my confusing problem with tactics

Loose pieces are a good indication of available tactics.

lol beat me to in it kwaloffer

 thanks for answering my question,i did not accuse anyone directly.i asked if it was legal to use tactics trainer during live game? so your saying there is no way to cheat?

Petrosian once said if you don't see a tactical idea in the first minute, you probably aren't going to see it.   Euwe said that tactics is seeing, strategy is thinking.  Practicing tactics should develop your ability to recognize patterns.  When you decide upon what move you want to make to further your strategic ideas, the first question you should ask is it safe.  Examine the canidate move from your opponent's perspective and see if there are any tactical consequences to your move.  You should examine all forceing moves (checks, captures, ect.) to see if they lead to tactics.  If you do a lot of tactical training, you can do this quickly.  Once you have estabished there are no immediate tactics, you can start thinking about your plan.

The reason that you study tactical positions such as on chesstempo.com is to learn pattern recognition.  One of those patterns is your opponent's undefended piece or pawn or your own undefended piece or pawn.

Tournament chess players are like atheletes, they train and practice.

Get yourself a grandmaters games tactics position book.  Anyone of the internet bookstores or USCF(United States Chess Federation) will have these tactics books.  The reason I recommend getting a book is because on chesstempo and other sites you are permitted to move the pieces.  In an actual tournament game you cannot move the pieces until you decide on the move you are going to make.  That decision is final.

With the book you study the diagram, select a move and then go to the back of the book in the answer section to see if you got it right without moving any pieces.  In the tactics book there is usually 9 diagrams per page.  Start at the beginning of the book with the first diagram.  With a chess clock or some type of timing clock, give yourself 3 minutes per diagram.  At the end of the 3 minutes, stop, choose your move and check for the correct answer in the back of the book.  Mark and x for wrong or a check for right.  Move on to the next diagram and repeat the process.  Do not stop study or set up a board.  Do 3 pages of 9 diagrams every day.  At the end of 1 month of doing this practice I guarantee that in your own games the tactical shots will jump off the board and smack in you in the forehead. 

develop, protect, attack.  in that order.  and dive in and start playing--a lot. there are a lot of great books that have been recommended but i see studying these as a step for later.  only after you start playing a lot of your own games and being personally involved in a position on the board of your own making-- then some of the concepts described in the books will become more clearly imbedded into your game.  many years ago, i wanted to get involved in sailing.  being a reader/preparer like yourself, i went to the library and took out some books on the subject and read them.  i could only understand about 10 percent of what i read.  i started going to a club and volunteered as crew with a friendly group that accepted beginners.  after 3 months of sailing with them in club races 2 to 3 times a week, i reread the books i had borrowed and understood 90 percent of the content.  enjoy the journey.

Okay, I have answered this thread before. If you can solve tactical problems in puzzles, but not in games, it is usually because you don't have a plan. In chess, you need to have a plan. A common plan in the sicilian defense is to put pressure on the c-file, so most of your tactics would have to be from attacking the c file. If you are looking for tactics in the sicilian on the kingside to begin an attack, you will probably not find one too often because that is not part of the plan, and most of your focus has been on exploiting the queenside. In the french, the ideas are to break down the center, so most of the tactical themes will usually have to do with winning pawns in the center. this can help you direct your tactical eye to where it should be. My rating here for tactics trainer is about 1900, but that is because its harder for me to figure out tactical puzzles than it is for me to do on the board. they all seem to branch off like a plan, rather than just a position. If you play with a plan, tactics will definitely come up more often. Remember in order to have tactics, you have to have a strong position, which means you will also need positional skills and ideas about the opening you play. Hope I help

Many people run into the same problem. Tactical problems in both books and online are set up. The chances that you're going to find the exact same positions in a game are slim. To get better at setting up tactics, you have to master setting up the position. It is easy to fork or pin pieces when a puzzle has been set up. analyze tactica positions working backwards. See if you can play the puzzle backwards to determine how the critical position was reached in the the first place.

Most tactical exercises are taken from actual games.  It may be an interesting exercise to try working backwards, but in general you should work as many tactical exercises as quickly as possible.  In tactical exercises, quantity is superior to quality.  You should do about 30 a day.   If you do a lot of tacical exercises you will get better.

Try taking a look at The Complete Chess Workout by Richard Palliser. It will increase your awareness of tactical possibilities in more of the positions you see, can help you improve your endgame, and sharpen your attacking and defensive skills.

A wonderbful piece of advice I saw in the book was "LPDO": Loose pieces drop off.

That means, if there is an unprotected piece in the position, try searching for a combination.

wow thank you guys for all your help i feel like i have improved alot just fro the advice given.

pawnpusher your idea of tactics coming from a plan is intresting do you know where i could find a good source to get the overall plans of different openings?

blake thats a good way to think about each move as i have said early i think alot of my problem was in my thought process so that advice was diffenetly helpful. i have been doing alot of puzzles about  50 correct a day and more cause obviously i miss a few. i think chess tempo is a ok place for tactics cause if you move the peices wrong you do get punsished by getting it wrong and your rating lowered.

Yes, there is a method to set up tactics.

First, you must understand why tactics is possible then work your way accordingly.

You have a tactics because:

1) It is a tactical/open/complicated position. Here you can choose moves that lead to this kind of position. You should play 1.e4 instead of 1.d4 (I even play the King's Gambit!). To make things sharp and complicated you should not simplify, you should avoid exchanging pieces when possible, you should not close the position.

2) Your opponent's King is weak. Here you can focus on creating  these weaknesses. Provoke advancement of pawn covering the King (a6/h6/a3/h3). If he fianchettos try to exchange/eliminate the Bishop. Try to attack the Kings's defender. Create open line in front of the King (when possible). Keep an eye for weak back rank (usually it starts with a battle for controlling an open file with Rooks). Prohibit castling when possible (if the King is vulnerable in the center you can think of a piece sacrifice).

3) You have more pieces active in an attack (than your opponent in defending). This is also about development, tempo and initiative. Put your pieces in the most potential positions. Knights are slow, you need to handle them cleverly. Beware of off-side pieces that may be left out from the real battle. If your pieces are mainly in the center, you can switch them to either wings quickly, so if your opponent erroneously goes to the Queenside, you can switch them to the Kingside quickly for a winning attack. Always count how many are the attackers (attacking potential) and how many are the defenders (defending potential). If they are equal, just add up pieces or pressure.

4) Your opponent has less pieces active in defending. Here you can break coordination between your opponent pieces. Block them from easy/quick access to their King (to defend it). Lock your opponent's pieces from becoming active, especially Rooks.

Here I show you my own game where my opponent tried to create tactics early in the opening stage, and I tried to become an opportunist, and still think that I can win the game by defending accurately. I post only the first 17 moves where my opponents created so many attacking possibilities with 2 pawns compensation. You can check out my ongoing game if you want to see how he conducted the attack (and how I defended it).

There are people who cannot benefit from this training, but if you do it correctly, it's the best tool to improve your strength.

I asked you about your rating because I believe that you cannot advance without good thought process. The higher the puzzle rating, the more sophisticated your thought process will be, because it should incorporate new skill/pattern.

If you don't have this thought process already, and you play a normal game, you will think that implementing a thought process will waste your time. That is why building this thought process is important.

First, You have to do the process repetitively to make it a sub-conscious or an instinctive process. Once it is part of a subcoscious process, it doesn't consumn a lot of time. Now lets see the benefit of tactics training in building this thought process...

In a normal position where there is usually no tactics, you won't have the motivation to train this process, mainly because it will waste your time. In a tactics training, you can use as much time as you need, and you are motivated because you know that tactics are there and you are building the skill to solve them.

Second, in a normal game this thought process is still very usefull and applicable. You need only to modify a bit to incorporate more positional measures if you want to perfect it (the critical steps are remain unchanged).

yusuf thank you for your last 2 posts they have been extremly insightful. so doing the tactical puzzle builds the thought process and the more i do it, it will become subconsious and just a part of how i naturally look at a position. so how would i go about modifiy this for a game and how would i go about getting better at finding ways to set up the tactics like i did in the game i mentioned earlier (where i baited his rook to a spot where on the next move i forked his king and rook to win a rook for a bishop)

To be precise, you should build the thought process to assist you during your problem solving. A general process will look like:

1) Find out what your opponent can do to harm you.

2) Find out your opponent weaknesses. Piece by piece, up to the King, which is mostly the real target in a puzzle. In a real game, you need to find positional weaknesses, but in tactics puzzle you don't.

3) If you see there is a pawn three squares from promotion, then consider pawn promotion as part of the tactics (either threat or opportunity).

4) Find out ways to benefit from your opponent's weaknesses. Usually the solution is a move (or move sequence) that attacks many weaknesses at the same time.

The above process only has 3 or 4 steps, but you already know that the details or the quality of each step can differ from one player to another. The quality of the process depends on your skill and knowledge. Make a written process, follow it, and improve it during your tactics training.

Lets see step #1: Find out what your opponent can do to harm you.

Tactics training is usually about attacking, not defending. So you don't need to go too detail here. The first thing you have to do when you are given a puzzle is to find checks by your opponent. If there is one, follow the combination untill it is fully "quiescense", meaning that you should know if the check combination is really a threat or only a "bluff". This detailed threat analysis is usually needed for puzzles rated above 1800, so you know that the higher the rating, the more sophisticated your process should be. That's only about check yet.

Prophylactic is important in real game. How about in solving puzzle? In low rated puzzles may be all you will see are forced lines without counter attack, but in higher rated puzzles, situations can be different.

If you know that your opponent has a mate in one, it will help you find the solution because you should not try to win a Queen. You have to find a forced moves (checks to be precise), and for sure you're not looking for a "quiet" mate in two.

In a real game you either play positionally, tactically or both. Positionally, a weakness can be in the form of only a weak pawn or a weak square. You need to have positional knowledge to benefit from this. As I mentioned previously, when you look for opponent weaknesses, these include some positional measures like double Bishop, weak color complexes etc.

Yes, you have to list all of these type of weaknesses and find it in a position one by one. For example: "look for trapped pieces". When you look at Queen or Rook to find their weaknesses, you find out if they can be attacked, forked or even trapped.

"Setting up tactics" is different with setting up traps.

To set a tactics you need patient and follow the steps to make the tactics possible. Tactics is also my weakness. To ensure that I get in touch with tactics I changed my opening to 1.e4, and best of all I picked the King's Gambit as my opening. If you play KG, granted you will have the tactics most of the time.

To set a trap, you should not give away too many compensations. At 1900 level you really should play for the best moves, play the board and not play the man. But when you are in total lost you can think about setting up traps. I have won an OTB game where I have left my Queen en-prise in the opening stage. Luckily my opponent was weak enough (though he won the previous two rounds like I did) that he didn't exchange the pieces so I can set up a trap for him (I lost my Queen because of my blunder, so don't ever think that I don't have the right to not resign and expect blunder from my opponent )

Setting up tactics?

Just ship your pieces to active positions.

If your pieces co-ordinate better than your opponents pieces, tactics will occur naturally.

Its all about harmony. =)

yusuf your advice on thought process was great. and to the earlier repliers who suggested the article on seeds of tactical destruction i checked it out and it was just what i was looking for. shirvsky you really helped me understand the meaning and role of tactics in the royal game. and thanks to all of you i have gotten a ton of great advice and i feel like my problem is on its way to being resolved