Chess Tactics for Beginners Arrived
I finally picked up CTB, so I have something to smack around after CT-ART's done abusing me. Did the first 110 problems over lunch. I had an embarrassing think over one of the mate-in-one problems, an example of chess blindness if there ever was one:
The funny thing is, I knew the theme was queen mates in one, but I instinctively kept trying to find a longer sequence, or returning to a failed one, rather than focus on every possible queen move. I kept looking at the criss-cross "mate" with Qd5, thinking, "man I wish that were possible...wonder if the programmers made a mistake with this one." After about a minute of this I forced myself to actually think concretely and found the answer (which I'll leave to the reader to find.)
Really, really embarrassing. If this had been given to me as a "white to play and win" I may never have gotten it.
3 comments:
I know what you mean. I had to hit myself over the head too. Just when I had thought I had gotten over this particular form of blindness... I currently would have missed this over the board. And that is wrong.
I remember that problem well from level 1. It's almost as embarassing as taking two minutes in 'attack training' mode in Fritz to find a piece that is attacked.
Note you can order Marin's book on the Ruy directly from the publisher. I got it. It is good, though strange in format: not a typical repertoire book (almost conversational, and then the actual repertoire is in these strange tables with a zillion footnotes).
What does he recommend against the Ruy exchange after white castles?
It's a repertoire book that's actually instructional. I'm reading Beating the Open Games cover to cover (not all the table footnotes, but all the explanatory text). It's interesting when he shows examples of White's systems succeeding (e.g. King's Gambit, Max Lange). I'm finding a lot of overlap between his coverage and My System (central control, exchanging without loss of time, etc.).
I would pre-order the next book on the mainline Spanish but I'm moving in a couple weeks and don't want it lost in the mail. I'm still working on the first volume anyways.
Against the exchange his mainline starts 5...f6 6.d4 Bg4 7.dxe5 Qxd1 8.Rxd1 fxe5, which is a popular continuation. The exchange is a fairly big chunk in the book (193 footnotes).
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