Developing Chess Skill

Develop Pattern Recognition Through Analysis

I've been following my plan somewhat, doing the 50 CTS puzzles and 50 one-move mates from the "Polgar Brick" and the rest as time permitted. Recently I looked through my copy of 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate by Fred Reinfeld. I took a quick peek at the first page on queen sacrifices (which I still haven't finished) and wanted to redo the first few puzzles again.

These problems were pretty tough for me when I first attempted them months ago. So, I thought I'd try doing the puzzles over and to my surprise after a few moments of looking at them, my old thoughts and analysis was popping into my mind! I clearly remembered the position. I knew what pieces were important and where to start testing a solution in my mind.

Because these problems were initially so difficult for me to solve, I had spent a lot of time analyzing potential moves. This meant a lot of side-analysis and understanding of the war going on. It wasn't simply another static puzzle, but a whole system that I became well aware of and consequently remembered much more of.

A similar comparison might be to one of your positions in a chess game. You should be well aware of the board as you witnessed and participated in how it played out. You would have made lots of side analysis that was, and was not directly reflected into that game. But if you look at some static position... a tactical puzzle- the pieces may feel alien to you. You aren't intricately familiar to the field as you would be in a game you've been thinking about from the start. A tactical solution may be difficult for you to find until you see the board correctly.

In any tactical puzzle I think it is important to have the skill to quickly assess the field. To know what is under attack, where there are pins, forks and potential tactics. To see the position from both white and black's perspective and so on. If you can clearly see what is happening on any board, it is simply a process of choosing the best outcome, be it a material advantage, positional or checkmate, etc.

I think our goal is not simply to solve a tactical puzzle, but practice observation and analysis. By working the puzzle in your mind like that, you are putting effort into it and have developed many strong connections in memory (by concentrating on the consequential interplay of the pieces) that it would be hard not to remember something from it.

I started to slow down with my solutions so I could get more familiar with the board. I started finding more than one solution to some puzzles, noticing potential checkmates being rallied by the opposition, and many fun details that are increasing my board vision and awareness of that tactical puzzle. Because most of the mate-in-one puzzles are simple enough that a solution can often be seen without much analysis, I would be putting that extra bit into it to really understand the position. This way, they are not simply one of 50+ positions I flew past without much mental thought and being barely able to recall them afterwards.

I can imagine that after continually looking for features in the board, you'll soon recall that many of these features are similar to other puzzles you've studied. You may reach a point where you can see a board position and quickly make judgement as if you had been playing the game from the start because many patterns will begin to pop-out. This is similar to how knight movements can pop out if you practice knight-sight enough. Afterwards your analysis can begin to reach deeper levels, as the details you once placed effort into seeing are now obvious and observed quickly because of well-earned pattern recognition.

That's my current understanding of things. From now on I will put more effort into "seeing" a puzzle to develop observational/tactical awareness and earn pattern recognition. On the first run through a set, I think this is important to get some idea, and on the second run those ideas will probably be more easily remembered or more obvious which can then let you take the analysis deeper.

Perhaps there are many higher-level chess players who may find this to be pretty obvious, but then that may be part of the reason they are where they are.

It is with this insight that I feel using CTS as just a measurement tool, is the right choice; not as a developmental tool. With such a short, and narrow time-restrained analysis of each position you won't likely push your analysis to the point of learning something new or spending enough time to really remember the problem. For this reason, I feel it only best measures your current ability.

posted by Board Scholar @ 4:56 PM