Seeing tactics during games

What are tactics?

The capacity to create tactics in a way so that you have to analyze the field on the chess game, is what differs chess from other strategy games. Meanwhile the main focus of other strategy games, looks up to making your resources scarce so that you will have to work by limiting their usage, otherwise, they will simply run out. Chess is a game that (of course, if you didn't alter anything on your side like removing a piece to make the game tougher) both sides are always going to start with the same amount of resources. There won't be anything the game itself will be putting on the board that none player has the ability to predict. Chess isn't a role-play game, but it holds the ability to tell many stories still.

The opponent can never befriend you, there are no "deals" that can be made that will benefit both sides without one of the sides not wanting to win the game somehow. Chess is a game that is meant to test one another capacity to think. Chess is only a game of luck, if you are lucky enough so that your opponent won't play the move that will set the game over.

There is a quote that says, "Chess is about 99% tactics". And i think that this is right. Because for every move, there has to be a reason for it. And knowing what every move does is what will change how you play and see the game.

Chess is a game that you have to spend time on

Chess isn't easy. At this point, even the people who don't know how to play the game won't feel themselves attracted to the game, because the game feels somehow too difficult to learn, so is to play. Learning the point of every square to have these pieces over them, is what makes of chess a so special game. But in order for we to be talking about advantages, we have to understand how many different sorts of advantages we can have.

Positional advantage

Positional advantage are the ones that not necessarily you're up in material, but you have many opportunities to set up an attack. Generally speaking, when you have positional advantage, it means that the game will be more difficult for the one who doesn't have the position advantage and the chances of making a blunder that will throw away the game is high. Meanwhile, the one who holds this sort of advantage have the game in hands, all it has to do is not to let that advantage slip through.

Material advantage

<strong>The most common sort of advantage</strong>. every player is recommended to be looking for material advantage because it's easier to keep, and when you have more pieces than your opponent, generally the theory is that you are controlling more squares than your opponent is controlling, therefore, also having more chances to win a positional advantage too. As for counting the material advantage that you have in comparison to your opponent, we have to know the value of each piece.

Queen == 9 points
Rooks == 5 points
Bishops and Knights == 3 points
Pawn == 1 point
King == The King simply doesn't have any points as it can never be captured.

Although these points won't mean anything for the final results, it is a tool that you can use for analyzing your games. generally, having material advantage is a good take, but most importantly, having positional advantage is what settles the game down.

Training to get one of these advantages on your side

Now that you know the two different sorts of advantages that we can have during a game of chess, now we have to understand how to practice them.

There are two major ways that i'd recommend you to go look after, i'll start with simplest one, Puzzles.

Puzzles as i've said prior to this article, is the easiest way so you can practice chess. Whenever there is a puzzle, all you have to do is to identify the issue, and solve it so that all the threats are covered and at the same time, you have the advantage that that position gives you. whether it be positional or material. Even checkmate themes may come towards you. Through puzzles, one can practice any sort of theme you think you are having troubles on. Here on Lichess, you can train any puzzles for free and have all the data later organized so you can find where you're struggling the most, and get better.

Another cool way to improve your chess, is through studying opening theories.

Gambits, entire opening lines. they all are going to give you something if played correctly. If you really want to understand how traps works and how to identify them, go work with some opening theory. There are many of them including The Scandinavian Defense, The Queen's Gambit, The Italian Game, Sicilian Defense, Vienna Game, The Slav Defense and many others. learning these openings and studying them so that you understand why every move is played in these opening theories is what takes your game to another level. By basically studying them, you will have a more enhanced view of the moves you are playing by inspiration of these opening theories.

Finding checkmate

But if there is a sort of tactic you wouldn't like to miss out, these are checkmate in a certain amount of moves. Stockfish always claims as at least an innacuracy, when you play a move that allows the checkmate opportunity to slip through your hands. But in fact, finding checkmate may not be something as easy to find, specially when you are not used to making sacrifices, specially knowing that if something goes wrong, you are basically just giving a piece away and moving the king around. But Stockfish actually won't go easy on you if you simply lose these opportunities to mate.

So, i've said earlier that training opening theories are a good way to get better at chess, this also applies to checkmate but a little different. These checkmate theories we call them <strong>Checkmate patterns.</strong> Checkmate patterns are nothing but patterns that eventually lead to checkmate. As the same as opening theories, these checkmate patterns also got a name for each of them. <strong>Smothered Mate, Anastasia Mate, Fool's Mate, Scholar's Mate</strong>, are some of what i can quote here. search later for these checkmate patterns so you will find more of them. By training them, you will lose less checkmating chances.

Sacrifices, sound or not?

For those of you who don't know what a sacrifice means, it means giving away a piece in order to get a positional advantage or a forced trading sequence that will lead in your gaining back your material advantage you previously had. But sacrifices aren't as easy to plan as it may look like, since you are basically giving away a piece. Prior to playing the planned move, you have to predict as many as possible moves the opponent will be playing, and have something already planned to any of the predicted variables of the sacrifice including what to do if the sacrifice is denied. Planning sacrifices are one of the most difficult things to do in chess and many of the sacrifices we see being played casually results in simply nothing. That means, these sacrifices aren't sound.

Once a sound sacrifice is made, it goes on the spotlight. Sacrifices are basically the soul of chess, sacrifices are what makes of Chess a risky game and at the same time, it drives emotion on a game. when playing puzzles, you may find many sacrifice themes on the way. First, because you are not used to sacrifices, you'll miss them out. But once you start getting used to it, you will start sacrificing and getting more puzzles done. Therefore, finding more other advantages as you move on playing chess.

What about the chess channels we have available to watch?

These chess channels, they're also a great thing that we have nowadays. You don't really have to go look after old interesting games to analyze on your own because these channels, they have done this part of the job for you as well as explaining everything that is happening on the match. So even though you have zero or a little experience in chess, you may still be able to understand what is going on by watching these channels. But they're still a little passive, but if you manage to pay attention, you'll understand the game and have more inspiration to play.

Help your pieces so they can help you

- Paul Morphy