Author: Russell Reagan
Date: 18:34:45 01/10/02
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It depends what you are wanting to learn, but the general idea is to break down whatever you want to learn into it's simplest form and do mass repititions until you can do those problems in their simplest form instantly, then move on to a slightly more complex form of what you want to learn, and do mass repititions on that until you can do that almost instantly, etc. Here's an example of what I'm talking about. When an absolute beginner first plays chess, he or she will hang pieces usually. I recall when I first learned how the pieces moved, I played a couple of games against my dad. He would take my pieces left and right because I was leaving them unguarded; I was hanging my pieces. I decided that I would look at each move and see if my pieces was unguarded and if my dad could take it immediately. I started doing this and after I had practiced this for some time, I no longer hanged my pieces when playing chess. The same basic idea was used when I learned how to do simple combinations using "counting" (I take, he takes, I take, etc.). I'm still not a very strong player, but if my opponent hangs a piece, I see it instantly. An absolute beginner might miss that. You continue the process to learn tactical motifs like forks, skewers, pins, etc. Just do tons of problems over each tactic. One master level player once told me that to get good at tactics, I needed to do tactical problems for about an hour a day, and after a few months I'd be good at tactics and we could start working on strategic play (when I inquired about chess lessons). When it comes to tactics, it's just a matter of familiarizing yourself with the patterns that present themselves during the course of a game, and you can learn those patterns by doing tactical problems and practicing while you play. When I say practicing while you play I mean that if you hang pieces, before you move, take a look around the board and make sure you aren't leaving any piece hanging. It may seem like a boring thing to do that just wastes time, but eventually you will be able to see that there are no hanging pieces on the board with a glance at the board. At that point, before each time you move, you make sure that you don't have any pieces that are insufficiently guarded, (i.e. do the "I take, he takes, I take, etc.") and make sure your pieces are safe. That'll be time consuming at first, then it will get easier, and after a while it'll take no time at all. Once you get good at that, do the same for tactics and look for forks, then seeing forks will become easy, do it for pins and seeing pins will become easy, etc. Those are examples of learning basic tactics. You could also use this method for learning something like attacking the king. Buy a book of miniature games (miniature games are games with 25 moves or less) and play over all of the games where one player makes a sacrifice and rips open the other player's castled position. You'll start noticing patterns of bishops taking h-pawn's and other things, and you'll get a better feel for how to attack the castled king. Try things in your own games, get a feel for what works and what doesn't, and just like before, it will be hard at first, but as you continue to do repititions by playing over games and playing your own games it will become easier and easier. Before too long you'll be a good tactical player, spotting combinations all over the place and making sacrifices and attacking the king. The main thing to keep in mind is that it will all take time. In my chess program I plan on adding a feature for creating tactical problems. I'll have it start with hanging pieces, where it will create a simple position in which a piece is hanging, and you take it. Pretty simple to start with, but it would be good for a beginner. Then it would move on to 2 ply problems, 3 ply, and so on. I think this would be a good source for beginning players to improve their tactics though repititions. To summarize, learn by repitition and look for patterns in doing repitition in tactics or playing over games. You'll notice things like, "white was able to make this sacrifice because all of black's pieces were blocked off on the other side of the board and couldn't hurry over to help defend in time." You'll see how a castled position is designed to keep the opponent out, but it's also hard for the king to escape if the castled position breaks down. It's hard to get in, but once you're in, you're "in" :) Things like that. The biggest pattern I have noticed in tactics is that when one player gets another player with a tactic, there was usually an insufficiently guarded piece in some form, whether it was a hanging piece, a piece attacked twice but only guarded once, or two pieces that are guarded by the same piece. The other tactical pattern I've noticed is that tactics also occur when pieces get uncoordinated, and they block each other and do more to get in the way than help. That usually leads to some kind of insufficiently guarded pieces where you have the queen guarded a pawn and a couple of other pieces, and you attack the queen and she can't guard all 3 anymore. Stuff like that. Do lots of repititions and look for patterns like these. When you reach the point where you aren't improving any, take a step back and do some basic beginner pattern recognition. Kind of a "back to basics" type of situation. You won't win many games if you aren't good at tactics. If you can't guard against tactics, you're destined to lose, and if you can't create tactics against your opponent it's hard to force a win. If you're still reading, thanks for listening to my ramblings on tactical play :) Hope this helps. Russell
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