I'm creating this thread because someone had questions about that topic and I'm trying to share what I know. Actually, I suck at tactics (because I'm too slow), but I know the basic principles.
Feel free to add your ideas and maybe correct me.
What are tactical puzzles for and do they lead to you employing a certain (aggressive) style of playing?
Tactical puzzles enable you to improve three different types of your play: combinational vision, accuracy of your calculation and speed of your calculation.
You may say, ok, tactics are not important, I have a positional way of playing and will win like that.
That's simply not true.
Tactics occur everywhere, and even normal calculations involve checking whether there are any motifs coming up when you play a certain move.
Positional players (eg Karpov) often use tactical miniatures to achieve a certain positional goal or to justify a positional decision tactically.
When masters play a game of chess, they basically look for candidate moves their intuition tells them and start calculating whether they work. While calculating, they might come up with more candidate moves, because they're getting a deeper understanding of the position.
When you do a lot of tactics, it affects your way of playing blitz, but shouldn't have a general effect on your style when you're playing long games (maybe there's a slight style change in blitz, but that's not really worth mentioning).
How to train with tactical puzzles?
So, again, there are are three areas you need to improve:
tactical vision, calculation accuracy and speed of calculation.
When you're a beginner I reckon tactical vision is the most important thing to learn first, meaning you are able to recognize certain motifs quickly. The other two areas are developed with the first one; at this stage you don't have to do anything in particular to improve them.
When you're getting better, the other two areas - accuracy and speed of calc - start to matter. When you're checking, whether a move is good or not, your calc has to be accurate and fast (you don't have an eternity for playing your game, right ;).
1. improving your tactical vision:
There are puzzles which are particularly good for improving your recognition of patterns and assimilating new patterns.
You should do a bunch of these every once in a while to improve your combinational vision.
You can either find them in books or online (eg chesstempo).
When you do tactical puzzles, combinational vision and accuracy of calc are the skills which are trained the most, speed also, but not so much (you need a special training for that).
2. accuracy of calculation
Imagine you start out with a huge blow, first checking with your queen, then embark on 4 move sequence where you sacrifice a rook and a knight and it's mate in the end. Brilliant. You just missed that on first move, when checking with your queen, your opponent could simply take your queen with his bishop.
So, yeah, accuracy can be trained by calculating long variations, not necessarily involving difficult motifs, but many moves.
3.Speed of calculation
When doing chess puzzles, it's always best to mix the levels a bit, do some demanding and some easier stuff.
Easy puzzles are good for training your speed of calculation.
Try going on a website like chess.com or chesstempo and use the Blitz tactics (or get some easy puzzles from a book or so, set a timer and do them as quickly as possible).
The more frequently you do this speed training, the faster you'll be at recognizing certain motifs and calculating variations.
Techniques for calculating:
1. Look for candidate moves:
This method (the others I'm mentioning as well, but this one is the most famous) is explained profoundly at other places on the internet or in books (the inventor was "Kotov", but his approach of thinking is more machine-like and is not really recommendable). Anyway, I'll just draw an outline:
You look at the position for a while and pick some moves your intuition is suggesting.
Now you're starting to verify, which one of your candidate moves is the best. There's no real formula with which you start. The outline strong players give, is simply, that you should start with the most obvious move. So if the back rank looks weak, maybe start calculating a candidate move involving that motif first. If the queen looks a bit off-side, try trapping her first.
Also, the most obvious moves are sometimes the most forced ones. So try calculating captures and checks first.
Calculate one variation, come to conclusion, go to the next one.
Repeat that process until you come to a satisfying answer. Check your idea and then carry out the move.
2. Avoid ruminating:
The best way of solving a chess problem (and any other problem) is to avoid letting your mind ruminate, meaning going through the same variation every time, even though you've already calculated it and it probably doesn't give you a satisfying answer.
So once you're done with a variation (and you don't think you've come to and end, which would be the case if eg you had found a mating attack or a decisive material win; also keep in mind Tarrasch's (? I think it was him) advice: If there is a good move, look for a better one), look for other candidate moves or check the ones you still have left.
Repeat this process all over again, until you can decide to check your final variation again (which is the best in an actual game) and the play the move or just go for it (when you're only doing puzzles).
3. Set milestones:
When the positions get more complex, your approach should look as follows:
1: Look for candidate moves.
2: Start calculating your first (obvious) one
3: Calculate the forced part (forced moves are usually checks, sometimes captures and sometimes other, quieter moves as well).
4: Stop at the point, where the forced line stops and try to remember the position.
This is a good idea, because you don't have to go back every time to the start of the puzzle. Thus you save time and also don't run the risk of ruminating.
5: Look for candidate moves again starting from your remembered position.
6: Return to the beginning of the puzzle and do the same process all over again, if needed.
4. Think about what your opponent wants to do.
This is a rather obvious advice, but many people keep forgetting it. Does he have any threats? How can I deal with them?
Is there a way of carrying out my own plan and at the same time hindering my opponents plan (most effective way!)?
This approach can also be used for approaching non-tactical positions. Actually, besides tactics, prophylactic thinking is the other major things, weaker players are lacking. They are only thinking about what they wanna do, not about what their opponent wants to do.
Anyway, I'm done for today, it's pretty late. There are other things one can mention, but that's what I can recall now in my environment which is not really ideal for concentrating.
Well, most of these tips are applicable to regular play as well. Frankly, I don't see much differnence between tactical puzzles and just starting off in a random position and then having the board taken from you when you are about to further improve and win.
I am not a master to give advice, but from my experience winning approach is primarily based on two things, i.e. initiative and forced moves (or forced non-moves for that matter).
Frankly, I don't like games with a lot of forced moves. They are mechanical. Probably chess is so popular because it allows to play it differently on different levels. GM levels border on computer calculation, which you criticize. Amateur level is full of funny things, such as getting run over after a bold attempt to cut corner to a checkmate, or actually succeeding in a position that is far from perfect, simply because you were more patient and attentive while your opponent gets a bit carried away. This human game is probably more appealing to some than cautious calculation and steady rating progress.
@hatchet #1
Quite interesting.
Where did you collect this wisdom from ?
A certain book or articles or video, or more than 1 source ?
@achja #3
It's a mixture of acquired knowledge through books, my own conclusions and some small-talk with a friend of mine who is IM.
@resorus:
Wrong, when approaching tactical puzzles, you know there is something and you think way more concrete.
When you just play a normal game of chess, your approach to the position is much more general, you look for plans, off-side pieces, weaknesses and so on.
I understand that in tactical puzzles you can concentrate on tactics alone, not thinking about development, positional weaknesses, etc. Probably this type of training is somewhat important. I cannot argue about that. But puzzles are restrictive in this same component, i.e. they do not allow you to switch to positional play and ultimately they shape your style in a certain manner. That's what I called 'conditioning' in the other thread.
Of course, one can compensate for that by doing also training in strategy and positional play. Although I don't know of instrumental ways of strategic training except for playing slow games and watching quality games with commentary.
If there is no time limit, calculating the solution to the end is the best way to learn and exercise. Even if it takes 30-40 minutes.
If there is a time limit, my way of solving them is to find answers to these questions:
for openings and middlegames
♦1: Is the opponent threatening mate? So can I force a checkmate, or win one of his checkmater piece?
♦2: Can I checkmate him?
♦3: Can I sacrifice the queen, or another piece?
♦4 : Are there any unprotected pieces or queen traps? Can I remove a defender of something?
for endgames
♦1: Am I playing for a win or draw?
♦2: Is there a cute checkmate with remaining few pieces?
♦3: Can I promote the pawn by ignoring the opponent?
♦4: Where is the zugzwang?
♦5: Can I stalemate myself?
for promotion
♦1: Do I need to underpromote for quicker checkmate, knight fork or to avoid stalemate?
I hope this helps you chess friends :)
Usolando, thanks for explaining your approach, your advice is very specific.
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