Questions tagged [tactics]

Questions relating to maneuvers that take advantage of short-term opportunities, such as forks, discovered attacks, skewers, etc.

Tactics are the concrete maneuvers (e.g. forking two pieces with a knight, pinning a piece to the opponent's king, or unleashing a discovered check) that chess players use and combine in order to achieve their overall goals in a game. They are the building blocks which underlie successful strategies.

Tactics represent the raw calculation side of chess, rather than the speculative, intuitive aspects of the game. That is, perhaps, unless you're Mikhail Tal, former world champion and so-called "Magician from Riga".

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Training tactics - doing more easy puzzles or fewer, but deep, puzzles?

I know daily tactics training is very beneficial. However, what is the best way to do so? Lets say I have 15 minutes a day. Is it better I do 3/4 puzzles in detail, spend 5 minutes on each analysing each move in and ensuring I get the puzzle…
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Am I improving my tactical knowledge by explaining solutons to my wife?

I recently started to teach the game to my wife, yay for me :) So now she's somewhat comfortable with how the pieces move and the basic opening principles but as soon as she gets to the middle game she never knows what to do next so I started…
Sergio Romero
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Productive tactical puzzles: random or themed?

Simply, which of the following two approaches will typically improve tactical ability the fastest: Doing puzzles around a known theme or tactical motif - i.e. do 100 puzzles that involve a discovered attack, or a skewer, or mate in 3, mate in 2…
firtydank
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What's the best chess tactics trainer on the web?

There are plenty of chess tactics trainers out there on the internet. What trainer works best for you? Why?
Arun J
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Why should I sacrifice Bishop?

I had a game with a friend, I obviously lost, but now I don't understand why, while reviewing my game, the CPU suggest that at this point the best move is Bishop in b5. If the Queen decides to take the Bishop, there is nothing taking the Queen…
Exiltaran
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Have we found every existing tactic?

Is it possible that there are missing or unstudied tactics, waiting there to be found? Maybe some of them have been played only by GMs and in so few times that they don't get to have a name on their own, maybe the rest of the world just see them as…
ajax333221
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Practicing tactics

I have been floating around the 800-900 tactical rating on chess.com for a while. A few things I've noticed For a beginner I'm having giant swings in rating based on if I get a series that I can identify or not. It's not unusual in a single session…
user14142
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Why does chess.com's tactics player avoid taking the queen in this problem?

Why can't the black pawn take the queen at h6? Instead the computer makes the king go to g8.
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Playing rating is higher than tactics rating

I noticed for a while that in many chess websites that my tactics rating is between 1700-2000, but my playing rating in rapid is between 2000-2250, in blitz between 1900-2100, and in classical between 2200-2400. I know that there are differences…
Guess601
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How much time it takes before searching for tactical themes becomes a subconscious process?

I would really like to have that ability.So how to achieve that?
bretlee
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Woodpecker method on chess sites

Is there any chess site that allows you to train tactics by repeating some number of problems over and over again?
dlb
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What are the objective criteria which suggest the position needs immediate tactical attention?

In even the most quiet-looking position there might be a tactical bolt of the blue, but consider a game might last 50+ moves, and your time and your concentration are limited resources. Thus it is not feasible to do like a computer and calculate…
AnjumSKhan
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Can someone explain why should white lose his queen in the following tactics?

This is my initial position: I exchanged my pawn to get queen at this position: Now to complete the tactics, the engine is accepting only this move which results in a stalemate I would have dominated black with my queen and bishop but the tactics…
sziraqui
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Improving my ability to scan the board

This seems like a silly noob question...but I am a silly noob. Sitting at around 600 (and floating there in both tactics and in 30 minute games) I've noticed I give away material or extend the game considerably sometimes because I just don't see the…
user14142
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Best heuristic for memorizing positions in chess

Opening variations may be memorized by recalling what the objective behind every move is. For example, the first few moves of the Ruy Lopez fight to control e5. In the middlegame, we may find ourselves thinking about a critical move - a move that…
Jossie Calderon
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