Chess Tactics Explained in Plain English | Hacker News Reader

Chess Tactics Explained in Plain English

chesstactics.org

271 pointswang4223 comments

I was in Chess Club in high school. It was our first year establishing the club, the teacher hosting it didn't have any great insights into chess, we had no books, and so we just sat for hours every afternoon staring quietly at chessboards playing one another. I remember our minds being blown when we discovered you could achieve mate with just a king and a rook versus a lone king. We had formerly believed this meant a draw.

Skipping around on this site is a delight for me. We discovered so many of these tactics in our many hours of play, but we didn't have names for them beyond "fork" and "pin." Now I suddenly find I have a vocabulary for describing these tactics and situations to my kids when they get older. I can't wait to show them the "Back Rank Mate" with just a king and rook left on the board.

I love chess, and own these books. It was a pleasant (if a little bewildering) surprise to find this submission on HN.

One thing I don't love about chess is how eager everyone seems to be to apply concepts and principles from chess to non-chess situations, implying that an understanding of these principles within the game will provide a better understanding of their analogous situations outside of chess.

People tend to claim that being good at chess will make you good at other things too, but I've always found that being good at chess makes you... good at chess, and that's about it.

Edit: My favorite article on chess is from an 1859 Scientific American, and can be found here: https://books.google.com/books?id=90hGAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA9&dq=%22...

An excerpt:

> ...chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements, while at the same time it affords no benefit whatsoever to the body.

Oh, if they knew the kinds of things we spent our time on now...

Chess taught me many things about life: think ahead, sacrifice for an advantage, patience, and setting the stage in preparation to execute a strategy which I use as a lawyer often.

I don't mean to offend, but aren't these all sort of...common sense?

Yes, if common sense was common, it would be common sense :).

In my "career" of chess, I still learn things after 12 years. This year my focus is to not downtalk myself before a game against a strong opponent. It is part of my personality to do that. I also do that in more common situations. Chess just provides a way to battle your own shortcomings and improve yourself.

Other things I learn by playing chess... Always play till the end, untill there are no more chances. Only then give up. I learned to lose better, and am still learning that. The less I am afraid of losing, the more freeflowing my gameplay is. I learned to find my way better in chaotic situations and I actually love them. I like to find the moves and game-style that gives a bit of bewonderment and inspiration.

And yes, you can learn something everywhere. You just have to pick your battles and where to fight/play them. Chess fits my personality, it does a lot to me.

I can relate to this a lot. The lessons of finding one's way in chaotic situations and learning not to fear them in particular did carry over into real life along with several other lessons.

Interesting. Thanks for the response.

It's the difference between "knowing" something is a good idea and actually comprehending why since you've seen it executed successfully and understand the consequences for and against that idea. Now you understand the core concepts and don't just "know" it because it's "common sense". Huge difference.

That reminds me of an SMBC comic which coincidentally mentions chess when joking about a similar idea. http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-01-29

This book is a masterpiece with some amazingly lucid writing. I have spent many hours reading this book just for the prose.

Fun fact: The author is the dean of the University of Texas School of Law - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Farnsworth IMHO, his chess writing reminds me a lot of pg's writings on startup and tech (and I could only imagine how lucid his legal writings would be)

If you are looking for the deadtree version of this - it's available as a two-part book series on Amazon titled 'Predator At The Chessboard' - https://www.amazon.com/Predator-At-Chessboard-Field-Tactics/...

I was wondering who would write books on metaphors, language, the law, and chess, and the dean of a law school definitely fits the bill.

From the site:

> "Book versions of this site are available: over 700 pages in total in a two-volume set. Here are links to book one and book two. You can check out other books by the author about language here, metaphor here, and law here and here."

Ordered his first chess book. Just yesterday I was thinking how I would like a version of "The Impostor's Handbook", but for chess. This seems to fit the bill.

Which Imposter's Handbook do you mean? I've looked and found a couple, and both look interesting.

Another resource: http://www.chesscademy.com

Has a step by step tutorial from scratch, videos and interactive exercises.

This is a fantastic book.

I have little interest in actually playing chess - I far prefer games with hidden information, some luck and the ability for the rules of the game themselves to be changed - but as someone who loves games in general, this is exactly what I've been looking for to understand chess theory.

It's basically all the interesting bits of chess, without the stuff that demands memorization of opening moves or that can be otherwise handled better by a computer than a human.

There are lots of chess variants that can be interesting as well, some have a component of luck, and all are bending of the rules. Hidden information is the thing they lack, though.

Fischer Random Chess, Antichess, Atomic Chess and Crazyhouse are some of the most popular.

Fun random puzzle from the book: http://www.chesstactics.org/index.php?Type=quiz&Topic=4,2

Thanks! Yes, this was fun. It's also cool that you can get an explanation (like of the general principle) which lichess won't do after you solve something successfully.

Does anyone know if there is the equivalent for Go?

The closest thing in English is Tesuji by James Davies (http://senseis.xmp.net/?TesujiTheBook). It already presumes that you know a bit about Go, though (the very simplest tactics are taken for granted).

Also Cho Chikun's All About Life and Death and Fujisawa's Dictionary of Basic Tesuji.

I highly recommend Kageyama's Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go. It does a great job explaining, with problems, the foundations necessary to become a decent go player. It is better than any other book I have seen on the subject.

The other recommendations are good, but I think they're higher level than this. The Graded Go Problems series (in this case the "For Beginners" books) are good and cover a lot of the basic tactics.

Lessons In The Fundamentals Of Go is probably worth reading when you reach your first "plateau" (stop improving despite regular play and problems).

Very nice! Thanks for sharing.

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