Opening Tactics - Part 2: Pattern Recognition Is No Substitute For Calculation

Opening Tactics - Part 2: Pattern Recognition Is No Substitute For Calculation

All that glitters is not gold

O hell! what have we here?
A carrion Death, within whose empty eye
There is a written scroll! I’ll read the writing.
All that glistens is not gold;
Often have you heard that told:
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold:
Gilded tombs do worms enfold.
Had you been as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in judgment old,
Your answer had not been inscroll’d:
Fare you well; your suit is cold.
William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, Act II Scene 7
Quoted from https://nosweatshakespeare.com/quotes/famous/all-that-glitters-is-not-gold/

So you have done a lot of tactical puzzles, you have studied opening theory and you have a couple hundred games under your belt. You know your patterns when you see them.

Here you are sitting at the board. It is the opening phase of the game and a certain constellation of pieces on the board triggers a Pavlovian response in you. As soon as you recognize a familiar pattern your hand reaches out and you energetically sacrifice your bishop on f7.

You relish the look of absolute surprise and shock from your lower rated opponent and while he sits there slumped down low in his chair, desperately thinking about the seeming ruin of his position you can hardly suppress the gloating expression that's beginning to show in your face.

You wait impatiently for him to resign or make his move. When he finally does make his move, you feel like the chair you sit on has been pulled out from under you. Your heart drops and the gloating expression you had quickly makes way for a red face and an expression of shame that your involuntary face palm can not conceal from the spectators gathered around the board.

What happened here?

You recognized a familiar pattern and without calculating, without thinking, you played the tempting move, only to learn, that sometimes things may not be what they seem to be on the surface. Had you bothered to calculate things through you would easily have seen, that the sacrifice doesn't quite work, because there is a tiny but significant difference to the positions from which you had picked up that pattern.

Have you ever been in a situation like this?

If so, learn from the painful experience. If not, spare yourself the embarrassment and take my advice:

Always blunder check your candidate moves before you play them. No matter how familiar a position looks, calculate your lines just to make really sure you don't make a fool of yourself.

Introducing the pattern

From the white perspective the pattern I am talking about today requires a knight on f3, a queen on d1, a bishop on b3 or c4 and an unprotected black bishop on g4 pinning the f3-knight to the queen in a relative pin.

White can play the pseudo-sacrifice Bxf7+ and after Kxf7 Ng5+ recover his piece with Qxg4.

Let's just take a look at what I mean:

This is a constellation of pieces which can come to the board in a variety of openings and it is a tactic that you will frequently find in beginner level games. Sometimes even a stronger player might miss this, though do not count on that happening very often.

It is a useful and important pattern to know for both sides. You don't want to allow your opponent to catch you with this and you also don't want to miss your chance to get winning advantage early if your opponent gives you the opportunity to do so.

But as always, be careful, don't miss tiny but important differences in the position. Think before you play and make sure your (pseudo-)sacrifice is not just a blunder!

Example 1: Beier - Suhre, Scandinavian Defense

Example 2: Wall - McKone, Alekhine Defense

What could possibly go wrong?

In the two examples you just looked at, the pattern worked out nicely and White won quickly in both games. You will find an almost identical constellation in the following game. Only this time there is a small but elementary difference in the position that changes things quite a bit. Can you see what the problem is and why our pattern doesn't work here?

Campers - Muss, King's Gambit Declined

That's right! The black queen was controlling the g5 square. At a quick glance this might not seem like an important detail, but it is of critical importance. It is not so hard to understand. If you take your time to calculate the line before you play it, you should be able to see the problem without any difficulty. But being lazy and just following your Pavlovian conditioning might get you punished.

Conclusion

I hope the example above has convinced you, that it is not a good idea to rely on pattern recognition alone. Recognizing patterns is an important skill in chess. You should use it to aid you in finding candidate moves. But it is no substitute for critical thinking and proper calculation.

One more lesson to learn from this is, not to blindly trust your opponent's calculation. Not to resign prematurely under the immediate impact of "Opferschock" - a term used by Vladimir Vukovic in his book "Buch des Opfers" - but to take your time, calm yourself and then make an objective assessment of what is truly happening on the board.

I don't think a similar word exist in the English language. But the concept as such is well understood, of course. "(Das) Opfer" is the German word for "sacrifice" both in a chess context and in general. In another context it may also be translated as "victim" as in "Opfer eines Verbrechens" = "victim of a crime".
"Schock" is easily identifiable as "shock", of course.

Opferschock means the state of mind a chess player experiences, when his opponent surprises him with an unexpected sacrifice, especially when it is played with a triumphant expression and a look of absolute confidence. The feeling of shock, the sudden jolt of adrenaline racing through the body. The thought "OMG! I missed this... now I am lost!" that sweeps all other thoughts from your brain and leaves you sitting there shaky and lightheaded, that is, if you don't fall off your chair.

There is a famous anecdote that this happened to Vlastimil Hort. It is often told that he fell off his chair as a result of the shock he experienced when Paul Keres played the unexpected sacrifice 35...Qxc1+ in their game in 1961.
"Se non è vero, è molto ben trovato." to quote the famous renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno ("De gl’eroici furori", 1585).

You will find this story being referred to in the comments to the game on chessgames.com:
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1056959&kpage=1
as well as on the Chessbase site:
German: https://de.chessbase.com/post/vlastimil-hort-ludek-pachman-i
English: https://en.chessbase.com/post/vlastimil-hort-ludek-pachman-i

While the game as such has nothing to do with the topic of this blog, I will include it in the study for those who are interested.

Vlastimil Hort -vs- Paul Keres, 23.06.1961, Oberhausen

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