity to what should (or must) be done.
I'm not describing the process behind the board. I order the steps with hindsight. There is a causal order at the end which made itself visible after 27 repetitions. Behind the board you can start at any point and work forwards or backwards.
ReplyDeleteI try to get a feeling for the narrative that describes the logic. There were times in the past where I looked at a target and it took me five minutes before it dawned on me to have a look at the defenders. Now it has become a natural thing to do.
I didn't notice the pin of the knight before I start fiddling around. It takes a few minutes before it dawns on me that a pin might have consequences in this situation. Compare that to the need of five minutes before it dawns at me to look at a defender.
That naivety is a weird thing. Why do I need so much time before I realize that a move can have consequences? There are only a few scenarios related to a pin or a defender. But apparently I like to stay in a blissful unaware state for some time.
Of course I looked at the F7 square but the queen is not going anywhere....
ReplyDeleteA logical narrative is the base you need for visualisation, we found out long ago with the aid of Mr. Z.
ReplyDeleteWill have to check this out and Tisdal book.
ReplyDeleteGM Jonathan Rowson's books The Seven Deadly Chess Sins and Chess for Zebras: Thinking Differently about Black and White and GM Jonathan Tisdall’s Improve Your Chess Now are highly recommended for those seeking a deeper explanation of how to improve at chess.
ReplyDeleteNarratives are addressed in detail by Rowson. ‘Variation processing’ is proposed by Tisdall as a modified alternative to GM Kotov’s suggested thinking process.
Excellent value for the money!
I have a copy of the Tisdall book and my local library has Chess for Zebras. I hope to reread both as it has been a while. My local library has all 9 Yusopov improve your chess books . Purchased at my suggestion.They have hosted our chess club for 30 plus years.
ReplyDeleteWhich book talks about narratives?
ReplyDelete{I saw this earlier, but my service provider SPECTRUM [S.P.E.C.T.R.E.?] went down, and it just came back online.}
DeleteChess for Zebras
Contents
Symbols
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Preface: Why Zebras?
Part 1: Improving Our Capacity to Improve
1 What to Do When You Think There is a Hole in Your Bucket
Learning and Unlearning
Hindsight and Foresight
Knowledge and Skill
The Intelligent Unconscious
Developing Skill
2 Psycho-Logics
The Importance of Not Having a Clue
Identity
Folk Psychology
3 Storytelling
Chess Narratives
Vague Narratives
Opening Narratives
“Reading” the Position and “Writing” the Position
Fabulation
4 Which Myth are You Playing By?
Myths and Style
The Sacrificial Attacker
The Thwarted Genius
The Noble Apprentice
5 Concentrate! Concentrate? Concentrate.
Learning to Concentrate
The Lazy Detective
Can You Make any Useful Moves before Your First Move?
Part 2: A Mental Toolkit for the Exponential Jungle
6 Why is Chess so Difficult?
The Exponential Problem
Words
“Anomie”
Planning in Pencil and Playing in Pen
Moves and Ideas
“Control”
Finding Beauty in Ugly Moves
Learning from Proteus
7 Something that Works for Me
The Four Dimensions Redux
Material
Opportunity
Time
Quality
Psychology as a Fifth Dimension?
8 Doing and Being
Chess and Taoism
Modes of Being
Why is the Threat Stronger than its Execution?
Keeping the Tension
Brilliance without Dazzle
9 Why Shouldn’t I Be Defensive?
Losing a Pawn to Gain a Position
The Spirit of Resistance
10 Glorious Grinding
And the Rest is Just a Lack of Technique…
Staying Power
Gumption Revisited
When “Simple” is Not So Simple
Intrinsic Motivation
Part 3: Thinking Colourfully About Black and White
11 Three Types of Theory and What They Mean in Practice
Will Ceteris find Paribus on the Chessboard?
Hypertheory
Elite Theory
Our Theory
Who’s Afraid of the Plusequs?
Practice
12 White’s Advantage
The Initiative
Serve-and-Volley Chess
The Draw Bully
13 Black’s Advantage
Is Adorjan OK?
“Zugzwang Lite”
Is Suba’s Joke Funny?
Black’s Potential
What’s so Special about the Sicilian?
14 Finally…
Endnotes
Index of Players
Index of Openings
Presently I am reading Weteschnik understanding chess tactics and solving as I go. I should be finished soon I hope 8)
ReplyDeleteMartin Weteschnik’s outstanding book Understanding Chess Tactics was my introduction to the concept of the status examination. His definition in Chapter 10: Status examination is brief:
Delete“The status examination does exactly what its name says: it takes a close LOOK at the status of each piece on the board.” [Emphasis added.]
GM Valeri Beim provided considerable support for a similar idea (but not necessarily the same process) in two of his excellent books:
How to Calculate Chess Tactics: A revealing LOOK at the nuts and bolts of chess thought
The Enigma of Chess Intuition: Can You Mobilize Hidden Forces in Your Chess?
I’ve detailed those alternative approaches in previous comments, so I won’t repeat them here; no need to “beat a dead horse to death” more than once.
My understanding is that Weteschnik proposes doing a full status examination of the relative coordination of ALL pieces at only critical moments, perhaps a few times per game. Beim, on the other hand, proposes following his process (in general) on every move. Obviously, we can take advantage of any “carryovers” of information from one variation to another.
Beim emphasizes a logical analysis (instead of a piece-by-piece status examination) whenever no discernible patterns are recognized, similar in nature to Temposchlucker’s logical narrative. He intuits that there are two generically different ways to approach finding the “secrets” (requirements) of any given position: (1) An intuitive analysis primarily grounded on pattern recognition, and (2) a logical analysis based on “What You SEE Is All There Is [Kahneman].” [If you don’t SEE it, it doesn’t exist - FOR YOU!]
Beim does NOT advocate a mechanical examination of each and every piece. Instead, he starts with salient cues, working in one local area of interest (tension) at a time, and then integrating what has been “SEEn” into an overall picture of the “requirements of the position.”
Both authors emphasize the critical importance of being thorough. The process seems like it could drag on forever, but after practicing it until it becomes ingrained in the subconscious (System 1), (surprisingly) it takes a relatively short time to grasp what the position is “telling” us is important and what can (safely) be ignored for the moment.
At TS. I think weteschnik touches upon it and the second edition has an in depth discussion on calculation . It is renamed Chess Tactics From Scratch. It is detailed and has discussions on why specific movrs work.
ReplyDelete@ts . I will check the Yusopov books as to which has narratives and get back to you. This is a Steps style book for players 1500 and above
ReplyDeleteBlogspot has the annoying habit to log me out one week per two months or so, so I can't comment directly under another comment under my own name. About dead horses, sorry for that. As professor Calculus said: I'm not deaf, just a bit hard of hearing on one side.
ReplyDeleteI was tired of writing long reports in the past while everybody started to fall over the conclusions just for the sake of arguing. I solved that problem by leaving a conclusion out. I let the readers draw the conclusion. Usually my boss ends up drawing the conclusion himself. And then he comes enthusiastically to my desk and starts to explain to me how the world works. Since he has drawn the conclusion himself, there is no arguing about it.
Maybe you should try that with me.
It is not what I do here, btw.
My allusion to “beating a dead horse” was intended as a reminder TO ME to avoid being pedantic in the investigation of what works (and what does NOT work) for adult chess improvement. Inevitably, the investigative process evolves in spirals, finding a nuance or subtlety that enlightens and builds on some points which have been previously discussed. I try to search through my previous comments (which I keep in a Word document) trying to make sure that I’m not just repeating something that I had previously written. (I sometimes suffer from a common affliction: Old Timer’s Disease — forgetting that “there is nothing new under the sun.”) I admire GM Beim’s stated goal of writing something new or at least providing a different perspective on a chess subject whenever he writes another book. I aspire to that lofty goal in my comments without simultaneously aspiring to write books, however many “word salads” I scribble.
DeleteI like your approach of leaving the conclusion to be discovered by the listener. I’ll try to remember that little “pearl of wisdom.”
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”
FWIW: I too have experienced the problem that Blogspot logs me out periodically without notification, even though I remain logged in to Google the entire time. I've tried to establish the habit of looking at the "Comment as:" before hitting the "PUBLISH" button so as to avoid posting a comment as Anonymous. Yet, at my "advanced age," I sometimes forget to look before I leap.
A lot of commentary here and I will can add a couple of thoughts. Almost done Weteschnik's book and at the Status Examination part. He makes the point that knowing all the individual parts of a position is not the same as understanding it as a whole/Holistically.
ReplyDeleteI think that is the tricky part and once we built up the understanding of elements which take a lot of years we can begin to understand or try to come up with a system of thinking as a whole. This is what I find interesting about what you two are doing.
Jim stated:
ReplyDelete"He [Weteschnik] makes the point that knowing all the individual parts of a position is not the same as understanding it as a whole/Holistically. I think that is the tricky part and once we built up the understanding of elements which take a lot of years we can begin to understand or try to come up with a system of thinking as a whole."
Agreed, that IS the tricky part. I’ve been thinking lately that we have all the parts (tricky or otherwise) but somehow fail to smoothly and seamlessly transition from one part to another. We have the “trees” identified, but we often fail to see the “forest.” This is distinct from taking the eagle’s view from 50,000 feet. At the distance, the forest just looks like a blob. If the eagle is hunting, it has to SEE and focus on a distinct target, with no consideration of the forest or any of the other potential targets that may be available.
Another analogy (from GM Rowson, IIRC) that I like is between a wall and the bricks that compose that wall. The wall does not exist independently from the bricks; the configuration and color of the bricks simply IS the wall. The whole makes sense of the parts.
For example, we investigated a lot of Lasker’s advice regarding MOTIFS and TACTICAL DEVICES/THEMES. Although separately defined, in reality the two concepts meld together; there ‘s no point to trying to “SEE” either concept manifested in isolation. The motifs “suggest” what is potentially “hiding in plain sight” and the tactical devices/themes provide the mechanisms to take advantage of the motifs. Ancillary “rules” (such as “Thou shalt not shilly-shally”) counsel acting with a sense of urgency and vigor but provide nothing in terms of recognizing “the art of the possible.”