From the desk of Howard Goldowsky (and some news)

First, the news. Good news first: we have a new Knight in the clan, I believe the first Knight from Bangladesh. Please welcome Knight Farhad to the increasingly noisy world of tactical monstrosity! Second, Patrick's blog 'Chess for blood' is no longer on line. This is a major loss: his blog was a rewarding cornucopia of useful information. Patrick, please bring it back!

On the topic of classifying tactics, a couple of things in the bag. One, I just noticed a nice post from Takchess that he wrote about a year ago discussing whether classifying tactics is useful or not. As was the case with my posts, the commenters had mixed feelings about the topic.

Along the same vein, I got a very helpful email from Howard Goldowsky, author of Engaging Pieces. Thanks Howard, for your thoughtful response. I include it here, with Howard's permission:

I can't help but follow with intense interest your series of posts regarding the classification of tactical motifs. Your blog doesn't allow anonymous comments, so I'm writing here.

After finishing my book I've decided to head right back to studying chess, and I considered creating a blog like yours to record my progress. I have over 65 pages of notes similar to your posts. What stopped me was the fear that the impetus for study would come from a need to create original and interesting posts rather than from a desire to get better. Hence, in a selfish yet unpretentious act, I now keep all my notes to myself. At some point, success or failure (I'm currently rated low class-A, and my goal is to make at least expert), if the time is right, my journy could be written in a memoir-type book. There's no need to tempt writing to get in the way of serious chess study.

In my view, traditional tactical motifs are the most fundammental 'basis' set of forcing moves. Combinations are just that: combinations of motifs. In my opinion, the interesting thought processes begin to occur when we begin to classify common types of combinaitons, like Lasker's Bishop Sacrifice, Alekhine's Cross, The Windmill, The Center Fork Trick, etc. When this happens our brains are creating a higher level of abstraction. This is what brains are best at: creating abstraction. When good chess players say "just play," what they mean is play until you don't think about tactical patterns, play until they're abstract enough so that they come without thinking. This is similar to what Josh Waitzkin gets at in his book, The Art of Learning. (I haven't read it yet, but I've read enough reviews to get the jist of what's inside.)

Waitzkin writes in his intro: "As I struggled for a more precise grasp of my own learning process, I was forced to retrace my steps and remember what had been internalized and forgotten. In both my chess and martial arts lives, there is a method of study that has been critical to my growth. I sometimes refer to it as the study of numbers to leave numbers, or form to leave form. A basic example of this process, which applies to any discipline, can easily be illustrated through chess: A chess student must initially become immersed in the fundamentals in order to have any potential to reach a high level of skill. He or she will learn the principles of endgame, middlegame, and opening play. Initially one or two critical themes will be considered at once, but over time the intuition learns to integrate more and more principles into a sense of flow. Eventually the foundation is so deeply internalized that it is no longer consciously considered, but is lived. This process continuously cycles along as deeper layers of the art are soaked in."

The whole intro can be found here.

What Waitzkin is saying, basically, is that we need to learn tactics like we learned the multiplication tables: work hard at it so that it's second nature.

Libraries of books on neuro-psychology have been touting this for some time. One book I recently read that provides a layman's scientific explanation of the way we learn is The Wisdom Paradox, by E. Goldberg.

I'm not sure if you should classify different types of combinations, just so you can talk about them in words. The basis set is already classified enough. Isn't it good enough to say something like, "I'm threatening a fork on g5, so he must deflect my knight with his own theat of a pin....etc.etc?" Once the basis motifs are understood, one can just talk away. An interesting site that has this type of verbal walk-through is here. This fellow, apparently, has taken his site and self-published a two volume hard-copy set of books with his site's material. When I go through the verbiage, sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't.

Howard's mail has lots of ideas, and is another vote for the fairly common idea that the basic tactical motifs are sufficient. Complicated combinations are just that, combinations of the simpler motifs.