Tactics Tactics Tactics?

Hey there,

I'm about three months into seriously undertaking chess. My OTB USCF rating is ~1140, but that's in my opinion overly inflated from playing in a children's tournament. This saturday I'll be playing in my first adult only 1100-1600 event, where I don't know if I'll win any games.

I've been told tactics are pretty much all I should study. I really want to become a fantastic player. My training regimen includes watching youtube videos on openers that I'm interested in, 60% tactics, 20% blitz games to practice seeing the openings and logical positions, and 20% real games. After each real game (meaning at least 10 minute time control), I always run a deep analysis and see my mistakes.

What more should I be doing? If tactics are the key, why are my tactics score higher than my actual rating? Thanks

(1) Children's tournaments are not inflated. Kids are more often than not deflated due to their fast progress.

(2) You've been told correct. 

(3) 10 minutes is better than the vast majority of training games most beginners play, but it's still too fast. At least 30 minutes is ideal. 

(4) Your tactics score is currently reasonable for your rating. Your main goal this tournament should be to always check your opponent's responses before you make your move on the board, to avoid blunders, which often happen at your level, and decide every single game.

I have long advocated working on all useful parts of chess in parallel:

tactics

strategy

openings

endgames

much practical experience

study of master games

common types of mating positions

...and probably a few more.

I also don't understand the common overemphasis on this forum of "tactics, tactics, tactics." I admit that realistic game tactics (in contrast to composed problems) is one of the most useful things you could study, but if you don't know how to get into a decent middlegame then you won't be getting many tactical opportunities to win, anyway.

I'm sorry I didn't mean to imply there aren't kids half my age that are nearing GM level, what I meant was because I've only played 4 ranked games OTB, my rating is absurdly volatile. So being 3-1 is misleading.

I hear that phrase a lot. Right now I've only read Bobby Fischer's book (which is just some mating schemes) and Pandolfini's Ultimate Guide to Chess. I'm about 1/3rd the way to 1/2th the way done with Logical Chess Move by Move, and then plan to read My System 

What do you mean by "playing over a bunch of games"? Like what I'm looking to do when I view a game from whoever, let's say Carlsen vs. Anand

Oh yeah I have a travel bag with my clock and pieces and whatnot. I almost do all my stuff electronically but if you think playing it out physically is more valuable I trust you. You're years and years better than me at this game so I trust your opinion.

Excellent book! That's by far the best book of the ones you mentioned, in my opinion. Another excellent one by Chernev is "The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played."

What Urk is talking about--and I agree--is that a chessplayer needs to see how really good chess is played, or what a good chess game should look like as it evolves in time. If you only play with people at your own level you won't realize how many good moves you are missing since you aren't being punished correctly and/or you aren't punishing as much as you could be. 

There is a deeper issue behind Urk's suggestion: The brain learns different things in different ways. Book learning is the knowledge aspect, but learning statistical generalities subconsciously is also very important. The latter can't be done unless the brain is exposed to a large number of patterns, which means either playing many games, or looking through many games (ideally master games, for the reason I gave earlier). A good chess game has a certain expected look to it, regarding how a mistake is refuted, how long it takes to make that refutation, the form of the refutation, the length and type of middlegame and endgame, the type of tactics involved, where the units are placed, the general direction of flow of the pawn structure over time, and so on. All this is knowledge that is not taught in any book (or at least not in any single book), so the only practical way to acquire it is exposure to many good, typical games.

One source of games, if you didn't know about it yet, is chessgames.com. Famous games usually have people commenting on them too (like why this or that move, or whether the position was a draw or win, that sort of thing).

Not as good as a book with detailed annotations, but it's a site worth knowing about.

Oh, and about tactics. I'll just share my experience. I think it's worth it to set aside a chunk of time, I did 1 month, where you only solve puzzles and go over the solutions. Going over the solutions can be half of the work. Not only the winning move for your side, but did you find the best defense for the opponent? What sorts of winning moves are you missing? (remember most moves should be as forcing as possible like checks, captures, and threats). What sorts of defensive moves are you missing? (for example checks, counter threats, blocking a line, creating an escape square).

The reason I think it's useful to do this is because it changes the way you look at a position (at least it did for me). So then when you start playing games again, you're instinctively looking at forcing moves first, which is ideally the habit you want to have.

That's also useful, to just expose yourself to high level patterns and ideas without worrying about understanding exactly why one move or another was played. I need to do a lot more of this myself.

The tournament is only 2 days away...at this point just chill...make sure you get good food, some exercise, a good sleep the night before, and a BM before you go in the morning, stuff like that...lol.

^^This

Sqod and Ziryab offer sound advice as well!

And use your tournament set if you have one. Place the set on an actual table, just as if you were playing a real opponent. When going from a lot of computer screen study to an actual board I usually have a 2-D hangover. This method seems to cure it.

Look at the old masters as Urk suggested. Don't bother trying to play through modern games.

Balance is the key. Reviewing your own games is a must.

In your tournament this Saturday I'd focus on trying to develop your pieces as quickly as possible.

Your opponents probably won't have massive amounts of theory committed to memory. So in these types of encounters the side with the most active pieces usually wins.

If you do study tactics, try to study them grouped by theme. i.e. Mates, Pins, Forks, Skewers, Deflection, etc.

A few good books on mates:

1000 Deadly Checkmates by John Nunn

Simple Checkmates by A.J Gilliam

The Art of the Checkmate by Georges Renaud and Victor Khan  (Covers the types of mates)

5334 Problems Combinations and Games by Laszlo Polgar

(Most of the crafted positions are so abstract or impossible you would never encounter them over the board. It was designed to teach you to see how the pieces control squares versus looking at only their points of contact).

Good luck!

Let us know how you do!

I'll absolutely update this post with my results, thank you for the very helpful book recommendations.

I was gifted three tournament repertoire videos by GM Roman Dzindzichashvili, I'm hoping they'll be of service. I know it's bad to keep going back to the candy store of openers but I always find the stuff so fascinating. In my first event, as white, I played exclusively C4 as white and my coach took me aside after and said pretty honestly that maybe I'm not ready for the mountain of studying needed to use it.

Now I'm sort of "paying my dues" playing E4 and meeting E4 with E5 and D4 with D5 for the games to be more educational. Removing my ego from the game and letting my rating fall as currency for future skill and knowledge isn't easy but it's necessary. I'll excitedly enjoy the hypermodern stuff again when I'm ready to hack it.

I saw my greatest early improvements, aside from playing a lot, by reading and slowly working through such books as "My 60 Memorable Games" and similar books on Tal, Botvinnik, Smyslov. Of course, this was back when books were popular and there was no Internet. Look at the positions and see what you'd play; see what the salient strategic and tactic options are and work though all of the sub-lines, to see how various ideas hold together. Your understanding will improve as will your knowledge of tactical motifs. It's a lot of work but it can be a lot of fun, too, as you delve into the way stronger players develop positions and increase their advantages. Choose players who tend to play in the style you wish most to work on. Over time, you'll come to see what your own strengths actually are and then you can refine your areas of study.

This took the words right out of my mouth.  I've coached dozens of teenagers, which coaching a high school team, from initial 700-800 OTB regular ratings to 1100-1500 in 1-2 years with exactly the same advice.

I would recommend picking a repertoire of openings, the first 5-6 moves, and understand the ideas behind them.  Then, if you practice against a computer, use something like the freebie Lucas Chess where you can force it to initially play a defined set of opening moves so, if you always play the French, or Caro-Kann, or Sicilian, etc. against 1 e4 and want to practice it, you can tell Lucas Chess to start out 1 e4.  If you want to practice against those openings you can tell it to play 1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5. etc.

The only reason I recommend that is so that you'll be more comfortable and aware of opening traps: but don't get hung up on opening moves since you're likely to be out of the book by move 6.

I hope you don't think studying tactics is done by just doing tactics trainer for an hour...  You also have to drill basic tactical motifs until you can do them in your sleep, and also, learn common mating patterns as well as get a book out and study 2-3 move mates, maybe later you can do 4-8 move mates, and you should do them in themes if you can.  Like, back rank mate, then bodens mate, etc.  I don't see very many books that do mating nets like this, so I am not the one to give you advice on which books to get on the subject, however, I do know that chessimo, Chess-art, and chess tactics, are all good tactics programs you can get on an iphone or ipad or even android based phone and crank out tactics till you are blue in the face.  I have all 3,   also, if you can't afford all that, the cheaper route would be to get the books Irk recommended that one time.  I forget the author.  Ask Irk