What do the pieces do?

 A close inspection of my last post revealed that I probably mix up two things. The plan of a tactic is revealed by its last scenario. The main study task is twofold:

• discover all scenarios in the chain of the logical narrative
• discover all the effects of each scenario

I mix this up with my observations of the games at the Tata Chess tournament.. Essentially that works the same, but the end of the scenario-chain is not the gain of wood, but an assessment of the resulting position. Which I called the plan.

Back to tactics. The last post was about the first point, discovering all scenarios, and especially the last scenario. But during my training I discovered that point two is a problem too, seeing all the ins and outs of a single scenario.

Let me give an example.

Black to move

5rk1/p3ppbp/1q1pb1p1/1N3r2/2PB1Qn1/1P4P1/P3PPBP/R4RK1 b - - 0 1

Parligras, Mircea vs. Nielsen, Peter Heine

This is a problem of my database, and Chessable presents it to be on a spaced repetition basis.

I think I hadn't seen this position for two months or so.

What did I see immediately (what have I absorbed)?:

• 18. ... Bxd4 taking away the thread against my Queen
• 19.Qxd4 Rxb5 annihilating the defender of the white queen
• 19.Qxg4 Rxb5 discovered attack against the white queen

What did I not see (what have I not absorbed)?

• 18. ... Bxd4 comes with an additional punch against Ra1
• 18. ... Bxd4 four black pieces converge on f2

I this as a proof how to make progress in tactics. I must focus on one scenario at the time. Until I see what the moves actually do, how two scenarios interconnect to each other and how the pieces converge.