It occurred to me, new Boylston Chess Club location is walking distance from my office

 

Some Footnotes of a Chess Position

 Feel free to lose interest in this post, I expect that it will be fairly simplistic. My intent  is to place over time  some things that I have learned in chess tactical training, books and play here. 

Chess is a visual game. 

It's helpful to know and see elementary patterns.

Seeing can occur on different levels.

 ie. If a rook attacks a queen you see it and you do things to avoid it's capture . This is L1 -level one thinking,  

L2- Level 2 thinking puts things in additional context of the position such as the rook attack is illusionary because it cant moved because it is pinned or defends a square that prevents checkmate. This is I am thinking as the footnotes of the position, 

L3- Level 3 thinking may show in the position the pin can be removed, can support a piece moving next to the opposing king or a the pinner can be deflected. 

From doing thousands of problems thousands of times I have come up with some pretty trivial observations that speed the solution. 

If you have a bishop pointing to an eighth rank square and a rook lined up with that square move heaven and earth to get the rook there. but Calculate first. 

----- More to be added slowly ----

The Art of Combination 5x5

 Quick Update. 

Now back to circling almost finished 5 circles on Blokh's Art of Combination 958 problems . These are the bare essentials of chess tactic positions . Feeling stronger. These are the 5 x5 puzzles that pop up if you are having issues in CT-Art to help. 

Roughly there are 2000 of them and in a time when I was motivated 4 years ago . I put them all in an Instagram account Takchess1 . Feel free to add the solutions as you view them. I would like to crowdsource this . 8) 

https://www.instagram.com/takchess1/