Hi,
When I was a member at chessgames.com, I would play a game they have called
Guess The Move. They would have you play through famous games, then at various
points, make you make your move. The better your move, the more points you got.
I do not know how the point system worked. It was fun, because for me, puzzles
seem to have no context. I tend to remember after a while when I get burned by
something.
Jim H
-----Original Message-----
From: usbca_chess-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <usbca_chess-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
Behalf Of David Rosenkoetter
Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2020 8:18 PM
To: usbca_chess@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [usbca_chess] Re: Chess Puzzles In Increasing Order Of Difficulty
Hi, Jim H and all.
I think the term,puzzle, is quite deceiving because some puzzles are jut that,
positions set up to solve in isolation. More helpful are the endgame scenarios
that come from actual games. Look at wtharvey.com (which has 20,000 chess
"problems" and chessgames.com which is a repository of thousands of full length
games. The trick is knowing your JAWS or NVDA quick navigation keys to make
sense of the great stuff available.
All this will supplement the very helpful games that Chris and Tyson post with
their annotations on list.
Finally, let's avail our selves of Paul's coaching sessions with their
annotations. Seeing the games in their full length will be just as, if not
more, helpful than any single chess endgame or middlegame scenario.
I hope this helps, too.
David
On 4/16/20, JT <hazelnutt2001@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi All,
Right now, I don’t have anything better, WRT finding interesting chess
puzzles, than Shredder Pro. Chess.com is and has been one of the
inaccessible thorns regarding which I have written more than once to
the ASCC. I forget what it stands for. It is the committee working
with or for USCF to improve overall accessibility for disabled folks to play
chess.
Chess.com is inaccessible to people using screenreaders, has been for
quite some time, and the developers have been approached about it and
have responded that they don’t intend to fix it. That was a year or
more ago; perhaps the climate might be better now. Perhaps.
A quick aside, to Jim H, and to anyone else interested, if you
subscribe to blind-chess@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-chess@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> , Ed Zolotarevsky publishes a
puzzle fairly regularly. His biggest complaint is that Mark Hague is
pretty much the only person who regularly works to solve the puzzles.
Now to my real interest, herer. Many people have heard me talk about
my issues with chess analysis in general, and master-level analysis in
particular.
I am a staunch, adamant devotee to the school of learning which
follows the crawl, walk, run model of learning. Speaking from my own
personal experience, and I will readily admit that I’m not the
sharpest tack in the box, but from my own experience, I played chess,
maybe I should say played at chess, for nearly forty years before I
ever got a clear enough explanation about what constituted a good
position, what constituted sound positional play, to ever make any
kind of sense out of the business. If you, meaning the generic you,
I’m not aiming this at anyone in particular, If you can explain to a
fairly new player in simple, relatively easy-to-remember terms, how to
know a good square from a bad square, how to recognize during the
development process when you’re building a position that will just
fall apart when the crunch comes… If you can achieve this, then you will have
extreme value as a teacher.
The reason I believe that one simply can’t teach positional concepts
purely from a positional standpoint is that in order to evaluate the
strengths and weaknesses of a position, one has to use all of the
tactical concepts. To understand the difference between a knight and a
bishop, for example, one has to learn about xray attacks, pins, forks.
How do you learn about the differences between open and closed
positions when a position can go from one to the other with just the
subtlest shift of a piece or pawn by a square or two.
From my own experience, I wasn’t able to benefit from master-level
analysis until I began to have a reasonably good working understanding
of the building blocks: space, counting attackers and defenders, piece
mobility.
Oh, and piece mobility doesn’t just mean having squares to move to.
And what the heck is a tempo, anyway!?
This much I am certain of. For most of us mortals, the odds of
achieving
master- or even expert-level prowess on the chessboard can be
calculated. I believe the formula runs something like this:
The number of hours per day per week I spend at the chessboard,
Minus the number of extraneous obligations, distractions, and
commitments I have to take me away from chess,
Times the number of chess games I actually play through and actually
review,
Equals the likelihood that I’ll ever become even an expert.
I believe it was Fischer who said that if your position is sound, good
tactics will follow. True, as far as it goes. But you have to be able
to recognize the dynamics of piece movement in order to know when the
attack is mature and when it will fail from unreadiness.
Puzzles can help teach us to think about the possibilities of finding
that surprise fork, gaining that one initiative tempo through a
sacrificial check, exploiting zugzwang or zwischenzwang—did I spell
that right??? But somehow, some way, we have to simply spend the time
on the chessboard to begin to recognize the telltale signs of a
disintegrating position, or, hopefully, of the disintegration of the opposing
position.
If I may share a most valuable observation from Bruce Leverett. He
recognized that I was not allowing my position to mature. He pointed
out that often, one needs 40 to 60 moves for a position to fully
evolve. There I was, thinking that I had made the jump already,
because I had finally gotten myself mostly out of the habit of
expecting my attack to crush my opponent in 20 moves. Hey, I could
wait through 30 moves or so. No problem! It wasn’t enough. I still
couldn’t say exactly how or why it works. I can’t give a checklist of
things to memorize to tell me when an attack is really, truly, finally ready.
But at least I’m finally learning not to rush it.
Quite often, it seems, during the course of a game, there will come a
point where I’m just not sure what the best move is going to be. And
I’ll finally settle on moving something I hadn’t even really hought
about, which often involves bringing another piece from a less active
place to a more active place. Probably with no clear plan as to why,
just, nothing better comes to mind. And often, it pans out. Which
comes right back around to something we’ve all heard from our
suiperiors,… Use all your pieces! Don’t leave that rook in the corner.
Maybe my problem is that, after all these years, I know a little bit
about how to teach tactics, but I still don’t have a real clear sense
of how to teach sound positional theory. And the idea of memorizing
book lines only works as long as your opponent plays along with you.
If your opponent gets you out of your book line, and you don’t have
any real clue as to what was sound about the line you were playing,
well, you can always clear the board and start over! And, if we start
over often enough, maybe we’ll start to build a walking, working
knowledge of why, in this particular variation, that bishop is better
placed on e3 instead of g5, or why or when that knight really ought to
be on d7, rather than the more aggressive c6. If someone figures it out, let
me know??? Please???
I hope this was worth the read! If y’all don’t hear from me, it’s
because my wife killed me for spending too much time on chess!
Jim T
From: usbca_chess-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:usbca_chess-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Chris Ross
Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2020 4:08 PM
To: usbca_chess@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [usbca_chess] Re: Chess Puzzles In Increasing Order Of
Difficulty
Tyson et al,
Thanks for the suggestion, but annoyingly, like many sites like that,
it is inaccessible.
Shall we open up the can of worms that debate the use of contemplating
puzzles to increase one’s tactical abilities? For I, personally,
refuse to accept that the study of puzzles increases the ability of a
chess player in over-the-board play. As a positional player, I believe
in the principals of positional structure, principals, formations and
the such like. I acknowledge tactical ability is required to calculate
current positions and to figure out immediate situations. I ask the
question though, to whether siting endlessly figuring out tactical
solutions to obscure patterns is a developmental tool? Sure, I also
acknowledge that “patterns” can be learnt, but I agree with and
appreciate, but the obscure stuff, is that really instructive?
Thoughts welcome,
Chris
From: usbca_chess-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:usbca_chess-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
[mailto:usbca_chess-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of mordue andrew ;
(Redacted sender "tyson.mordue" for DMARC)
Sent: 16 April 2020 21:58
To: usbca_chess@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:usbca_chess@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> ;
jhomme1028@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:jhomme1028@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [usbca_chess] Re: Chess Puzzles In Increasing Order Of
Difficulty
Hello Jim,
You could try:
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/more-puzzles/puzzles---increasing-dif
ficulty
Tyson
On 16 April 2020 at 21:11 jhomme1028@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:jhomme1028@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Hi,
The subject says it. Can anyone recommend a source of chess puzzles in
increasing order of difficulty? I am also looking to purposely
practice tactics. I know that is a broad topic. I do not feel smart
enough to narrow it down. My apologies.
Jim H
