Temposchlucker

 I have a set of 100 tactical problems. I use this to get a better idea of what salient cues I need to solve the problems. While investigating them I noticed different categories in which to divide the logic that is exposed by the problems. One such category is counting. Diagram 1. Black to move 5rk1/2p4p/1p1p1qpb/p1nPp3/2P1P3/1PN1B1Pb/P3B2P/2Q1R1K1 b - - 0 26 Pinho, P. vs. Gallagher, J., Gibraltar 2013 Attacking is about invasion. In order to decide where to invade, I need an overview of the focal points on the board. Diagram 2. Same position. Black to move  Red digits indicate the squares where white has the upper hand. Green digits indicate where black has the upperhand. The logic that I want to develop revolves around the invasion squares. Luring and trading and clearing and chasing etc. are the tools in the box to change the balance on the invasion squares. The salient cues are: a Queen on g2 or f1 is mate. Although black has the upperhand on f3, he cannot make use of it ...

 The Trick is learning the chess language. But once you speak it fluently, what are you going to write? The Trick is the most decisive element from novice to super grandmaster. But how much more do you need? How important is the story you are going to tell with the language?

  It is tricky to use Stockfish for positional assessments. Because when Stockfish deems your position somewhere between - 0.5 and + 0.5 it can mean the following: Your opponent has several acceptable possibilities and the position is easy to play Your opponent has only one correct move, and the position is difficult to play What we actually want to know is point 2. We want to steer our games in the direction where the computer says that it is equal, but that are difficult to play for humans. But Stockfish doesn't tell you that.

 Now we have discovered the trick, it is time to think about how we can acquire the trick more efficient? The trick starts with a plan. The plan must be triggered by salient cues. How can we learn these salient cues the easiest? Diagram 1. White to move 5rk1/pQrnqppp/4p3/2bn4/4N3/2B1PP2/PP2BP1P/3RK2R w K - 0 17 Everything revolves around f6. Who are the defenders and how to deflect them? Diagram 2. White to move Once you KNOW that everything revolves around f6, it is easy to come up with a plan. 1.Qxc7 to distract one defender 1. ... Nxc7 2. Rxd7 eliminating the second defender 2. .. Qxd7 distracting the third defender 3. Nf6+ luring away the 4th defender by a royal fork This leads to the following position: Diagram 3. White to move From here it is easy to execute the mate. 3. ... gxf6 4.Rg1+ Kh8 5.Bxf6# I'm thinking about making a FEN viewer that helps to find the salient cues. In this case, you need the mate pattern (diagram 3) and the fact that everything revolves around f6 (dia...

 This is a tricky one. I'm going to use a rather random example I had trouble with. YMMV and if you see it without any trouble, still try to understand what I want to convey. We are searching for the rules that govern the acquisition of understanding in the most effective way. First of all, we must abandon all rules that are commonplace and that are just a waste of time. don't bother about visualisation don't waste your time with feeling the need to make an effort you are in learning modus here, so don't waste your time with trying to find the solution yourself, because you need elements that you haven't learned yet. There is no need to invent them yourself. when the tree of analysis becomes bushy, trial and error is a waste of time What you need is to get an understanding of what you are trying to accomplish in a position. It starts with the goal. When you know the end goal, you can judge for every move whether it contributes to the goal or not. White to move 2r1r1...

Robert Asked: I'm curious about your training process. Do you work on the problems by just visualizing the solution (along with recognizing the patterns involved) without an actual board or do you set up a board with each position and shuffle the pieces around in order to "cement" the visual patterns into memory? I'm glad you asked. After the fire 3.5 years ago, I haven't used a physical board in my house. I do everything digital. Except for playing, much to the frustration of my opponents who tend to search for my games when they know they have to play me. The last two weeks I noticed a difference in my training approach. All of a sudden, I feel that my training becomes much more efficient. That was actually the reason for my previous post. Before anything else, I wanted to stress the fact that there is only one trick (System 1) that you must learn Besides the trick, you must acquire some knowledge (System 2). But that is usually not the problem. If you compare t...

 This might well be the most important post from the last years. So what's the trick then? Understanding and scenarios are closely related. You can't learn the trick without scenarios. But scenarios are not the essence of the trick. The trick is to see what a move does. You can find out what a move does by fiddling around with standard scenarios. Take for instance the following scenario: White to move r1b2rk1/p1qn1ppp/1p1bpn2/2ppN3/3P1P2/1P1BP3/PBPN2PP/R2QK2R w KQ - 0 3  In this diagram, you are close to a standard scenario in the Colle Zukertort. It is not winning yet, although Stockfish gives it about 0.5. Black must do a few things wrong and white must do a few things right before you can count a point. The idea is to open the long diagonal by two tempo moves (Nxd7 and dxc5), then throw the two bishops to the king position to get rid of Nf6 and h7 (again, with tempo) and mate the black king with Queen, Rook and / or Knight. I was fiddling around and asked myself the questi...