Yusupov and the Older Lower Rated Player

That is impossible to answer in one sentence. It really depends on what black would play himself. It could be though, at least from a practical point of view, that Kd5 is a better move after all.

I think the value of tactics training for me is that it forces me to calculate accurately. Some puzzles are far better at that than others. Like OldPatzerMike, I am only to well aware that my calculation skills are suspect.

Also, over time you do learn patterns and you may recognize those in your games. Gradually I am recognizing opportunities in games that I would not have before.

I have also noticed the rate at which I blunder horribly by hanging pieces and such has definitely gone down.

But I agree that tactics training in and of itself is not the end-all be-all that some people make it out to be.

Solving tactics is perfectly fine as an exercise. I was referring to online tactics rating, which I think is pretty much pointless. But I also believe that tactics should be studied thoroughly, just as any other aspect of chess game. I don't think solving tactics is gonna do much by itself. That is my humble opinion, though. I could very well be wrong.

Apologies for asking a stupid question here. Isn't this the game Esteban Canal-Akiba Rubinstein from Karlsbad 1929? If so, the position in the diagram isn't correct. When Rubinstein played 59...Rc7, White's rook stood on f3, not d3, and Black's king stood on e6. The game went 60.f5+ Kd5! 61.Rf4 Rc2! etc. Playing 1...Rc7 in the diagram position loses to 2.Rxd4.

Spoiler Alert:

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As for the puzzle, I correctly played Ra7 but then missed that Kf6 is the correct move. It does seem obvious in hindsight.

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I don't know if this position is correct or not, since it probably game out of the 3rd book. But Yusupov will sometimes alter the position of a game to make it more instructive. When he does, he calls that out.

Yes, that is the game. I qouted the position from Yusupov's book. That is the position after 58.Kf2. After 58.Kf2 the white rook is still on d3, Black then played 58...Ke6 intending 59...Kd5. I, however, have misspelled Kd5 in my previous posts. I should have written Ke6.

Aha, I see. And Stockfish prefers 58...Kf5 instead of 58...Ke6?

@madratter7 - That is the exact same position. I just checked it on chessgames.com.

@BonTheCat - yes it does, but from a practical point of view Rubinstein's Ke6 is probably a better move.

Yes, that's exactly what I was going to say. What is an easy win for a computer may not be that easy for a human and (sometimes) vice versa.

I view tactics training exactly the same way I view a 1 mile run before starting serious training for a track meet. It's essential, but not sufficient. It builds certain "muscles" and helps build up certain skills. But the real work is still ahead: wind sprints, intervals, and the like.

In chess, the real work is deep analysis of positions, Endgame training, and the like.

During the last 10-20 years I have probably done 20-30k+ puzzles on different sites and from books.

If solving lot of puzzles are a good exercises for improvement, my rating should be quit high. Yes?

My OTB rating is <1500.

Nothing wrong with solving puzzles. Far from it, it's a great idea. However, it's important to focus on other things too, such as learning how to play the middle- and endgame, general strategy etc. GM Jacob Aagaard (of Quality Chess) wrote in of his books (can't remember which one now, but one of the 'Excelling at...' by Everyman Chess) of a post-mortem he once watched. One of his friends (a GM or an IM) had defeated a player somewhere in the E1900-E2200 range, and the end had been a tactical oversight but the guy was lost anyway at that point. During the post-mortem, the guy who had lost just put forward one new try after another ('what if I play this then?'), which the GM/IM patiently refuted, one suggestion after the other. Aagaard said this went on for quite some time, and he got bored watching it and wandered off. Later, Aagaard said, it hit me: The generally accepted truth that up to rating EXXXX, chess is all tactics, is only true up to a certain point. Yes, most games are immediately decided by an oversight by one side or the other. However, the real issue or problem is that these lower rated players, generally speaking, don't actually understand strategy.

This passage in turn made me think of one of my games as a junior where I lost against a player rated about E2250 (I was close to E2000 at the time). He played the Réti and I followed the Lasker System (Black plays Nf6, d5, c6, Bf5, e6 and Nbd7 - in essence the London system with colours reversed). My opponent completely outmaneuvered me and in the post-mortem, I was exactly like the guy Aagaard had seen (one suggestion after another), and after a while my opponent started replying 'But that's an entirely different game' to my suggestions. I was sort of doing a retrograde analysis without knowing about the concept. For a long, long time that game stuck in my mind, because I just couldn't understand why I had lost. It simply didn't occur to me until I read that Aagaard book that my problem at the time was that my positional understanding was completely insufficient, and that also explained to me why I so often had struggled against the English Opening as Black, despite trying out various different set-ups. My understanding was simply too limited in that opening.

ok, I've returned to studying Yusupov. I'm currently working on the test for chapter 14 of book 2.

My hiatus was profitable: Soltis's book on calculation is great. It would take way too much time and space to describe all the good things about it, but I want to point out two especially interesting things. First, he says that chess is not 99% tactics, but 99% calculation. I think that is correct, although many writers take the two as being the same thing. Thus, whoever first said that chess is 99% tactics probably meant calculation but was using the words interchangeably. A good grasp of tactics is necessary for accurate calculation, but they are not the same thing.

The second thing is the concept of how to choose lines to calculate, which Kotov referred to as candidate moves. Soltis says to analyze the position for "ideas". The thought process is to identify and evaluate the positional features and the actual or potential tactical themes in the position. This process yields ideas on what you should be trying to do, whether it is tactical or positional. Once you decide what you want to do, you have to calculate how to get there. This probably seems obvious, but the way he presents the entire thought process finally made sense of it all to me.

I'm sure this short description does not do justice to Soltis's work, but the book has certainly improved my thought process--that vital aspect of chess that enables you to apply your knowledge to winning games. Now on to Yusupov to expand my knowledge!

The newer book, Chess Tactics From Scratch(CTFS) also does a great job of reinforcing this same point.. Look at the tactical themes and positional features and it will help guide your calculations. The CTFS book, which I have admittedly read more recently and therefore remember better, states that if you feel like the tactical solution should be there but cannot find it, you should do a status check on the pieces. 'What i this piece doing, and this one, and this one' See where the connections are and that will sometimes bring forward avenues of calculation.

Anyway, on to the thread topic. I finally finished chapter 14 of Book 3(Evolution 1-The Fundamentals) and scored 13/27. This is the minimum passing score and the worst I have done on any chapter to date. Therefore I will review the chapter and the answers again before moving on to 15.

It was titled 'Attack', but it was not tactics per se. Subsections in reading were 'Bring up the reserves', 'Coordination of attacking pieces', 'Weakness in the opponent's castled position', 'Exchanging a good defensive piece', and 'The pawn storm'

Definitely there were tactical calculation lines but it was more about seeing the possibilities and avenues. The test was frustrating as not infrequently the correct answer was something I had looked at but not found satisfactory because of a followup idea(once again not necessarily a tactical sac/combo idea but just a way to bring more pressure) 3-4 moves down the road.

This sounds excellent. It's now on my ever-expanding wish list.

I've really become focused on thought process. We all have one while playing, but unless you specifically think about how you are thinking, the process will remain a subconscious thing. Whether it leads you in the right direction is a hit or miss proposition. Once I grasped that earlier this year and started working on it, chess became much clearer. I have a long way to go in learning to think properly, but Soltis improved my ability a lot and CTFS should take me further along. Thanks for pointing it out.