learning to think in tactics while playing, not after

putting a name to tactics has been the biggest conceptual breakthrough ive had while learning chess. its one thing to understand the idea of a tactic, or to analyse it after a game. its quite another thing to see it while ur in the game itself. it helps me think faster and better than if i were calculating individual potential moves possibility by possibility.

ive been going thru the beginner bots and am up to the 850s, and my goal for playing Zara-BOT was to purposefully use at least one fork, pin, and skewer. the bot should be easy enough that i have room to think and follow thru on the ideas without having to abandon them for more optimal moves, so i can get practice in the thing i want to practice.

but by the time this pawn structure took shape, i was already at a bit of a loss for what to do. my movement felt really limited, and i hadnt played against anything quite like it before, in my vast chess experience of almost 10 days. unless i have, and dont remember cuz i couldnt see such things as pawn structures back in the bygone era of one week ago.

its very… spiky? 

i wanted to avoid sacrifices if i could. so my first idea was, maybe if i pin a pawn to the king i can get the knight around. 

like this:

the analysis is really not impressed, but it doesnt know that my queens purpose today is to help my brain think of pins when theres pins, not to make good moves.

i mean look at this thought:

“pin the pawn and go ne4”

and now compare it to this theoretically equivalent thought, which u shouldnt read but just take in the scope of:

“maybe i could get in at that square, but if i go there the pawn could take. so what if i attack the pawn first. but if i take the pawn, the king could take back, and thats not a good trade. so maybe i shouldnt attack. but what if i put my queen where it could attack the pawn, and then my horse goes to that square? then if the pawn takes my horse, the king is uncovered, and my queen could take the king on the next move. but thats not legal in the rules of chess. therefore the pawn cant actually take my horse. so the horse is safe on that square as long as the queen is attacking the pawn and the pawn is between the queen and the king.”

sure im capable of thinking the long version of “pin the pawn and go for ne4”. i could think all that and much more. but imagine if i thought that same amount of thought, but starting with:

“if i pin the pawn and go for ne4…” (insert dense paragraph of equally dense chess ideas)

thats what im working toward in phase 1. then phase 2, if i get there, is to be able to condense that new paragraph into a short phrase i grok in 100% detail. and so on.

but cuz im still practicing the thought "pin the pawn and go for ne4", i didnt get to what happens if the king just moves. which it did. so i needed a new plan.

i finally figured out a sequence to break the pawns using the concept i call “predatory loan”, which is an aggressive sacrifice followed by a check so i can take something better back. its like, pressuring ur opponent into taking points on loan… writing a check… and then taking more points than u gave, cuz of the high interest rates… lol. 

probly this specific kind of sequence has some other name in chess terms that i will learn eventually.

i think thats my first certified brilliant move!! i thought a while on it so im glad the analysis liked it. 

and then i knight forked the king and queen, which felt good. theres a difference between thinking a giant calculation in order to plan out good moves, and doing the same exact thing by thinking “gon fork. yeah fork! nom nom queen!”.

i felt pretty in control for most of this game.

but going into the endgame i made a classic me blunder and tried to castle by moving the rook instead of the king. again.

the engine isnt mad at me, but it should be. it seems to think i just wanted to go there.

(is that even the way the long castle goes? i keep forgetting. add it to the list.)

finally i managed to get in some sort of skewer. i wanted to get the enemy rook and break into the back of the pawn structure, since my knight was having trouble going in the front. i thought i could bait out the bishop and get dibs on the rook, which is exactly what happened. tho i feel a bit like Zara-BOT cooperated with me on that one. i might not have gone for it if i didnt know the bot is bad and also that i want to practice the idea of skewers.

skewers are still my weakest of the basic tactics. i gotta work on that.

i was happy with this game. not cuz i won against the highest tier of beginner bot; it played real bad. and i didnt play my best either, if u only consider move accuracy. the thing that makes it my best game is not something u can see from the moves or the computer analysis or from who won.

for me this is my best game cuz i achieved my goal of thinking about the game using named tactics and strategy while i was in the game itself, at many points throughout the game, and not just in analysis after. and thinking good is the first step to playing good. maybe.