Chess tactics explained

Post by stainforth » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

cjohnson318 wrote: post #153

watwut wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheating in chess typically means using engine. There is big enough difference in how engine plays and how human plays for it to make game less fun. Pls, it is quite natural for humans to care about notion of fairness. How and why we loose matters.

I had a Romanian stats teacher that sneered at Americans' preoccupation with fairness. She would say, "Why do you use this word fair? Life is not fair. It is a useless idea."

Post by bsder » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 1:10 AM UTC

ofrzeta wrote: post #256

bsder wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by ofrzeta » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 7:10 AM UTC

bsder wrote: post #263

ofrzeta wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Prodigy" simply means you hit your 10,000 hours as a child. And the "youngest grandmaster" title simply keeps moving downward, so apparently you can convert random 5 year olds into chess experts. I really don't understand why people still cling to the notion of "talent" in intellectual pursuits. It's pretty clear that "number of hours" is what places you in the top echelons.

Post by bsder » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 1:06 AM UTC

ofrzeta wrote: post #265

bsder wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Prodigy" simply means you hit your 10,000 hours as a child. And the "youngest grandmaster" title simply keeps moving downward, so apparently you can convert random 5 year olds into chess experts. I really don't understand why people still cling to the notion of "talent" in intellectual pursuits. It's pretty clear that "number of hours" is what places you in the top echelons.

When you assume 8 hours a day straight work 10.000 hours means 3.42 years including weekends. I'll claim that's impossible (not to say inhumane) to do with a child.

Post by DavideNL » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 11:13 AM UTC

joelthelion wrote: post #63

If 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!