Common Chess Patterns
In IM Jeremy Silman’s article (here) he says the best way to master chess patterns is by isolating the pattern and in training it via repetition. This is exactly the approach I have taken in my third Chessable release, Common Chess Patterns.
Having first searched through 1000s of games and positions (taking over 100+ hours of work!) I have gathered together a large collection of tactical patterns which have then been organised by theme and individually isolated in order to aid recall.
This Chessable course contains two sections: the isolated section and the test positions section. The first isolated section consists of knight forks patterns, double attack patterns, pin patterns, double check patterns and deflection/remove the defender patterns. It also contains all the major (and some minor) checkmate patterns which have all been likewise isolated with the ‘noise’ of the chessboard greatly reduced. There are over 370 positions in this section.
Example of an isolated position.
The second section contains the tactical and mate test positions. These are all taken from real games and represent the same positions or similar positions as in the first section, but without any isolation. There are over 290 positions in this section including 130 mates.
Example of a test position.
The suggested method of study is to complete the first section several times (using the review function) before moving on to test section. It is hoped that when doing the test position, patterns trained in the first section will start to immediately ‘jump out’ and as such the user will be using pattern recognition rather than calculation. In my opinion, using Chessable’s built-in spaced repetition algorithm is the perfect place to train tactics and the very best format for this method of training.
In putting together this release and training with it myself, it I immediately noticed patterns in blitz games and in regular tactics training (leading to a new all-time high rating on one particular server.) Beta testers of the course also reported similar findings in their own games and tactics training and other feedback has been extremely encouraging.
Common Chess Patterns is available for $14.99 on Chessable here.
The very popular Visualise series is available here.
Previous releases include 100 Chess Tactics, 100 Chess Threats – for the Club Player and Paul Morphy 25 Games to Memorise are available from Chessable from $3.99.
