Tactics

In trying to find some lessons for tactics, I stumbled across a useful site-- chesstempo.com-- which is quite helpful at practicing what chess people call "tactics." In chess, this term refers to a sequence of moves that results in a "win"-- either a literal win (i.e. checkmate) or a tangible and significant gain in material.

Early on in chess, you study some basic concepts in tactics, like the fork (particularly devastating is the knight fork), the pin, the skewer, and so on. Studying tactics, then, is a way to teach yourself to think ahead those few moves and see if there is winning combination that would win you material.

And while these exercises do help train the mind to look deeper for winning moves, they are also sort of frustrating. After all, you know that there is a winning move there. They tell you. But when you're actually playing a game, there's no light going off telling you that you have a winning move. So you could spend 30 minutes trying to tease something out, when in reality the best move is some minor positional improvement.

This is one of the frustrating things about trying to improve your chess. One of these days, I'll want to get a coach. But coaches can be expensive...

In any case, I spent 30 minutes today reviewing tactics. It wasn't a great performance. I started the day with a chesstempo rating of 1461.5 and went through 6 problems. I got 3 right and 3 wrong, but my rating ended up dropping to 1364.6-- almost 100 points. This is still better than my actual USCF rating, but not ideal regardless. Later on today, I'll move on to another aspect of practice: namely going over a GM game...