Sunday, October 28, 2007

Transition from "building" to "concrete" action


Great position for Black, huh? It's Black's move and he must make a concrete decision on how to move forward. I was building and building, that is, I was positioning my pieces in a way that didn't necessarily have any direct threat or idea, Just getting them in a place where the tactics would be good for me.
I have excellent control of the center with the classically placed d and e Pawns. My Bishops are poised both the support my central pawns as well as act as powerful king side pressure if a pawn were to advance. My Rooks are in a threatening position right in the center of a vacated Queen side.
It is at this point, when all my pieces are basically optimally placed that I had to make a choice. But I wasn't ready yet. I wasn't looking at all the tactics deeply enough because I thought, just one more positioning move, which wasn't really helpful at all.
How do you know when it is time to move from "positioning" to "tactics"? Sometimes it's easy, like when a situation is forced on you, but here, it seemed like I had more time. Maybe another slow move like Bb4?
There is a tactic here that transforms the game into completely won. Do you see it? My thought is that to know it's time to look for the tactic, you just have to be good at tactics and train so you have a kind of "sixth sense" that says, "something will work here". I want that sense!

4 comments:

jrobi said...

My very first thought glancing at it is QxH3, KxH3, NxF2 forking king and queen, KG2, NxD1. I thought I would try just quickly glancing at it to see what my initial tactics told me - I will also look it over in more detail tommorow morning over coffee and see what a longer think will yield.

Anonymous said...

I bought an awesome tool for training tatics and strategies. It's called "personal chess trainer", and it was developed by Gilberto Milos, a GM from Brazil, where I live. It improved my strenght very, very much!! If you spend half an hour per day on it, the results will be impressive! Sorry about my poor english. Sending the link: http://www.personalchesstrainer.com

Slatts said...

jrobi, that is definately the right move. I looked at it too briefly and said, lose my queen...not thanks, without even looking to see how powerful the knight check would be!

Carlos, that sounds like a great resource. Thanks for the link and your english was just fine (very good in fact).

jrobi said...

Definitely enjoyed this one Slatts! And I agree, your English is just fine Carlos!