tennbad wrote:
I am so slow when it comes to solving tactics. I’m thinking the reason why is not so much I don’t know the pattern (when I actually do know it) as much as it takes too long to identify the tactical elements. I mean say there is a tactic problem I’m supposed to solve in 10sec. I’ve never seen it before and I’m staring at a board with 26 pieces. I’m scanning to identify what is pinned, alignment problems, trapped pieces, king safety, Knight forking distance, etc. By the time I notice the one element I need to, a whole minute has passed. But when I do see it the tactic jumps out quickly. I don’t know how to see it faster. I don’t have a-priori knowledge of where to start looking. It’s just lucky if I start looking at the right spot first.
Is there a better method to take in the position? How to do this faster?
Is there a better method to take in the position? How to do this faster?
I often find tactics by working backwards.
That is, I try to picture the position AFTER I've played the winning move (mate, or forking K+Q, or whatever) and then try to figure out a plausible way to get from the current position to that winning position.
That's what I mean. We have a million people solving thousands of puzzles. Some people solve puzzles every day... but Morphy probably solved none. There were some primitive books back then, and tournament games were passed around... but obviously his vision for combinations didn't come from solving puzzles.
That's not to say that solving puzzles is bad, of course, and I'm sure Morphy would have been even better had he had access to today's stuff. I'm just saying there's something more to the learning process. Obviously he picked up ideas and principals (or whatever you want to call them) from other sources.
This sounds depressing. It sounds like you guys are saying you are born with ability or your not. if you are no one really knows how to develop it. Working hard may not amount to anything. After all no one knows what exactly to work on. it loses all meaning if you don’t know what to do. If your lucky and born with ability things will magically come together no matter how you work at it.
I wouldn't go that far. Everyone works for their skill. Everyone starts as an awful beginner who plays lots of mistakes. It's just that for some people work pays off faster than others, and no one can really explain why that is. It's not that the training is secret, it's just something about how people process and relate and learn information.
The good news is that chess is fun no matter your rating, and that even a somewhat below average person, if they work really hard, could probably be in the top 1% of players.
And try to stay motivated... because no one improves constantly. Everyone has a few months, or a year, where even if they're studying every day they don't seem to be improving... but eventually you break through and start improving again. It's just that while players like you and me get stuck at 1600 for a while, players like Carlsen get stuck at 2600 for a while
So it's somewhere in the middle. You'll probably never be a professional player, and that was probably determined at birth, but you probably can be a lot better than you think you can, and be better than almost everyone on the planet.
I'm skeptical that the training is not a secret in some sense. I think its more likely that most of the information out there is probably bad. The training that many people are doing is probably hurting them. Especially if a forum is where they get their advice, but may be no other option. you can't ask a book a question. For the lucky few kids who get private coaching, they will get some good stuff, but it will be generic coaching. The information is probably nothing that you can't read in a book, but it has the advantage of a clear plan. As opposed to a jumbled up bunch of training methods that are as uncoordinated as the pieces in my game. The really good stuff is passed from Master to a single student that the master selects. Outside of this I probably agree with what you are saying which is why it bothered me more than it should.
I think your best trainer, would be yourself. Don't expect much even from GM's, since they can't put themselves in your shoes no matter how much they want to. They have 10 times better chess memory than you and calculate much deeper. Their intuition is probably better than your best calculation and I could go on, but at the end, they just CAN'T understand you.
Having said that, I am 100% sure that you can improve and that you can even improve your speed. I am the first that will say that speed is the hardest thing to improve, but even so is possible. Keep doing what you do. Try to understand and learn and be able to name all tactic motifs and mate patterns and keep doing them slowly repeating the ones you missed. I even have my own names for tactics that a name doesn't exist (like boomerang, sandwich x-ray etc.).
Don't worry about what others are doing and what is supposedly expected from you. Have you ever looked at the top tactics players? They do 8 move tactics in 3 secs. Do you understand the meaning of it? They either cheat, which I don't think so, or they have them almost all memorised. Thus, don't compare yourselve to them. Accept that they have better chess memory than you and move on. I am sure you don't like solving tactics, for training and enjoying your memory. You do them, because you like to think. Don't compare yourselve with those memory "monsters" then.
You are doing well. You are improving and you will improve even more and if you want my advice, try endgames (what I am doing right now). They are the funnest part of chess, the part that requires the most logical thinking, involves no luck (like middle game) and memory doesn't play a major role (like in opening).