Ideas of Tactics and Material

...be cautious about measuring everything in material values, because sometimes the spirit prevails. -- Garry Kasparov

Understanding "Tactics Before Material"

As I understand it, this concept states that capturing material for the sake of a numerical advantage is often meaningless if the position is tactically compromised. The board isn't a storehouse where the player with the most "stuff" wins—it’s a battlefield where strategy, coordination, and timing prevail.

The term tactic is used in chess to describe a series of moves that exploit a particular position on the board and allow the player to gain material, gain a positional advantage, or even force a checkmate. For chess players to progress, tactical problems are incredibly important. Knowing tactical motifs helps them to recognize when a winning or drawing combination might exist in a position. By solving tactical problems, chess players improve their tactical skills. It is not uncommon for games to be decided by tactics, because even a single mistake gives the opportunity to use a tactic that changes the outcome of the game. A large number of patterns or tactical motifs have been defined in chess literature to help players discover tactical opportunities during a game. The ability to recognize chess motifs during a game is one of the key components of becoming a competent chess player.

A good example in game  format, not the best available but I'm too lazy to go searching for a great example and I just played this game -- is here :

Why This Matters

While I'm still a nube in the world of chess and still uncovering the ways of the adept, one skill that I have honed is Knowing how to Learn. Writing stories about characters who are much more intelligent than yourself, is a challenging profession. A major asset when approaching a new subject matter, especially for skill performance matters such as sports or games are the existing tactical principles. Every sport, serious game, most collector skills or categorization professions are going to have tactical principles ready and waiting. 

By definition a skill is:  train (a worker) to do a particular task.

Skills are learned behaviors. For the most part they are counter intuitive -- which is why everyone makes the same mistakes as everyone else. It is also why, periodically, that everyone needs to relearn them as well. It is also why these things are forgotten, especially the ones which apply to positions which don't occur very often. 

Learning a new behavior isn't ever going to be a straight forward operation -- because our minds and memory aren't like spreadsheets. You don't go to the cell or nerve-cluster where the  Intuitive Info is and replace it with: Avoid Overlooking Simple Moves, and be done with it. No. What happens is a new cell is created with the new information, and then referenced -- so you get both info sets. Hopefully you learned the skill right and don't have to add a third or fourth or eighth new info set for the skill or you might find yourself confused under pressure... just saying. Be mindful. 

No, seriously: Learning, comprehension and memory truly are that weird. So getting down the Principles and Tactics and setting aside time regularly to review them -- especially when the thought of doing so is duller than watching flies formicate. And that is my only goal for this post. Just to make myself reread a few things. For the last two months I had no time for chess at all. Now that I'm back I'm receiving hard fact experience as a reminder of how fast new skills can diminish, and how devastating to the ELO that can be. Thankfully, getting them back is just a matter of doing some retraining. 

See you out there! and Have Fun!