Training Problems

Hi everyone. Firstly, I would like to say, I have school starting from tomorrow, so I would like to acknowledge I find this group amazing, and I am not leaving anytime soon. If you see me less active, it is probably because of school. Here are some puzzles I have annotated to make up for it. 
1.This puzzle is what could have happened if my opponent fell for a trap (which doesn’t work - your goal is to find out why) in one of my games. I was playing as Black and lost the game, but thought I was winning if this s position occurred. Level = Advanced.

2.Here is a composed puzzle, which is extremely similar to the one that could have occurred in my game after a sequence, but the difference is one piece is place one square to another direction, just to make there only be one answer. I was playing as Black, and I eventually lost the game after a sharp game (I thought I was doing well but I was losing the whole time). Level = Intermediate and Advanced.

3.Here is a puzzle from a game I was playing as White, which could have happened if my opponent fell for a trap. I lost the game, but pulled up good defence. Level = Intermediate.

4.Here is a position what happened in a game I played as White. I found the sequence but lost the game due to mishandling the position. Level = Beginner.

5.Here is a position I got as Black but missed the win. I was still winning for a long time but lost (see the next puzzle). Level = Beginner.

6.Here is how my opponent won the same games as the one from the previous puzzle where I missed an easy win. I lost a few moves after.

7.Here is a tactic I played as Black. I was completely winning but lost in the end.

whatcha think? Feel kinda proud of finding this one.

This is a pretty one

Good Job finding that! It reminds me of a famous game that I studied, although I cannot quite remember which one...

Purtty good

Hi everyone. I spent some time composing a puzzle (or study), and made a really interesting one, which was based on a theme I played in a game against myself. Level = Master.

Hi everyone. Here is a puzzle played by two chess computers. Level = Master

Hi everyone, here's a position from one of my games. White had 30s to figure out the sequence. My opponent found the first move and then messed up.

Inspired by a Carlsen vs Firouzja sicilian najdorf game. Think of the following tactical motif: hanging pieces are tactical opportunities.

Hey guys! I'm sorry I haven't been active on the forums for so long! Here's a comeback Fischer Puzzle! :

https://www.chess.com/game/live/137684247930?move=79

Hey guys! I've noticed recently that the puzzles in this forum and the POTD seem to be getting more and more difficult (not a bad thing!) In an attempt to make this forum more beginner friendly, I will be posting 5 puzzles that are solvable for true beginners with a focus on pattern recognition. The puzzles will start simple and get more difficult as they go. Enjoy!

Knight Forks

@Logando2805

Finally some puzzles I could solve! The difficulty level really got out of hand lately, to the point that I don't even try to solve them without hints anymore.

I completely agree. I feel like the POTD have been beating me to death recently. I kind of understand @Jared's style enough to usually solve the Mate-in-X puzzles (they are almost always brute force calculations where every move is a check), but a lot of them are just way too tough for me.

I think both types of puzzles have their uses, we're just trained to get an instant reward by puzzle mechanics in chess.com and lichess and forget about deep thinking and calculating the sequences before trying them out. Most people here (including myself) are guilty of seeing one puzzle and thinking "oh it must be x tactic so I'll just play it, bet it's that", getting the first 1 or 2 moves correct then getting the 3rd one wrong because you didn't actually calculate the sequence, you just 'guessed'. Then in our games, we lose because we played a tactic in the wrong order or didn't find the correct sequence at all, well, very hard and complex puzzles help with that, while quick tactics help you with finding the final blow or gaining material without wasting time. Most of the time, you'll use strategic and positional thinking to get an advantage and when your opponent crumbles under pressure, you'll spot a short tactic.

I wouldn't be mean to anyone of course but I read once in this forum "I found a brilliant move but didn't find the next move", well, if you didn't find the follow up then it was just a blunder and you lost a piece with that sacrifice! It doesn't matter if there was a hidden tactic if you didn't understand why it worked. A lot of sacrifices aren't even about gaining material or checkmating, sometimes sacrificing a rook for 2 connected passed pawns, a piece to open up a castled king or losing the exchange to have a very good pair of bishops will also give you +3 or +4 advantage but those sacrifices aren't easy to see without a deeper strategic thinking.

Hard puzzles from master games where you have to spend 15 to 20 minutes calculating, seeing the minor details of the position, help you with your strategic thinking, checking with the analysis why the sequence you thought it worked didn't helps you build a thought process when making moves. For example, in the Magnus vs Firouzja game I posted, it was clear that f5 was a relly annoying move and that the queen was unprotected, so, what can I do to prevent f5 or make it less effective? Well, just pin the pawn! Then, the 2nd part is just realizing you now had a free pawn, then, when attacking, you don't want to trade queens ofc, unless you have a clearly winning endgame, which was not the case, so, what was the best way to block? Finally, you have the 'quick tactic' part where you spot a potential mating threat and execute it, in this case, that was an arab checkmate. The checkmate tactic, as you can see, is 1/3 of the sequence, but you don't usually get good tactics from losing positions, so neglecting the thought process of a hard puzzle in favor of gaining 'puzzle rating' or 'getting many correct ones in a row' I just think it's wrong and detrimental to chess improvement.

Instead of getting frustrated guys, I'd suggest you just set up an analysis board and check where did your solution lead you, why was it worse or better?

These are the reasons why I'll actually start solving puzzles and tactics with books and annotated master games, I think there's a big part we miss on just making easy puzzles and I think the 'not being able to guess' part of writing it on paper before checking the answer will help avoid the 'false positives' you get when solving tactics online, which are when you just had a lucky guess.

Find the prettiest move for black with 2 minutes and 13 seconds on the clock. (intermediate/advanced). Position from https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/139773054259?tab=analysis&move=44

you and your opponent have 4 min left, your opponent playing so fast that he got more time then you, he offered a draw but you have a Tactic (intermediate)

position https://www.chess.com/game/live/139467060895?username=asdfghjklsasd&move=95

@cegalleta maybe I didn't make my point clear. I'm not discouraged per se with POTD, and I don't dislike any of the puzzles that have been posted. I do spend a lot of time on them, and that's fine. My goal when posting my beginner puzzles was simply to provide puzzles that a new player can reasonably solve. Puzzles are great for everyone, and I want players below 1000 ELO to be able to participate in this forum.

@cegalleta

You raise many good points about solving puzzles and I agree with all of them. I certainly don't encourage solving puzzles by guessing the moves. Just recently I refrained from posting a puzzle here, because I thought it's too easy to guess the right moves.

There's no rule of what the difficulty level of the puzzles here should be, so I take it that everything is welcome. Usually the stuff I post here is something I couldn't solve myself, and I'm not concerned if it's too difficult or too easy for somebody else.

You are correct that I was feeling frustrated with puzzles when posting my last comment. My rated puzzles haven't gone so well lately, and I felt like I couldn't solve anything but the most simple ones anymore.