Earlier quoted context omitted.
Work ethic ok but talent is domain-specific, isn't it?
The Polgar sisters are the counterexample: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r
In what way are they? I can only see that they are good at chess.
Chess tactics explained
251–260 of 271 posts
Re: Chess tactics explained
#252Re: Chess tactics explained
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
Long-time player here. Strangely enough, the hardest part of these exercises is the uncomfortable brief moment of getting acquainted with (or being teleported to) a random board position.
A couple days ago I was really captivated solving chess puzzles on lichess and I encountered a particular puzzle that didn't make sense to me (my puzzle rating is ~1800). Then I realized it's white to move, and I've been pondering on black moves for the last 10 minutes... Mistakes a human mind can make while playing chess really surprise me, even while doing another intellectual activity like programming, learning ma…
Mercifully Lichess actually tells you who has the move. ChessTempo didn't (you have to figure it out from who moved last,) and thereby made this feeling of disorientation much worse than it had to be.
Re: Chess tactics explained
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Polgar sisters are the counterexample: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r
In what way are they? I can only see that they are good at chess.
The point is that they didn't come from some "Chess Prodigy" family. There wasn't some "talent" laying there that they picked up. And, even among the sisters, Judit wasn't the one with the most "talent".
Judit's level and achievements were due to training and persistence.
Re: Chess tactics explained
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read on Magnus Carlsen[0] and Josh Waitzkin[1] - both have top spots in other fields, (and I'm sure others do too, these are from memory). Either talent is less specific than you'd think, or work ethic is more important than you'd think. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Carlsen#Personal_life [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Waitzkin#Martial_arts
I don't see this with Carlsen. Fantasy football? Well ... Waitzkin may be successful in martial arts but still that's the exception not the norm. Also I would claim that talent is domain-specific insofar that very few people have a mental and a physical talent at the same time. For instance there are professional athletes who are very good in some other sport but I know of no one who is also very good at chess.
You may discard Fantasy Football, but it is not easy to be a top player - there are thousands of people who spend a few hours a day practicing, and have been for years. It’s been a while, but when Magnusen rose from “not playing”’to the top spot it was impressive and unusual.
Emanuel Lasker was iirc a very noted mathematician. As I mentioned, this is from memory. I’ve known a person who had both made the national swim team as a 19-year old, and was a national bridge champion in his thirties (not in the US).
I don’t know to separate talent from work ethics, but my layman’s impression is that that these aren’t simple, and definitely not independent, measures across fields.
Re: Chess tactics explained
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
In what way are they? I can only see that they are good at chess.
The point is that they didn't come from some "Chess Prodigy" family. There wasn't some "talent" laying there that they picked up. And, even among the sisters, Judit wasn't the one with the most "talent". Judit's level and achievements were due to training and persistence.
Still they might have a talent for chess and not for ballet for instance. It might be otherwise but that was my claim and the Polgars don't refute it.
Also the Wikipedia page says she was a "chess prodigy". From my personal experience I strongly doubt that you can make every five year old child a chess player who wins blind matches against grown-ups only through hard work.
Re: Chess tactics explained
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems merely like a way of perpetuating unfairness. I don't know the story, but it sounds like the teacher was in a position of power and someone said she was being unfair. Retorting "life is unfair" when you, yourself, are the agent causing unfairness simply inflicts needless pain. For what -- to teach the lesson that life is unfair? As a parent, I try to parent my kids fairly. I try not to show favoritism. I t…
This was a graduate level class and the teacher did not believe in partial credit. Someone had missed a sign and thought their B was unfair. I agree, kids should be treated fairly and taught to treat others fairly. However, I think it is just as important to teach children resilience in the face of unavoidable adversity. It’s important to feel feelings, but to not let them poison you. Learning to get over a breakup,…
That sounds like much different situation. It was not about cheating and getting unfair advantage at all.
It was about stopping infinite debate about "what is fair" and "what are ideals rules" just so that one kid can get better grade. E.g. the claim that it is unfair was already motivated reasoning and your teacher perceived/treated it that way.
I am from former soviet blog and really, what teacher said is normal way to shut up bullshit complains. And yes, there is way more cheating in schools too amd bad teacher can get away with more.
But, the notion of fairness is important to both students and teachers.
Re: Chess tactics explained
#258If you prefer learning by practicing, Lichess has a great introduction to most tactical patterns: https://lichess.org/practice Once you start mastering them, you can try real problems on Lichess as well ( https://lichess.org/training ), or try solving as many as you can in five minutes ( https://chesscup.org/ ), it's a lot of fun!
I've never been good at chess, nor felt like I was making any progress on paper chess problems. Not that I really tried to solve them. But lichess training was really engaging for me. I played it for a few hours, and I found the format of the problems and the ui nice in a way that let me solve things pretty quickly. I like that all of them are formatted as "do the best moves", and yet some of them end in checkmate, w…
Tactics are really important on amateur play. Perhaps the most important thing. If you know a few basic principles (move each piece at most once in the opening, control the center, etc), and you can spot tactics, you will reach a quite high level. Heck, even ignoring strategic principles at lower levels, as long as you have good tactical vision you will go quite far ahead because the opponent will make mistakes.
There are not always "tactics" in chess games in the sense of having a move sequence being considerably better than any other one. Nevertheless, when there are, there are factors that limit your opponent's choices and one of these factors is a check.
Re: Chess tactics explained
#259I often put two engines to play against each other.
This makes for the most boring games ever, with a long endgame and few pieces.
In contrast, human beings are capable of beautiful checkmates and crazy attacks. Without this aesthetic aspect, chess is just not interesting to me.
Having said that, many years ago, with the Chessmaster DOS engine, a Casablanca bot managed a beautiful checkmate. Which is now lost in time.
Re: Chess tactics explained
#260The book must be very old because the notation is not in the currently de-facto standard Algebraic Notation.
I tested some random positions but found the book’s solution not totally correct (besides hard to follow).
This one for example, where the correct move should be Ne7+ but the book proposed Rxd7... then Nh6+
(FEN) r3r1k1/ppqn1ppp/2p2n2/4pN2/2P5/Q4PPB/PP1R1P1P/3R2K1 w - - 0 1
(could not copy the URL because it’s not permanent)