It's a common problem that benefits from experience. I'm not sure that simply calculating stuff, like a fishing trip, the approach I use in puzzles, is effective in games. Be interested to hear what others think. Another approach is to keep your tactical antenna on the lookout for tactical targets. These are often undefended pieces or under-defended pieces, then treat it as a problem solving exercise. The piece isnt hanging because its not directly threatened so you have to work out which mountains you need to move to make it happen, but working backwards from a potential target may help.
Putting puzzles into practice
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MarkGrubb wrote:
It's a common problem that benefits from experience. I'm not sure that simply calculating stuff, like a fishing trip, the approach I use in puzzles, is effective in games. Be interested to hear what others think. Another approach is to keep your tactical antenna on the lookout for tactical targets. These are often undefended pieces or under-defended pieces, then treat it as a problem solving exercise. The piece isnt hanging because its not directly threatened so you have to work out which mountains you need to move to make it happen, but working backwards from a potential target may help.
The only way I think about puzzles during a game is through pattern recognition. If I know of pattern that leads to a tactic, I'll look closer. Otherwise, I just do candidate moves and then calculate a bit and see if there is a tactic.
My advice is to stop thinking about puzzle type tactics while in a game and start focusing on theme recognition for tactical opportunities.
If you are actually thinking and calculating when doing puzzles, your puzzle rating will be much higher that your normal rating. The rating of puzzles is way off, I don't exactly know why.
Puzzles are good to play so you can become stronger, but they won’t guarantee a similar rating in live games. They will help you, but you gotta put some elbow grease in. You are gonna have to do most of the work. Pick an opening(I don’t recommend London or Sicilian), and play a lot of games. Don’t blunder, try to see what your opponent wants to do, develop all your pieces on good squares, and grab that center if you don’t know what to do after you develop. Do some lessons too and watch games.
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At the moment my puzzle rating is 1760. I'm very happy with this, but somehow my other ratings aren't even close. Now I know usually your puzzle rating is higher, but I'm talking about a 700 to 900 points gap.
My guess is this is due to a difference in mindset. When I'm doing a puzzle, I know the outcome would most likely be checkmate or winning material. So I keep looking until I find one of those. This results in the correct solution more often than not.
When in a game, after calculating for a little while and finding nothing, I just figure there is no win and just try to improve my position (whereas in a puzzle I know there must be at least something there).
So my question is: in a game, how do I know if I'm in a position where I can find a win (so a 'puzzle situation'), versus a position where an improving move is best? I'm trying to avoid a dilemma I often have: spending a lot of time while there's nothing there to find, but also not spending enough time and missing a winning move. How to handle this?