Learning to count

I'm getting ready for the scholastic season, and I'm on the lookout for tactics books for beginners.  One of the best I've seen is Dan Heisman's Back to Basics: Tactics (Kindle edition available here).

Heisman argues (quite convincingly, in my opinion) that before one teaches students about pins and forks and such, one first has to teach them not to leave pieces en prise (chess speak for "giving pieces away for free") and to take your opponent's pieces when she leaves them en prise.

Sometimes the answer is rather easy:

White to play

Other things equal, the rook on g3 should eat the pawn on d3: a free pawn is a good thing!

Sometimes the answer is more complicated:

White to play

1.Raxd3 Qxd3 2.Rxd3 Rxd3 is approximately an equal exchange, so the correct answer is "It depends."  (Heisman provides the reader with a more sophisticated point-count system, still suitable for advanced beginners, that suggests that in the general case, the exchange is good for White.)

And sometimes the answer is surprisingly subtle:

White to play

Is the Black pawn safe?  (Three attackers, three defenders)

There are of course other pieces on the board.  To answer Heisman's question, just concentrate on these seven pieces; you may assume that when the missing pieces are taken into consideration, material is equal.

I'll have a few more examples from Heisman in the coming days....

What tactic is more basic than pins and forks?

Dan Heisman (whose Chess Cafe column is wonderful reading for beginners and their teachers) has argued that teaching beginners to count is the indispensable first step in teaching tactics.

Blog contributor Vince Hart, who has been working with the Prospect High School chess team for the past nine years, emphasizes piece safety with his team, and points us to a wonderful Heisman column on the subject.

Tactics quiz for advanced beginners...and beyond

Dan Heisman's quiz may be too hard for true beginners. It's drawn from John Bain's Chess Tactics for Students (strangely out of print, but used copies can be found on the Intertubes).

Get out your stopwatches, read Dan Heisman's instructions before you begin, and play along! (Yes, I scored 12 out of 12, no, I wasn't as fast as I should have been, yes, I saw the dual solution. The easiest problem was the one that took me the longest.)

Here's an earlier Heisman quiz with the same format.

Thanks to Dan Heisman for pointing out that Chess Tactics for Students can be ordered directly from John Bain.

A problem for the morning

So what would you do if you were given two consecutive moves?

White makes two consecutive moves in this position

The first move cannot be a check

The second move must be checkmate

If you're stumped, be concerned: the problem is from a beginner's book!

Answer in this review.  (Permalink not available yet.)

Not all Bads are Equal

At chesscafe.com, Dan Heisman has a terrific article with the above title. He makes the profound point that inexperienced players often lose games because they have learned a lot of chess principles, but not their relative importance. He observes that, "Lower rated players have little trouble valuing most material issues, but many are absolutely clueless when assessing issues that are generally not quantified." For example, after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Ng5 d5 5.exd5 Nxd5 6.Nxf7!? (the Fried Liver Attack) Kxf7 7.Qf3+, the only move is 7...Ke6! with an unclear position that has been debated for centuries. Instead, most inexperienced players will retreat with 7...Ke8?, leaving them down material with a lost game, explaining that "I didn't want to expose my king." True, exposing one's king is bad, but being up a piece (as Black is after 7...Ke6!) is good, while being down material for nothing (after 7...Ke8?) is terrible. Another example he points out is that low-rated players will sometimes avoid exchanging pieces when they are ahead, yet will blithely trade off into dead-lost endings when they are behind. It's a very worthwhile article for anyone who is a low-rated player or teaches low-rated players.