The secret is only three words: “Study Chess Tactics.”
If you’re an amateur and want to improve your game, the biggest waste of your time and money would be to go out and buy books on chess openings, positional themes, strategy, and endgame theory. The reason is that without the ability to recognize tactical opportunities, those other skills won’t do you much good. And studying tactics will give you the biggest bang for your buck.
And psst…here’s why this is such a dirty little secret: If you become a tactical expert and go to your local chess club and play against that guy who has done nothing but obsess over chess openings you’ll likely get off “book” in fairly short order and end up in a position that he may not understand. And you’ll have ample opportunities to crush him with a tactical blow. And when he loses he’ll pout and blame you for not making the right opening moves.
Here’s how you’ll beat that guy:
- Get a book explaining chess tactics:
- Get a giant book of chess problems:
Solve as many of these a day as you can. What you’re doing here is burning patterns into your memory that you’ll recognize in your own games.
- Use these online resources in addition to the books to sharpen your tactical edge:
- Chess Tactics Explained - Various common tactical themes.
- ChessProblems - online collection of problems to solve, categorized by skill-level
- Practice with the Chess Tactics Server
Read this, understand the ideas.
4 comments ↓
Absolutely true. In fact, many strategic ideas are simply tactics writ large, so being tactically astute will generally help in all areas of the game.
Good point, Sam. I like to think of strategy as how the tactics play out over a longer series of moves, whereas tactics are usually small advantages gained over a move or two.
Playing chess like a pro depends also on how much time we take to play and time taken to look at other playing.
Armand Rousso
http://chess.armandrousso.biz/
good points.
that’s why i love watching other games and try to understand why each player did what he did.
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