The Prized Tactic

Ever play chess against a person that favored one particular type of tactic above all others, and to the point where they would forgo a material gain and just do his favorite tactic instead?  I've spoken about a particular person in my blogs many times, and this person is not nearly as good as I.  When I started playing regularly 15 years ago I was still better than him, and he was obviously much worse.  He and a friend of his used to drill together in their house to try and get better than me, but they never did.  We'll just call this guy George from here on out.

 

I've spoken about this in previous blogs.  Over the years, I have noticed, that most people that play the game of chess, are fast thinkers.  When they play blitz, that gets playing fast very easily and win games very easily.  It is very easy for them to start making fast moves on the chess board.  However, every once in awhile, you run into what I like to call a slow thinker, who thinks slowly and often cannot even play blitz until they have mastered the fundamentals.  

 

When I say fundamentals I do not know exactly what I mean.  I know he doesn't know nearly as much as I do about chess, but at the same time, I myself do not know nearly enough about chess to be giving a program to someone to learn more about the game.  I know part of it is pattern recognition, however, that is just one piece of the puzzle.  

 

Part of it is his opening choice.  Pretty much now he is randomly picking what opening he is going to use and just sticks with that.  I notice when he plays someone else he uses what he feels more "dangerous" openings where he doesn't push d3 to protect his pawn as white early on, and when he plays me, he often plays what is sometimes called the white Philidor, which is a black opening, however, when played as white, it is not so good as an opening.  I can't really explain why that is, I am just going off of what I read in a book I studied years ago that I haven't picked up since because it is a repertoire book and I abandoned the aim I had to memorize a bunch of openings, because now I know that is not the thing that is going to get me to expert level.

 

What is the thing that is going to get me to expert level?  I have some good advice to follow.  

 

 

I've also identified a lot of negatives.  Currently, I am trying to subtract my negatives and work on adding positives after I've subtracted most of my negatives.

 

Anyway, here is the game I played against my friend George: