- 32 mates (after seeing 10 Anastasia's mates, you have seen them all)
- 6 tactical motifs (pin, double attack, skewer etc.)
- 8 preliminary moves (clearance, interference, magnet, elimination of the defender etc.)
- LoA's (lines of attack)
- PoP's (points of pressure)
- Fun's (Functions: defender, overloaded, blocking, covering a flee square etc.)
- initiative (CCT)
No reason to make it more complicated than that. The transfer of knowledge from one position to another works, since these elements are occurring in ALL your games many times.
TS, you are the one constant of the Knights of old. I am back at it doing the 900+ 5x5 problems from the Art of Combination Blokhs book and the parent of CT-Art. Over 2000 plus 5x5 problems from CT-art found at the link mentioned here. http://takchesschess.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you again!
DeleteI can't disagree with your findings . I think that it becomes interesting when you reach the intersection of these motif s and pattern and multiple things are at play.
ReplyDeletePART I:
ReplyDeleteTemposchlucker wrote (in part):
"32 mates (after seeing 10 Anastasia's mates, you have seen them all)"
I suggest (without being pejorative) that (in general) the notion that “If you’ve seen one (or 10) example(s), you’ve seen them all” is not true of most of the concepts on your list (even if it is true of Anastasia’s mate).
Linhares (in the article I previously referenced regarding Understanding Our Understanding of Strategic Scenarios) opined:
“. . . chess players are able to perceive strong similarity between two positions if the pieces retain the same abstract roles in both positions.
“In the game of chess there are similar strategic situations [PATTERNS] in which the numbers of pieces vary, the sets of pieces vary, the types of pieces vary, the positions of pieces vary, and the underlying search trees vary in depth and in breadth.
“Human experts access chunks by the perception of abstract roles. Chunks are created when a set of abstract roles are perceived to be played by the relevant piece, groups of pieces, or squares. These abstract roles emerge from subtly perceived pressures in many levels such as pieces; key squares; piece mobilities; and attack, defense, and distance relations. Chunks are composed of sets of abstract roles, and their perception leads to a strategic vision of a position.
“We propose experts perceive the abstract roles, the intrinsic functions, played by those pieces at a global level.”
We know from the personal experience f the Knights Errant that it is NOT quantity that creates chess improvement. So we should not be surprised whenever we try to use mass practice at problem-solving to gain skill – and we fail. But we ARE surprised, nonetheless.
Adding up the individual elements (presuming those are the elements) gives us a total of less than 100 things to ‘remember.’ Surely it cannot be that difficult to remember such a paltry few items, even if we are not geniuses!
As I am wont to do, I was re-reading Master Weteschnik’s treatise Understanding Chess Tactics, specifically the chapter on the Status Examination. Something in the Introduction stuck out (this time):
Some years ago I trained for about two years with the former trainer of Peter Leko, Tibor Karolyi. With Tibor I mainly studied openings, middlegame strategy, and endgames. During this time I also solved a lot of combinations to sharpen my tactical skills. I had developed my own little routine. Whenever I thought I had discovered some mechanism or characteristic of a position [PATTERN], I started making notes. The work of THOUSANDS OF POSITIONS grew first into a collection of unsorted tactical INSIGHTS, but finally resulted in a STRUCTURED OVERVIEW [ABSTRACTION] of tactics. Over time UNCONNECTED INFORMATION TURNED INTO A COHERENT CONCEPT.
As usual, when I first read this, I breezed right past it – I wanted to get to the good stuff, all those tactical insights boiled down for my immediate consumption as ‘fast food’! If I took anything away from this description, it was the quantity of puzzles SOLVED (thousands) and NOT the process done to inculcate the abstract essences into System 1. (To be fair to myself, I was totally ignorant of the System 1/System 2 idea at that time.)
PART II:
ReplyDeleteDr. Lasker addressed this directly (as usual for him).
“Another example concerns the way in which conclusions are drawn from examples. YOU MUST NOT DRAW TOO GENERAL A CONCLUSION FROM TOO FEW EXAMPLES. Unfortunately, this error is made far and wide. . .
A rule or law or stratagem pertaining to Chess does not come down from heaven but must have connections and analogies in life; it must therefore be natural. . . After having discovered what presumably is such a rule, we must ASSOCIATE it with Chess as closely as possible. But not with purposely thought-out positions: with natural positions, which could, nay even assuredly would, crop up in well-contested games. If the rule applies under such conditions, we hold a rough diamond. Then we have to cut it, so as to bring out its lustre, by trying to change the rule a little this way and a little that way. If the rule can be thus twisted about and yet seem to apply, it is a bad sign. The right rule, right in wording and content, cannot be changed in the slightest manner without losing some of its point or application.
While thinking about this, I wondered how this would work to drive the PATTERNS [“rules”] into System 1. Obviously, focused attention is required in order to burrow down from the surface impression to the essence. We start with a concrete example; we gain a specific bit of knowledge [KNOW-THAT]. By examining more examples, we increase the level of abstraction as we build up each category BUT ONLY IF WE ARE LOOKING FOR SMALL NUANCES, twisting the “rule” so to speak. As the category increases in breadth and depth, so does our ability to more easily “SEE” that abstraction in myriad new (unknown) positions.
Another thing: I think the learning process will work more efficiently if we compare two (or more) “similar” positions, trying to decipher WHY the positions embody a “similar” concept. This gives us the nuances required to broaden our skill.
The element with the highest frequency of occurrence is the line of attack. So nurture your ability to see the relevant LoA's and to discriminate them from the red herrings.
ReplyDeleteAnother good post, this time highlighting the key themes, motifs, combinations in tactics which are helping you to progress.
ReplyDeleteAre these the defined in ChessTempo (CT ) terms ? meaning that creating a set in CT based on primary CT tags that you are using could reflect these LOAs/POPs/Funs principles ?
I re-discovered an old post of yours where you mentioned specific tags ("Sniffing Glue" http://temposchlucker.blogspot.com/2016/06/sniffing-glue.html ), are these the key ones that you use now as well ?
In CT, I tend to have sets built around specific tags, ie specific mates, Quiet moves, Forks etc, always selected by rating range. In addition, I used the Mixed mode to be exposed to random tactics, and unique problems.
Any information on how you select and build training sets would be useful, whether it is via CT or other methods.
The sniffing glue post is a good way to start.
DeleteIn these digital times, I prefer to let grandmasters do the hard job of gathering relevent material. I use the following books from Chessable:
1001 Chess Exercises For Club Players by FM Frank Erwich and New In Chess
1001 Chess Exercises For Advanced Club Players by FM Frank Erwich and New In Chess
The Checkmate Patterns Manual by CraftyRaf
PoPLoAFun (point of pressure, line of attack, function) is my own creation, you won't find information about it beyond this blog. But it is no rocket science. If you have an attacker and a target, the road between them is paved with lines of attack and points of pressure. Learn to find the relevant LoA's and PoP's, and ignore the irrelevant ones. Rooks have right lines of attack, Bishops have diagonal lines of attack and when these pieces go around the corner, they do so via a point of pressure. Since when you don't have the upperhand on a square, your rook or bishop cannot use it to go around the corner.
DeleteKnights have weird lines of attack, they hop from PoP to PoP.
Thanks for the reply and information.
DeleteI already tried a set based on these tags ( although CT has changed tags in the last few months, so some of yours no longer match exactly, but close enough). The tag for Trap/Trapped pieces is very useful, since, so far, these tend to mean some interesting calculations.
I have seen the Frank Erwich books previously, but will look at them next time I am in my local chess shop, although I would already assume that I am not in the 'Advanced' class at this point.
The chessable checkmate I will probably skip since I picked up the re-published Henkin '1000 Mate Combinations' a few months ago ( yet again from the local shop). Its a great book, and usable when commuting/travelling as it has so many diagrams ! It complements Barsky's "Modern Guide" that I use in digital format. New In Chess have a regular 'digital book of the week' offer and at 9.99 some of them are exceptional value.
The Chessable format is digital, and provides a way for spaced repetition learning.
Delete1001 Chess Exercises For Club Players by FM Frank Erwich and New In Chess is for to learn the basics that every one knows. You cannot do without it.
1001 Chess Exercises For Advanced Club Players by FM Frank Erwich and New In Chess is for learning the tactics that most people have difficulty with to see. Including myself. It wil dramatically help you to win games. But you need a solid base first.
@signalman coincidently I just bought the Henkin book as well a few weeks ago. It is also at my local public library so I had seen it before. there are around 260 partial board pictures of the 36 different checkmates. I put a mark on each of these pages so I can view what the checkmates look like . something to do as low key repetitive recognition training.
ReplyDelete