Useful thinking system

Maybe I'm just slow on the uptake, but it would be nice if my experienced helped someone.

On the subject of learning the general mechanics of the tactic instead of memorizing the position itself, recently I've found a helpful approach. Specifically when the opponent defends while making a threat of their own, or an in between move that counterattacks. We should all know to look for our biggest threats, but I've found it useful to start calculating with the lines that remove the opponent's biggest threat first. I ask myself "what are all the ways I can remove this threat while making a threat myself?"

Sometimes it's as simple as moving an attacked piece to attack a rook or queen. Sometimes it's more modest looking, and you directly defend the threat.

Here's a position (not a tactic puzzle) I recently had where at first I was confused on where to start. White has 3 captures, black has two captures.

After some initial calculation I was still confused, so I decided to try this method. It made finding the best move easy.

White to move
(not a tactics puzzle, but only 1 move keeps the advantage)

Here's how my thinking went at first:
If white captures on e4, black forks.
If white captures on d6 threatening the knight, black counters Bxc2 with a threat on a rook and black's queenside play is obvious.
If white captures a5, black captures c2 and again the queenside is shattered.

So I decided black's biggest threat was taking on c2 .It's where his pieces are coordinated and ready to infiltrate and eat up the queenside... but if white plays c3 then axb Rxd6 bxc and the knight can't be captured because cxb threatens the knight and queening and again the queenside is torn up.

So that's when finding all the moves that do what I want (remove the threat on c2) made me realize I also had the move c4. This happens to be the only move to keep the advantage too. The best move is c4.

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Here's a recent tactic puzzle I missed:

White to move

After Nxd5 Qd8 Qxc4 Rxd5 white wins a pawn, but is there something better? Hint a few lines down --
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After Nxd5 Qd8 look for all the ways white can remove the threat on the knight. Nxd5 is the correct first move, but white's 2nd move, Qxc4. is far from best.

I've heard it's interesting but impractical.

Real thought process (of Kotov or anyone else) is more fluid, and skips from analysis, to general concepts, to looking for additional candidates and back again, and during calculation skips from one line to another.

I prefer Soltis' The Inner Game of Chess.

Hmm, thanks, I'll consider reading it. I'm reminded of Silman's thinking process, which I didn't like, but there were useful concepts in there for sure. (And of course Kotov is a stronger player and his book is a classic.)

If only I didn't have so many unread books as it is 

"Useful"

Yes, at least a few times to me during puzzle and games.

By the way, I think a good criticism of this is that it assumes the players has already looked at the regular forcing moves and come up short. So players who have not already formed certain habits would probably not find this useful, and it's not so much a system as it is just a useful question.

Honestly I think strong / young players do these things intuitively.

In the old chess master chess game, Josh Waitzkin called it propolaxis. Its thinking like your opponent thinks, what is he trying to do, what is his plan.

Its not that hard to do generally speaking, however the more skilled your opponent is the more subtle his plan may be. Thats why forcing moves are excellent choices. Good luck.

Oh by the way, nice puzzle, I like the b1 rook to d1 as your 2nd move, x-raying blacks d7 rook then your knight moves to f6 checking and forking blacks king and d7 rook. He'll probably take the knight with his a6 rook, then you take his d7 rook with your queen, attacking his queen and threatening another check, if he then tries to interpose with his f6 rook you take his queen with yours anyway with check, also you still have a threat on his knight, and his other rook whether or not he interposes it, because of the pawn on e5. Also I needed to add this, this also protects your back rank, which is vulnerable.

Thanks.

In the puzzle I tried the totally wrong 1.Nd5 Qd8 2.Nf6+ Rxf6 and now I thought I was really clever with 3.Rxb7 Rxd3 because I planned 4.Rb8 when the queen in pinned and I'm threatening both rooks. 4...Qxb8 5.Rxb8 Kg7 and then I capture both rooks and I'm up the exchange.

Unfortunately lots of moves on the 4th win for black. Most obvious is 4...Rd1+

If I had even considered 2...Rd1 for a moment, I would have seen it was right, but I didn't even think of it.

It took me 5 minutes to figure it out because of your weak back rank, its an excellent puzzle, thanks for posting it man.

Glad you liked it

Nice thread, 01.

Most of my losses happen because I'm so focused on developing my own threats, that I overlook my opponent's threats.

I think if we all gave as much thought to our opponent's plans as we did our own, most of us would probably be much stronger players. :D

I have played Qa4 in 1 sec but will not be sad if that's wrong.

There is a huge drawback in solving a general 'positional puzzle's ,That is plan.The person already in the game and moved the pieces a lot and have a general plan that will guide to find a good if not best move,So to find a good move I guess it's better to spend some good amount of time.Otherwise positional puzzle's are nothing but tricks.

I personally think it is a critical skill you should practice more, especially in higher level play. You have to be able to stop your opponent's plans, which eventually is checkmating you.

It is not always straight out checkmate however, and the more skilled the opponent the better they are at masking what they are doing, and usually at higher level play it involves getting little advantages based on the position, and with enough small advantages.

It definitely increases your chances of winning the game, and makes it more likely your opponent will make a bigger mistake. Sometimes this can be over a single pawn, or even a critical square. It can be they want to control all the light or dark squares, or having the bishop pair in the right position when its almost down to the end game. If one is losing, trying to setup a perpetual checks position, or stalemate position. 

You need to give your opponent the respect he deserves. After all isn't that what you would do yourself ?

In concrete variations I'm usually so focused on making the biggest threats I can that I'll miss opportunities as in the puzzle... a move that makes threats, but it does it by defending against the opponent's threat.

I agree, I probably would never have thought about moving the rook to d1. If I hadn't noticed the weakness of whites King, especially after the knight moved to f6. So always 1st order of business is your King's safety. Always check your kings safety after a line, especially back ranks, they are quick killers.  Of course if your playing blitz you may not have the time needed to properly calculate either.

However you knew your opponent would probably take your checking knight, leaving a rook and queen against yours, with a back rank mate  behind it. Anyone could miss it. Even GM's blunder right. Of course they do, they are human and don't always see everything either.

This looks quite promising actually! Maybe it boils down to finding, what are the tools that allow the opponent's ideas to work, and take them away from him. You might be trying to play a certain variation, but it keeps losing to one or two ideas from the opponent, and things seem so difficult. But once you play the move that stops those motifs, then all of a sudden, the play becomes surprisingly easy. Once the c pawn moves to c4, and is no longer a target from black's pawn, then black's tactical ideas suddenly dry up. And you don't have to look ahead beyond that, once you know that. You got rid of the resources black had to create a tactic, so you know you're safe. Something like that anyway.

Like I said, looks interesting and promising. I'll keep it in mind myself :)

"a move that makes threats, but it does it by defending against the opponent's threat."

It's interesting because really, this has the same net effect as making your own threat: if an idea you wanted to carry out doesn't work because of your opponent's idea, then getting rid of the opponent's idea, completely changes that. But psychologically I think, it's more natural to think of making a threat as attacking something new. So I think I need to battle my psychology, I really need to look at these subtler, "prophylactic" ways of making threats, because they're just as strong, and I could completely miss out on them if my mind just filters them out right from the start.

Thanks.

I guess where I'm mentally filing this is how to approach tactical sequences... there should only be certain types of moves that work. One of course is making a threat. I was surprised when defending a threat seemed to fit in... I think most people are used to this sort of thinking when talking about quiet positions, endgames, and the like, not tactical sequences.

Why this is useful to me is... I'm guessing like most people I usually just calculate things on a whim (more or less) until something looks good / I stumble onto the answer. This is great for positions you can solve, but when you get stuck I think this sort of deconstruction can be useful.