I Don't Understand Tactics Problems

I want to start drilling tactics to push my game further, but any tactics problems I find are too vague for me to understand what I'm trying to be doing. I spent some time with the book 'Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess,' and that was extremely helpful because each problem had a specific prompt, but those were all mating problems. Is there some resource for tactics problems with explanations to help me grasp the concept?

Chess.com supplies tactic training that has helped me a good bit. What's your question exactly? they're too vague? you can use hints to start mane

Often I have no idea what the solution is accomplishing. Too often to be reasonable, I even think that the solution must be wrong, because it often looks like it's a worse position. For example, here's one I just did:

(I hope I set that up right, because I'm pretty new to the site and haven't had to before)

Black to win in 1 move. At first, I didn't see that the black king was in check and thought the solution would have to do with moving the passed pawn on g2. It told me that was an illegal move, and I realized the king was in check. The bishop, the queen, and the knight can all capture the pawn. The knight is pinned to the queen by white's bishop on g5.

Why on earth do I move the knight anyway and let white take my queen? There is no way I would do that in a game. I would move the bishop up, which leaves my queen safe and develops the bishop. Now, instead, my bishop is closed in and I'm losing my queen. There's too little information for me to gain anything from this problem.

1..Nxd7 is a cute solution. You just have to work through all of the pending captures. Playing 1..Nxd7 allows him to take your queen, but if he does, you can respond with 2..gxRh1=Q, thereby getting your queen back and picking up a rook in the bargain.

And if he declines to take your queen and instead plays 2. Bxg2, then you pick up a piece with 2..QxBg5.

Wow, alright, that makes a ton of sense. Thank you! Explanations like this make all the difference. If anyone knows of any resources that have tactics problems with explanations, I'd love to check them out

Hey man!

When I joined this site I was 1300-1400 on tactics for a while. Then I started to read the lessons of chess.com (tactics section) and also started to practice on ChessTempo, reviewing the comments of other players whenever I had a problem wrong, you know, trying to understand why.

Now I am 1800, so basically a jump of 400 points in a few months.

Watch out always for undefended pieces and study all the tactical motifs.

One thing that could be very helpful in your case, since you're just starting out, is a tactics book. One I would strongly recommend is Chess Tactics For Champions, by Susan Polgar. She explains everything in detail, and starts with all the basic tactical motifs, then, almost like magic, she takes you to solving positions with multiple motifs, and more pieces. Once you've absorbed a book like that, you'll be ready to take full advantage of on line tactics training, and other downloadable tactics collections. There are other, similar books, but I actually own this one, and it is very thorough.