How to Get Better in Chess by Solving Puzzles

Dear Chess Friends,

I decided to continue the topic about beginners’ chess progress and this post is devoted to how to solve puzzles.

I’m absolutely sure that solving puzzles is a part and parcel of any teaching process, but at the same time this process should be built properly. It’s not enough just to solve puzzles on chess.com.

Let me explain what you should do with puzzles. There are 2 common ways to solve puzzles. One-by-one from any book you can find or do puzzles from books that divide tactics into different motifs. This is what I recommend and I actually created 3 educational courses (for more information about the course message me) based on this concept. For beginners I recommend to start with Checkmate in 1, then switch to Checkmate in 2 or 3 moves and then learn at least such tactical motifs as “Pin”, “Discovered Attack”, “Attraction”, “Distraction”, “Annihilation of Defense”, “Double Attack” and may be some other. But this is what you should start with.

Where to find them? In books. I prefer to use Soviet and Russian books. That’s why I can recommend:
1) M. Blokh “1200 Combinations”
2) A. Volchok “Lessons of chess tactics”
3) I. Slavin “Chess-task manual”
4) S. Ivashchenko “The manual of chess combinations”
5) L. Polgar “Chess: 5334 Problems, combinations and games”
You can find some of them on Internet.

You can also solve puzzles online, for example, on chess.com. But if so, follow these rules:

1. Don’t make the move on the board before you are sure that the puzzle is solved correctly
2. Calculate all the possible continuations for the other side to be sure that the move you suggest works in all lines and you position becomes better (usually it should be a checkmate of extra material)
3. Check if there is a better move that can gain more material or checkmate faster
4. Spend not more than 5 minutes per puzzle (sometimes 10, but it’s a maximum)
   If you spend 1 or 2 minutes and solve such puzzles correctly, choose the next level (more difficult). If you spend more than 10 minutes and struggle with these puzzles, choose easier.

Try to complete at least 50 puzzles per week correctly. If you did 50 puzzles and only 30 of them were solved correctly, it’s not enough! Do more to get your score to 50 correct puzzles a week.

To be continued…

Best Regards,
FM Victor Neustroev