@GiGGidi
I've had PATC volumes 1 and 2 for about 4 years and found it had some very interesting concepts that I'd not seen before in other books.
It explains the thought process and the questions we should get in the habit of asking ourselves to solve tactics in words more than just visually memorizing patterns.
When Farnsworth talks about, 'working backwards", I interpret this as thinking about the essence of the position in its skeletal form.
By imagining what could possibly be the final mating pattern, it's like reverse engineering an alien technology.
As explained before is just directed problem solving not really calculating backward. One IM called make attempt and explain to yourselves why it fails and see how to make it work
1. I really want to play Ne7+ but silly rook takes you knight
2. Okay can trade it but could I make it to move to c6.... Bx, Bx, and then cxd lose a lot on fork so what is he gonna do
3 now you need to work out alternatives with my very limitted skills I would come up Kf8 which is kinda enpoint for evaluation : won pawn and b got one weak pawn. I am doing well. Second is the counter attack Nb6 and then gets more exiting. You cant with draw with rook so you have hit the bishop. here again branching point, Taking the knight things calm down you have extra pawn but not otherwise nothing great so look for better.
Aint simple
@Sacmaniac
Is the book the same as the online .org or are they different?
Is it worth getting a hard copy?
Do you know of any other work like pred at chess? I find that it's very easy going and still learn more than any YouTube videos. Not putting down YouTube, yt has got me an extra 200 Elo in the last few months. Now I've hit a wall and need to read more like pred at the board.
https://www.chesstactics.org/the-double-attack/the-knight-fork/playing-defective-knight-forks/2_1_8_1.html
@ThunderClap
"Another way of saying it is ... If Rc6 ? Then Ne7+ but it doesn't work unless i make it work MAYBE ... ahhh yes it works ! Bxd4 !"
That's how I think, but that's not going backwards. I just look for "it" if it doesn't work I go back to the start and look for the solution which is bxd4.
That's just normal forward thinking though isn't it?
Anyway, as long as I grasp the ideas behind getting the tactic to work I don't suppose it matters does it?
Forward or backward I came to the same conclusion bxd4, im just hung up on the idea if working backwards as said in the last paragraph. I thought it may be a way to work faster but now think I'm reading too much into it.
@petri999
Sorry buddy. I'm wasn't asking about the actual puzzle, that isn't a problem. The puzzle was solved, the question is about "working backwards" as the author wrote in the last paragraph.
I was hung up on what he thought when saying "working backwards". I thought he may have been hunting at some quicker way to solve instead of visualising everything one move at a time.
It's just a bad paragraph, it adds nothing but confusion. It's mentioned once and never again...so far.
@GiGGidi I originally read the online before buying the books from Amazon.
So it was no surprise when the information was the exact but the colorful background was of course not yellow in the books.
As far as being worth it to buy the books, in my opinion, it depends.
With chess books, it's not the kind of thing you can read once and you will gain a ton of rating points and they need to be reread occasionally. Now if the book is on a shelf in front of my eyes all the time, there is a much greater chance I will pick it up and scan through and study.
if it is online, it's not as likely to review and I suppose it's the old saying, "out of sight, out of mind".
And I also like books and want a hardcopy for the convivence to find information quickly without scrolling. Now that you mentioned the books, of course I'm looking through them again. Lastly, I also like to support authors with my patronage.
That said, I'm a huge fan of content creators like Jerry from Chess-Network. His YouTube series, Beginner To Chess Master likely raised my rating 300+ points. And I consider him the best in the business. Pure gold nuggets from soup to nuts. This is a series of 28 progressive videos that go over everything you need to know. Many of those videos I've watched several times and there are people right now that are mad that I'm telling the secret, hahaha.
The thing about videos is that I don't have to read anything and I can play them over and over if I don't understand them completely.
And if you like to learn this way, Lichess has over 1100 videos in their library that you can filter as well.
You don't need books nowadays to learn, nor do you need coaches, when Lichess offers everything for free, there is actually no excuse not to excel at chess if you put in some time and have a little discipline by playing Puzzle Storm or Puzzle Streak and analyzing your games and learning from your mistakes immediately after a game. This might be the single greatest tool to improve.
About your last questions, I think these books are unique in the depth they describe to talk through solving puzzles. That's the reason I bought the hard copies. Most authors of chess books imo just rehash the same old information and are humorless. If you only buy the Predator books and Jeremy Silman's Complete Endgame Course, then all you need is Lichess resources.
And thank you for reminding me to read my favorite chess books again.
@GiGGidi said in #6:
> The link shows what the author means. Working backwards seems wrong to me because you must predict the last position correctly to donthat and that requires working forward.
You can sometimes see the last position without first working forward. More precisely you see the relevant parts of the last position; the details not mattering at first. For example, a White pawn on f6 where Black has played g6, Black is castled, and he has no piece guarding g7. You think, "If I could place my Queen on g7 it would be mate." That is the relevant part of the last position. Now the details have to be worked out. How to get the Queen to g7? What to do if Black guards g7? What to do if Black threatens to capture the f6 pawn? But now it is so much easier to work forward because the candidate moves for both sides may be fewer.
Silman calls this "fantasizing". And the process of thinking backward from a known winning future position, back to another known winning position, all the way back to the initial position, Silman calls "flowcharting". I don't care for that word "flowcharting" in this context, but I know what Silman means.
In the end you have to calculate forward unless the entire thing is a pattern you know. And best to do the calculation anyway just to be sure there is no in-between moves or other surprises.
Hey @jomega no disrespect, but I've read your words and I'm completely confused by your thought process as might @GiGGidi too. Now I appreciate the work you are doing as an "official Lichess Teacher", to educate players to improve so I'll offer some feedback.
I can only speak for myself, but I suspect there are others that feel the same and their eyes gloss over when you start talking about chess positions and moves without having the diagram of the position to help illustrate your opinions.
I find it impossible to keep it all in my head and you lose my attention.
What you are doing is expecting me to go back to the original post #1 and looking at the link? Sorry, but I'm too lazy to do that.
One thing I do agree is "flowcharting", is also jargon readers could probably do without, no matter how much I respect the style of Jeremy Silman's writing. Imo he failed in his attempt to create memorable new chess jargon. Fair play, his other works are quite good.
And this is exactly where Predator at the Chessboard innovates. It uses simple language to explain the essence of tactics by labelling them in an easily digestible format into five basic families of tactics and also Mating Patterns.
1 The Double Attack
2 The Discovered Attack
3 The Pin
4 The Skewer
5 Removing the Guard
To me Mating Patterns are what I arrive at when "working backwards".
People generally like to name stuff as a memory cue and "often it is better to be understood than correct"
There is a concept in chess that I often hear called, "maintaining tension". This term doesn't mean that much to me until I heard GM Smirnov label it in his video, "To Take is a Mistake". And even better to paint the picture, ChessNetwork called it in his video, "Stop Before You Chop".
Chess is mostly a visual thing, unless you are blind.
Chess books use letters and numbers as symbols to explain the real estate of the chessboard. What the author might have done in Predator is not explained, 'Working backwards", with a clear enough real estate sign. #:}>
Working backward is essentially how I play tactics. It's the same as starting at the other end of a maze; the maze's branching paths are almost always designed to throw you off while working forward, so if you start at the end and work backward you run into far fewer dead ends.
Of course in Chess the trick is knowing where the other end even is. Sometimes you can spot one, and work backward to achieve it. Sometimes you can't, and have to play solid-looking moves with no obvious outcome. Sometimes you can spot one, but can't force it, so you set up and wait for your opponent to forget about the threat and move their defenders away.
working backward. isn't it essential for planning? moving the post elsewhere.
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