How to get a whole lot more from Tactics

So recently a friend (2200 FIDE) told me to "resist the urge to check if the move is correct"... "better to do tactics from a book, with a notebook and pencil, writing lines and evaluations"..

She meant when solving puzzles online, looking for that green V based on intuition, move per move - is not ideal.

Also not ideal is to impulsively jump in to a line which you feel should be the one, based on the fact that the move is "begging to be played", and after all, it is a puzzle so the chances of it being wrong are infact almost completely non existent. This way we may get some green V's but did we actually see any of our opponent's resources and defensive tries? What did we really benefit from repeating this pattern then? ..On the other hand studying difficult tactics with a notebook and pencil is easier said than done... and therefore is usually just not done.

So we mostly just solve the easy way, which is not improving our calculation. In fact it's training you to blindly believe in the attacking patterns you see without the burden of calculating, most importantly - your opponent's best defense. AKA trying to prove yourself wrong.

Pattern recognition and intuition - yes... it does train that.. But that's not the only reason you do puzzles.

In fact the calculation part of puzzles is equally if not more important.

Us beginners are very bad at calculating lines in games that branch out to many unclear paths, so we would like to think in puzzles it's more doable because of a narrow path of lines to a direct win.

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In that context, rather than the traditional "blow your mind flashy tactic", let's look at an elementary example.

My notes can be seen on the right, I opened it on the PC for convenience, but I forced myself to calculate and write entire line(s) despite recognizing the famous pattern instantly.

Note it's a very simple 900 rated puzzle, but it's very rich still. Much richer than it seems if you just play move per move based on intuition.

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Now after I finished writing, I only then played the moves, and there were no meaningful surprises, but I still missed some ideas and had some pretty huge mistakes in calculation!

These mistakes would have gone un-noticed if I had just been content with the green V's from chess.com. All the instructive subtleties would have gone to waste.

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So now behold how rich and complex the solution is in this "simple" tactic of 900 rating!

I commented on the mistakes in comparison to the initial notes.

Now one might think this is completely absurd, how does someone make such terrible mistakes as me? Believe me - if you are U1600 you will be shocked how flawed your calculation is if you try this method. And this is just a puzzle in which most of us just saw Qh4 Nxg3 immediately and would have considered it "solved" in 3 seconds ignoring all the richness and hidden patterns that are present (e.g: c2 pawn!)

So think... just think if this is hidden here, what treasures we are constantly missing in more advanced Tactics.

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I am amazed at how bad my visualization is with just a few moves deep, but I know by admitting it to myself and working on it I will get better. Also, I do have one positive from the initial notes which is my evaluation was correct assessing that the resulting positions in the logical lines are not "dead lost" for White, and there may be some compensation for the exchange.

The reason we so rarely think like this in most games is precisely because we don't trust the accuracy and strength of our calculation (for finding moves for both sides). There's no worse feeling than seeing a tactic in a game and rejecting it because you overestimate some dubious or completely illogical defense from your opponent.. Then in post game you realize you could have played it! From lessons of such in the past, we do not trust our ability to differentiate between a sound defensive resource and a wrong one, so the habit becomes to not to look thoroughly for opponent's moves at all (AKA hope chess) and this becomes a habit which transitions itself to trying to studying tactics the same way.. As if we try to apply time pressure to the puzzle (lol).

A combination of that and wanting to lie to ourselves that we can actually calculate 5 concrete lines in a few seconds, when that is in fact very far from reality.. Then pat ourselves on the back and let all the instructive subtleties and calculation details go completely unnoticed, waste them, like they were nothing.

Also, calculating with this degree of clarity and definitiveness is hard and very time consuming... But if we improve our calculation and visualization that can change our game more than any other channel of improvement, especially in the crucial moments in games.

Every coin has two sides, and many times it can be to our fault when we pause for too long at less optimal moments, considering lines we get lost in, then just blitz out "something", failing to pause on each move to scan for improvements or mistakes. Unsurprisingly, we all blitz out lines full of blunders based on flawed calculation from time to time, and sometimes our opponent might even crack under that pressure.. we even win games in this fashion.. But we lose way more by playing this way.

It's crucial to remember Tactics are an exercise free of stress, not a game. Here there is no loss on time, or psychological pressure to be applied.

In a game it's legit to just play the famous pattern and think later, and also pause in the clearest moments, rather than getting lost on decisions that are too far ahead.

But with tactics you have a chance to actually work on visualization and calculation accuracy for the sake of positions in which the 1st move is less obvious, not only critical ones... forget 100% of the time, if we are able to switch on the "full on calculation mode" even once or twice in a game: I believe that can be worth hundreds of points in chess strength. I believe fully understanding these simple puzzles is key before attempting the harder ones. and that is the whole reason for this post, and what I think most coaches and pro/semi pro don't bother explaining to beginners like us. It has to be fun.. If it's you sitting completely tilted vs a 2200-2400 rated puzzle with a notebook and pencil.... that's too hard to actually do every day and improve consistently by (although there is a place for that too)...

The feeling of truly completing a puzzle is a good feeling, when you feel you really understand all resulting positions, and all the subtleties to the best of my ability even though it's an easy one to "solve"... I'm sure it will improve the way we approach harder puzzles too.

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To sum it up: I think it was Carlsen who made the distinction between "solving puzzles" and "studying tactics"... I believe I am now beginning to understand what he meant.

Hope this helps

Good post.

I like this guy IM Andras Toth he talks alot about how club players dont evaluate at the end of lines they just calculate without reaching any clear conclusion which he argues is a waste of time or they make a decisions based on visual and feel.. anyways calculation is nothing without evaluating and the other way around. they go hand in hand. a lot of people miss that indeed. nice post