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 Good Tactics and Strategies2. Strategy: Evaluate the whole board and look for strategic strengths and weaknesses. Weak pawn structures, broken castles, imbalance of force, open files, etc. If you find an enemy weakness, then look for tactical measures to exploit it. If you find none, look for strategic moves to undermine that weakness and create tactical opportunities. If you find a weakness in your own position, look for tactical solutions to fix the weakness. If you find none, look for strategic moves to fix it. What are the strategic examples? There are too many to talk about, and too much to teach in an email. If you don't know them yet, or don't know them all, or you're not sure, there are lots of good books on chess strategy. 3. if there is no weaknesses on either side, look for strategy to create a weakness. This can mean driving off possible defenders, opening lanes to bring your pieces into better collaboration, driving pawn wedges into your opponent to disrupt his piece collaboration, or even simply advancing pawns to cramp your opponent's territory. Not random moves, but moves with a purpose of creating weaknesses, or at least, setting up scenarios where your opponent needs to play correctly to prevent you from creating weaknesses. 4. If none of that turns up anything useful, start looking for human-nature moves. If your opponent has no weakness, and you can find no strategy to create one, there is always the possibility of baiting a trap. Offer your opponent something too tempting to pass up, but that will create an exploitable weakness in his position and lead to his downfall. Sometimes these are not the best moves, and any decent player will simply not fall for it. But sometimes they do. 5. Once you've gone through all that and figured out the move you want to make, don't make that move. First, make sure you looked at all of it - never take the first move you see until you are sure you can't find something better. If you find a way to win a pawn but overlook a way to win a queen, you've blundered. 6. Once you're sure you looked at everything and found the right move, the best move, play out (in your head, on a practice board, whatever) all the moves and be sure you get the result you want. Consider: can my opponent counterattack somewhere else? I blow this all the time - find a great combo, think I'm going to win some material, and halfway through it my opponent ditches the piece I'm attacking and starts attacking me somewhere else. Consider: can I change the move order? You will be surprised how often a decent move that starts a big combination will lead you to a much better move if you simply start that combination in the middle instead of at the beginning. Almost every "great" move I make I find this way. Those moves where my opponent goes "wow, I never saw that coming" almost always evolve from me finding some minor tactical or strategic combination to gain a pawn, or to create a weakness, and then I realize that the 4th (e.g.) move of the combo could be the first move, when my opponent isn't expecting it, and I'll end up winning his queen if he doesn't handle it perfectly. Or something like that anyway - point is, always ask yourself what happens if you rearrange the order of moves in the combination you are about to play. And one final thought. Just because you start a great combo, you're going to win a rook, a queen, or even the game, in the next 6 moves, don't hesitate to go through all that on every move. What I mean is, you log into GameKnot and it's your move. You look at the game and think, oh, yeah, this is the combo where I'm going to win his queen. I'm supposed to move my rook here now, but before you do, run through all the above again. You might find that you have something better. It's easier to see it now than it was 3 moves ago when you started this combo. Or you might find that your opponent is luring you in, and you'll win his queen right before he checkmates you. The point is, just because you found a good combo, and you're in the middle of achieving greatness; don't stop evaluating everything because you never know what (good or bad) might show up. Your good combo could become a brilliant combo. Or you could save your game from your opponent's brilliant counter-combo. Or you'll just waste time on analysis and still end up finishing your good combo because it's the best combo on the board. But no time spent on analysis is wasted - it's always good practice that will make your next analysis in your next game even sharper. |
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re: Good Tactics and Strategies Also, I've heard of some chess books that people are saying are really good, like James Mason's "The Art of Chess", published by Dover. It supposedly covers the "Max Lang Attack" better than "Modern Chess Openings". Is the Max Lang Attack very popular? (And is this book too basic?) Has anyone heard of Edmar Mednis's 3 endgame books, "Practical Bishop Endings"; "Practical Knight Endings"; or "Practical Rook Endings" - all published by Chess Enterprises? I hope all of the above are still available. Or what about Hans Kmoch's "Pawn Power" or Ludek Pachman's books on "Strategy and Tactics", published by Doubleday? l'd buy one or two of these above mentioned books if I knew whether they were helpful or not... Thanks, cyna |
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