A long post today but hopefully a few practical tips.
I believe that practicing tactics and solving combinations and puzzles can help improve your game. Looking at openings and endgames is useful too but the majority of online games get decided in the middlegame. At least my blitz & rapid games feel that way.
One of the problems of puzzle rush and any other tactics tools is that you need to be careful about the selection of puzzles you are training on.
Here's a simple one
I don't think you will be upset if I mention that the backrank is the main motif or theme for this one. Let's say you practice puzzle rush 3 minutes, 5 minutes or do puzzle battles. This will help develop your tactical ability. Soon, you will have to solve the next position, which should be a no-brainer ( practice makes perfect ).
inevitably, you will end up solving a lots of easy to medium level puzzles. it's good to solve these fast if you play bullet and blitz but another way to tackle this is to avoid puzzle rush and select puzzles based on difficulty. Solving many of the similar puzzles is counterproductive.
You would increase the level of ratings to solve more complicated positions. It's possible you are already doing so.
Here's a less straightforward position ( given also as a quiz, you can press ? for the answer, or try a candidate move on the board)
White to play
This position was more difficult because 1) the lines are longer 2) there are more than 1 logical candidate move 3) the king is in check so it's combining defense and attack.
The first 2 positions were easier because it was all about concluding the game and there weren't any real defense after finding the right move.
But is that all ?
If you are trying to get a high rating, or a title, or win against titled players ( either CM,FM or IM,GM) , then what I described helps but is not enough.
I think stronger players can identify many tactical patterns ( its hard to quantify) and also can apply those in lots of different positions.
There my 3rd approach is to study tactics, not just by difficulty and by tactical motif and not just by timing those runs, but also to study tactics based on the opening and position structure.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Ruy Lopez and Italian opening structures
This leads to specific or thematic combinations.
Example 1 :
Can you identify a tactical move for White ?
Example 2, once again with a kingside attack. This was played at the highest level !
Example 3, This was once again an italian opening and White went long castle and setting up a direct attack. can you finish off tactically ?
as you can see, tactics can happen right in the opening or in these middlegames.
I grouped Italian and Ruy Lopez together for 2 reasons :
- Same centre pawn structure e4 vs e5
-Sometimes the bishop on Bb5 ends up on the b3 or c2 squares. So does the italian bishop which goes from c4 to b3 and c2.
How many thematic combinations would an IM know or identify in these structures ? if the IM or GM plays this opening, they would certainly be very skilled in the pattern recognition.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Does this work for opening with the Black pieces ?
Of course same applies. Here's a typical Nimzo Indian tactics from the black side
and here's another one in the Nimzo Defense
Black to play
