One can approximately divide all tactics, in increasing order of average complexity, into five levels:
1. En Prise – an unguarded piece can be captured.
2. Counting – determining whether any series of captures might lead to losing material (see Chapter 1)
3. Single Motif – pins, double attacks, back-rank mates, removal of the guard, etc. (see Chapter 2)
4. Non-sacrificial Combinations – combines motifs (including counting)
5. Sacrificial Combinations – Same as #4, but it involves a sacrifice.
Here is an easy example of Level 5 from Chapter 2:
White to play and win
In this example, White must play a “pseudo-sacrifice” of the bishop with 1.Bb5, pinning the queen to the king. Black must play 1...Qxb5 to save the queen, but then the knight fork 2.Nxc7+ wins the queen. Since there is a sacrifice, a pin, and a fork, this is Level 5, but it is still a very simple combination.
The two most important concepts in chess are safety and activity. Safety is much more important than anything else, and activity is more important than anything but safety.
When considering a combination, you often must ask yourself, “What can I do to make this work?” rather than start with the assumption “I don’t think this will work.”
The difference between a guideline and a rule is that a rule works all the time while a guideline is just a helpful hint that does not have the force of a rule. Some guidelines work almost all the time – others to varying degrees of frequency. The following are a collection of guidelines that apply to tactics.
– In chess, if you learn to do the little things on each move: take your time, count the material effect of your move, and check for basic tactics, and you will soon find that these are not so little!
– Most games between lower rated players are won, or could be won, on basic tactics; so studying basic tactics is extremely important.
– If you see a good move, look for a better one – you are trying to find the best one.
– Always assume your opponent will make his best move. Never make a bad move and hope your opponent will make a worse one.
– When looking for tactics – for either player – look for checks, captures, and threats, in that order – for both players. Note: Threats of mate-in-one may be more forcing than even a capture, so they have high priority.
– Teaching a student how to move the pieces and then the basic motifs, without teaching safety and counting, is like teaching someone algebra before they know arithmetic.
– Playing chess is primarily a series of puzzles, move after move, where you have to take your time and solve the puzzle: What is the best move?
– The primary goal of most moves is to make the best move in the given time available.
– The most important principle in chess is safety; second is activity; everything else on the board is relatively unimportant.
– There are only three times you should make a threat:
(1) If the threat cannot be met, or
(2) In making the threat you are improving your position more than your opponent does in meeting it, or
(3) If you have nothing left to lose and are trying to swindle your opponent into a blunder that lets you back into the game.
– You would not give up the bishop-pair for nothing, any more than you would give up a queen for nothing.
– If it wins, do it! Don’t worry about all the other guidelines on this page if you can checkmate or win plenty of material.
– The Donald Byrne rule: “If you see what looks like a mate, but you are not 100% positive and instead you can easily win a lot of material, just take the material and mate later.”
– “I know how to play when I am losing badly – I just take all my pieces and throw them at my opponent’s king. If it doesn’t work, I was lost anyway, and if it does work I can win!” – NM Rich Pariseau
– Don’t start a fight until your king is safe, especially if your opponent’s king is already safe!
– It is not enough to recognize tactics. You must recognize them quickly – even without prior knowledge that they are there – during the short time you have to move in a normal game. So study the easy problems in this book over and over until you can recognize both the problem and the solution quickly!
– When the game gets complicated and there are many checks and captures, it is usually correct to make a check or capture, or at least an extremely strong threat, to hold the initiative. To make a quiet move in violent positions usually gives your opponent the opportunity to take the initiative.
– If you have some sort of structural or minor material deficit, it is better not to trade and to play aggressively, or else your opponent’s long-term advantage will tell in the late middlegame and endgame.
– When both kings are exposed and the heavy pieces are still on the board, the initiative (or attack) is often worth everything – so you usually should keep checking (or capturing) if you can. In such positions, sacrifices of material are often quite common, as you cannot let your opponent start attacking with tempo.
– If the defenders of a piece can be removed, then you can’t count them as defenders – therefore that piece may be won via a removal of the guard tactic!
– Lower rated players should play gambits and tactical openings:
(1) It improves your tactics, as the subsequent lead in development usually gives you the initiative, and
(2) Your opponents are usually not good enough to win when ahead a by a small amount of material, so it is almost a free attack!
– Attack pinned pieces with pieces of lesser value. Yet never take a pinned piece unless it leads to some sort of tactic or you cannot maintain the pin.
– Having the bishop-pair – two bishops when your opponent does not – is worth about half a pawn.
– Patzer sees a check – gives a check, but always look for a check, it might be mate.
– You can’t attack where you don’t have an advantage. – Steinitz
Humorous
– I don’t see how either player can save their game!
– If I win it was a sacrifice, if I lose it was a mistake!
– The slowness of genius is hard to bear; the slowness of mediocrity is intolerable. – But that doesn’t mean beginning students should play fast!
– Castle early and often.
– See a pawn and pick it up and all the game you’ll have good luck.
– The loser always wins the postmortem.