Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Tactics Radar

Players who want to improve in chess, need to learn strategy and tactics.

Beginners are eager to solve tactics puzzles and that is good. There are many situations in chess where a brilliant combination allows to finish the game in a spectacular way.

Nevertheless, chess is not a game of luck and players who want to improve need to manage their pieces with a clear plan. That is, they need to understand and apply strategic principles.

It is commonly accepted that players need to combine strategy and tactics along with the game.
The purpose of strategy is to get a plan of action, while tactics are the elements that help in accomplishing the plan.

Good players are those who wisely combine strategy and tactics.

One element for successfully use tactics is to recognize patterns from our own previous games or learned after studying master games. Today’s example is one of them. You will see that the player with White harmoniously deploys his pieces over the centre. Besides that, he keeps on his ‘tactics radar’ and after identifying a common pattern, goes for the appropriate tactic elements.

If you look at the game Fischer – Reshevsky, 1958, you will see a similar pattern.


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