Steve Learns Chess

Dan Heisman has written many times in his Novice Nook column about the Seeds of Tactical Destruction. These are elements of a position whose presence tells you to spend time looking hard for a tactical combination. Conversely, if these factors are all absent, then you shouldn’t spend too much looking for a tactical solution.

Dan’s list of seeds includes:

• Loose pieces
• Pieces easily attacked lesser pieces
• Pieces subject to discovered attack
• Pinned, pinnable, or skewerable pieces
• Weak back rank
• Pieces (or squares) vulnerable to knight forks
• Overworked pieces
• Inadequately guarded pieces
• Major lag in development
• Pawns nearing promotion
• King uncastled or lost pawn protection with Queens on the board
• Open lines to king
• Pieces with little mobility
• Local domination of forces

I’ve been thinking about how I’m doing CT-ART tactics exercises in relation to the seeds. I just completed my fourth pass of all the level 20 problems. When I’m working my way through lots of CT-ART problems, I have a tendency to slip into “guessing” the first move by choosing a plausible-looking forcing move. I try to fight this tendency and make myself work through the lines in my head before making the first move. But I’ve also been thinking about doing some explicit practice that combines the seeds with CT-ART problems.

I just tried this for the first time tonight, and I’ll probably try it at least several times more. Here’s my approach:

1. Load a CT-ART practice problem and, working from a printout of the seeds list, write down all the seeds that appear in the position. Then solve the problem.
2. Repeat for 3-4 more problems.
3. Then solve 20-30 problems the usual way, attempting to solve each problem quickly. But when a problem stumps me, stop and write down the list of seeds.

Note that CT-ART has a lot of mate problems, which led me to add this item to the list of seeds:

• King with few or no escape squares

Here’s an example from the level 20 practice set:

White to move

Here’s my list of seeds:

• e8 knight loose
• g7 bishop “barely guarded” (meaning it is defended the same number of times as it is attacked)
• h7 pawn barely guarded
• Queen attackable by the bishop
• Queen on the same diagonal as the king
• f6 a possible knight fork square
• e8 knight overworked (protecting both g7 and f6)
• open lines to the king
• g7 bishop pinned

The seeds in this case lead pretty directly to the solution: 1.Qxg7+ Nxg7 2.Nf6+ Kf7 3.Nxd5 and White is up a piece.

I did four more of these, and then I tried to solve a set of 20 problems as quickly as I could. Problem 127 stumped me:

Black to move

So I stopped and wrote down the seeds:

g2 bishop subject to discovered attack
f3, e2 possible knight fork squares
e5 knight barely guarded
g2 bishop barely guarded
g2 possible mate square
open line to the king
king with only 1 escape square

It took a little longer than with problem 111, but I found: 1… Nd4 [threatens both mate on g2 and Nxe2+] 2.Bxd5 Nxe2+ 3.Kh1 Bxd5+ 4.f3 Nxc3 5.bxc3 and Black has picked up a pawn.

I hope that this kind of drill will help me with my tactical “board vision.”