Importance of Tactics part II
The positioning of the counters on the pitch affects the result and is essential for managing to win the match.
The player\coach must use all his or her strategic capacity and tactical knowledge to put out a well-balanced line-up. The player expresses his or her propensity for attacking or defensive play by positioning the number of counters in attack, midfield and defence that they consider most appropriate.
The correct balance of counters on the pitch continually develops and is strictly dependent on the game play determined as the match goes on.
The player always has the opportunity of expressing his or her character in each tactical choice. Intuition, sensitivity, propensity to risk taking, these characteristics distinguish the game play of each player and lead them to distributing their counters according to precise strategies.
As the game is played, the player\coach has the job of observing the developments and of making the right tactical decisions, changing the positions of the counters to balance the line-up, according to the match development and to the tactics adopted by the opponent.
Luck drives the action even further, it enlivens matches and leads the players to take even more care over the tactical aspect. Football is not a precise science, but strategy and emotion: it is a mixture of suffering to overturn a result, to approach the goal, to avoid conceding goals. Only the skill of the coach can prevent luck from deciding the result!
It is said that all chess beginners are interested in tactics. That may be so but it is not without good reason. It isn't that learning tactics is easier than learning to strategize because it isn't. Yes, chess tactics are quite flashy at times and yes, it is more exciting executing a brilliant combination than waiting for the endgame to arise to see the fruits of your labor in a well strategized game. But that isn't why chess tactics are so important. In chess it is said that to always be thinking about tactics is like chasing your own tail. While if you only think about strategy you always have your head in the clouds. Both of these are true to some extent but if the budding chess player hopes to become a brilliant chess player, learning tactics is the best place to start.
Chess strategy is nothing more than the planning of long range chess tactics. Therefore it is of great importance that the tactics of chess be mastered first. Sound strategy is based on grasping tactical theory and being able to implement it on the board. We cannot even speak of good strategy if we have not begun to master the basics of tactics. Tactics are the backbone of strategy. Let us define what exactly what we mean when we talk about tactics in chess. A tactic in chess is a move or limited sequence of moves which gains the opponent's material, gains you time, or prevents your opponent from carrying out their plans, or all of the above at the same time.
In chess there are an array of tactical terms: discovered attack, pin, overloading, and forks just to name a few! A discovered attack is when a piece is moved, the one behind it is threatened. The threatened piece is then placed in a situation where it cannot guard certain squares or pieces at the same time leading to gain of some sort, time or material. The pin is a move that forces a piece to stay on a certain square because if it were to be moved a more valuable piece would be captured. Overloading is just what it sounds like, putting additional pressure on a piece so that it cannot do one thing without losing the other. A fork is a situation in which two or more pieces are attacked at once by a piece of lesser value than the pieces being attacked. It works because no matter what the opponent does, on the next move, one of their pieces will be captured.
When these and other tactics are combined for longer tactical sequences (3 or more moves) the player is said to be using combinations. When combinations are used they force the opponents play by limiting their options. A sacrifice usually precedes the beginning of a combination. Combinations are employed for obtaining concrete results in material or time. Usually though they are meant only to severely handicap the opponent materially. Combinations are impressive because of the individuals ability to use different tactics effectively to secure some advantage in the game that the opponent can't readily defend against.
These are just a few of the reasons why the importance of tactics should be realized and taught to all young chess enthusiasts. The actual implementation of strategy is tactics and therefore, should not be ignored. When learning tactics a variety of methods must be learned and mastered. All around this makes us better chess players. This is good for our minds and hopefully makes us better strategist as well as expert tacticians!
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