You are here

J

The six basic tactics

Here's eight of them!

The different types of tactic are:

  • jumps (discovery)
  • mates
  • forks
  • pins/skewers
  • nets
  • ties (undermining and overloading)

Here's one of each:

Click on [...] to see games list.


[Event "Basic Tactics"]
[Site "Italy?, "]
[Date "1801"]
[White "Greco,G"]
[Black "NN "]
[ECO "C41"]
[Annotator "An ancient Queen fork"]
[Result "1-0"]

Mate with King and Rook against a King

The easiest way to learn is to remember the checkmate position:
[Event "checkmate"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "2012.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "KR"]
[Black "K"]
[Result "1-0"]
[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "R5k1/8/6K1/8/8/8/8/8 b - - 0 37"]
[PlyCount "0"]
* 1-0
You get checkmate at the edge of the board. You can force the defending King to the edge of the board by using the same idea:

Dr.Dave's Brain Sharpening Kit

Sorry if that sounds a bit alarming!  What I mean is, after the summer break, you might find that your usual tactical sharpness has gone a bit rusty. 

To get back to your normal diamond-honed sharpness, you just need you get your eye back in with some practice.

Some things to practice are:

Eton ruffles

A report of the visit of the Devon County U18 Chess Team to compete in the English Junior County Championships.

Exeter Juniors 1-2 Sidmouth B

A tale of three discoveries: a discovered attack proved the winning move in all three games.

Unmasked threats - discovered attacks and discovered checks - are the most difficult threats to spot. You pay attention to the piece that moves, but the threat comes from the piece behind.

I've attached a discovered attack training page - get your eye in! In 2010, the Devon U14 team lost an awful lot of points (or a lot of awful points) to discovered attacks, and the puzzles are all things that they missed.

Exeter Juniors 2½-1½ Seaton

Our first win! Even without the point from 'super-sub' Ray Shepherd, we had a draw in the bank, and that would have been a good result too.

So, well done all round. In both other games there was a big chance for our side early on - so make sure you think right from the start, don't 'warm up' during the game!

Making it up as you go along?

"I thought I would try something different."

This doesn't usually go well! Here are two examples:

Exeter Juniors ½-3½ Tiverton Testosterones

{A terrific scrap where both sides took and missed their chances. In the end the struggle with the 32 pieces on the board was decided as much by the clock as by the moves.}

What went wrong there?

After this quick loss, Black was not sure what he did that was so bad. Come and look for clues with me...

EJCC 1-3 Exeter Gambits 30th March 2012

A close match ended in a 1-3 defeat for the youngsters. As so often in chess, it wouldn't have taken much to reverse the score!

The juniors, unusually, fielded a team which had a majority of girls.

{1. A well-fought game: White got some attacking ideas muddled and lost a piece, but pressure won the exchange leaving an exciting RvNN endgame.}

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - J