« Under Pressure | Main | Chess sonata »
May 8, 2007
Attack, attack, attack!
A note for those less experienced chess players:
I was amazed when I started sparring with Fritz. The positions I felt comfortably with were demolished with horrifying ease, any counter tactic I would come up with was matched with an even better tactic, there was something missing in my game. When I looked back at those games, I realised that Fritz was playing plain simple type of chess: "attack, attack, attack."
And from there, I’ve learned to appreciate three elementary rules of chess tactics:
1. Evaluate checks first – your opponent is forced to do something about your check (or maybe it's a check-mate?!).
2. Evaluate captures next – in particular whether you can capture his better quality with your worse one.
3. Look where you can put your pieces so you can do 1. and/or 2.
It’s actually quite easy when the depth of a combination is 1-4 ply. I guess, for an average player, the difficulty arises when you are looking at +10 ply. GMs are too unpredictable - just take a look at the 1999 Kasparov vs Topalov game; Kasparov sacrificed his rook on move 24 to get it back with return on 39. It was a 30-ply analysis!
In the very near future, however, we will see computers with such advance software and microchips installed in them, and this will forever end any drawing chances a human may have against metal brains...
Posted by connpost on May 8, 2007 8:52 AM
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)
