A reflection on chess tactical skill – growing pains

One of my earliest memories with chess is when I learned about the Queen’s Gambit opening. Having only properly gotten into the game during Covid, I was getting to grips with how the pieces moved, mostly either winning or losing games by hanging pieces.

The idea that you’d begin the game with gambiting a pawn was a revelation to me – I had a poor sense of how a strong centre might become useful during the middle game, but I saw the win-loss percentages, and gave it a go. That’s a classic entry level material sacrifice for a positional game. But it was the first experience I had of understanding the different dynamics within chess, and seeing my play improve as I took risks and experimented.

Tactical skill is the next obvious step in that journey: the first time I sacrificed a piece to land a checkmate, the first time I sacrificed a piece knowing I could immediately regain material.

Over the years, I’ve grinded a lot of tactics. Over 10,000 on Lichess alone – likely twice or triple that if you account for Chessable, and puzzle focused platforms like Chess Tempo (I’m a big fan of Disco Chess at the moment). Today during my blitz games, I’m a lot more open to a messy sacrifice. That in itself is a big step: a few hundred points ago, I had to see the immediate benefit. I’ve had a few games recently where my opponent finds a clever intermezzo – this phase where my opponents are more resilient is itself a creative challenge.

One OTB loss sticks in my mind. I had a tricky middle game, but found an option to sac the exchange that was super promising. I overlooked some options from the opponent, which I solved over the board; yet I missed some essential follow up moves. My magnum opus that was never to be:

Here I lost the conviction of my attack, opting for a weak move that’s a blunder. But what is the correct continuation?

I was concerned that nxe8 would be met with ...fxe3. Totally overlooking the mate threat of qf8!

Since then, I’ve worked on tactics a lot, but would still be hesitant to sac the exchange without certainty about the follow up. I may very well be at the stage where my calculation is good enough to find problems with plans, but not the solution. So like so many more of us, I need to continue solving problems...

But I can see what the next big step in front of me is, the sheer chasm of where my chess thinking is lacking: sacrificing the exchange for longterm positional gain. Just like when I was a total beginner enamored by the idea of losing a pawn to gain the centre (now an obvious choice), and as I’m slowly getting my head around sacrificing material to weaken a king and open an attack, it feels like an entirely new, unexplored landscape of chess possibilities.

Until then, I still need to grind some more puzzles...