For those of you who enjoyed the Emmanuel Neiman's Seven Signals concept from 'Tune Your Chess Tactics Antenna' you might consider checking out Eugene Chuzhakin's approach of "Hazardous Elements", which expands the list to a whopping 18 elements!

According to the authors, there are specific signs/elements that indicate a tactic or combination is possible in a position. Here's what they say:

Neiman's Seven Signals

1. King Position

2. Unprotected Pieces

3. Alignment

4. Knight Fork Distance

5. Trapped Pieces

6. Crucial Defender/Overloaded Defender

7. Impotent Defense/Defense Too Far Away

Chuzhakin's Hazardous Elements

1. Material Advantage of Your Opponent

2. Object Under Attack (more attackers than defenders, regardless of value)

3. Unprotected Objects (undefended pieces AND pieces that have an equal number of attackers and defenders!)

4. Exchange (attacked by an object of the same value)

5. Possibility of an attack (an object that can be attacked on the next move by an object of smaller value)

6. Pin

7. Open King (can be checked on the next move, no "luft", one or more square next to the king is attacked)

8. Passed Pawn

9. Intrusion Square

10. Limited Mobility of a Piece

11. Presumptuous Object (far into the enemy camp and can be cut off)

12. Intruding Enemy Piece (especially Rook on the 2nd/7th, and Knight on the 3rd/6th)

13. X-Ray

14. -Hazardous Element (basically any two things that can be forked by a pawn or a piece, so "Pawn-Hazardous Elements" means two things (say a king and a rook) that a pawn can fork on the next move)

15. Major Pieces Shifted More Than Three Ranks Relative to Their Initial Position (a white queen/rook on the 4-8 rank)

16. Possibility of Stalemate

17. Possibility of Zugzwang

18. Possibility of Theoretical Draw

I read Neiman's book years ago when it first came out and finished Chuzhakin's just recently and while there is overlap in the two systems I found Chuzhakin's system to be overly complicated.

That said, he has some useful ideas about counting that Neiman does not address and I think are worth highlighting...and is the entire purpose of this post!

First, I liked his notion that an "unprotected piece" includes pieces with an equal count (attacked and defended the same number of times). I actually got into a bit of an argument with the YouTuber Kingscrusher about this a few years ago!

This makes sense since, even if the count was five attackers and five defenders, the last piece to capture is undefended and just as vulnerable to a tactic (pin or fork) as any undefended piece. Here's a simple example:

Bottom line is if you see a target with an equal count you should be able to quickly see if a pin/fork is possible against the last piece to capture (especially if the king is a defender). Just double check the material balance at the end if the piece values are different.

Second, I was also interested in Chuzhakin's ideas about whether to include certain attackers/defenders when counting. Chuzhakin recommends that you DO include in the count:

attackers that are blocked by their own pieces/pawns that can be moved (eg, discovered attacks), and
attackers that are pinned.

He recommends you do NOT include in the count:

defenders that are pinned,
defenders that can be captured, or
defenders that can be attacked with tempo (and forced to move).

These rules are clearly imperfect -- an attacker that is pinned to a king cannot move but yet is counted as an attacker, while a defender only pinned to a piece can move but isn't counted as a defender!? But as guidelines I find them very insightful. Here's a nice position that shows how these counting guidelines can work:

Inner Game

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