Some Thoughts on Thinking
Mousetrapper and I have apparently been thinking about the same thing.
I've picked up Silman's Reassess Your Chess again and am going through it ever so slowly to make sure I assimilate it properly.
According to Silman, you would only use your tactical sight when one or more of the following conditions are present:*
1. Exposed King
2. Undefended pieces
3. Inadequately defended pieces
Otherwise, you would use his imbalances technique to develop a plan.
I would add, because Silman doesn't seem to explain, that the 3 rules for using tactical sight needs to be applied to our side of the board, as well. So, a generic way to look at it might be:
A. Determine whether tactical sight conditions exist anywhere on the board.
B. If they do exist, and they apply to your opponent's position, look for tactics with the aim of exploitation.
C. If they do exist, and they apply to your position, look for tactics with the aim of defense.
D. If they do not exist, then use Silman's imbalances method to determine possible plans.
E. Use tactical sight to determine which plan is best.
F. Implement the plan.
*Dan Heisman's idea of first looking for checks, captures, and threats would be encompassed by the ideas here.
I've picked up Silman's Reassess Your Chess again and am going through it ever so slowly to make sure I assimilate it properly.
According to Silman, you would only use your tactical sight when one or more of the following conditions are present:*
1. Exposed King
2. Undefended pieces
3. Inadequately defended pieces
Otherwise, you would use his imbalances technique to develop a plan.
I would add, because Silman doesn't seem to explain, that the 3 rules for using tactical sight needs to be applied to our side of the board, as well. So, a generic way to look at it might be:
A. Determine whether tactical sight conditions exist anywhere on the board.
B. If they do exist, and they apply to your opponent's position, look for tactics with the aim of exploitation.
C. If they do exist, and they apply to your position, look for tactics with the aim of defense.
D. If they do not exist, then use Silman's imbalances method to determine possible plans.
E. Use tactical sight to determine which plan is best.
F. Implement the plan.
*Dan Heisman's idea of first looking for checks, captures, and threats would be encompassed by the ideas here.
posted by CelticDeath at 12:07 PM
3 Comments:
Celtic- I don't like Silman's list since it seems to ignore several themes such as trapped pieces and pawn promotion themes.
It's funny though that after the MDLM workout I always think of tactical themes using CT-Art's groupings ("opposing", "cramped king position", etc.).
Fussy,
It even misses more, the whole geometry business! Important pieces on Knight Circles or same file, rank or diagonal for forks, skewers, pins, discovered attacks. One big task after the Circles is to put all the stuff I learned in a logical framework so that the brain may use it in seconds. Just one example: forks. At the beginning I regarded only Knight Forks and Pawn Forks as forks. But any piece can fork: King, Queen, Rook, Bishop, Knight, Pawn. Another issue is how patterns are logically related. Just take a skewer, this is a special fork that could be called x-ray fork. I really try to get down to the core of all this stuff and I hope this will help to let patterns pop out quickly.
You both do have a point. I need to think about it some more.
I played a game against a lower rated player last night at chess club, and I once again blew several chances to win and ended up losing. I'm finding that I'm so addicted to looking for the spectacular win after working all those puzzles, that I disdain simply winning a pawn here and there. Also, I find that I often achieve a tactically dominating position only to not have enough time to work out all the variations. I need to find a way to balance my desire to find "the solution" with the time constraints of the game. Much to think about....
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