The Complete Guide to Chess Tactics

FIDE CM Kingscrusher has one goal of the course. And that is to make you a much stronger tactician than ever before in your life. You should be in a much better position by training with this course to create beautiful chess combinations on the chessboard which feature a wide range of patterns and demonstrate amazing calculation ability.  In short, the goal of the course is to make you a very strong chess tactician and help you enjoy your chess to the absolute maximum.

This course has a structure which is essentially is "process" and "patterns".

PROCESS: The Art of Chess Calculation

The "process" aspect is the art of chess calculation. Even if you didn't know a single tactical pattern by name, you could still play amazing tactics just with great calculation which the course gives you a solid foundation in. Yes, even if you didn't know your forks from your pins, the "Process" part of the course as in the art of calculation, would still enable you to play great chess combinations using an entire orchestra of tactical patterns without even knowing their names.

But training yourself on patterns will enhance your art of calculation and you will be able to name the key tactical patterns that are important for searching them out to practice and discuss with others as well as prompt during your calculations.

"Process" is like the software of your chess mind. "Patterns" are like the Content for that software. You need both the software and the content to be really effective as a tactician!. 

PROCESS and PATTERNS

YOUR STRENGTHS OF POSITION (PLUSSES +'s)  MATCH WITH (MINUSES -'s)

DOWNSIDES OF OPPONENTS POSITION (FOR MAXIMUM DIFFERENTIAL between the PLUS AND MINUS)

BOTTOM UP APPROACHES vs. TOP DOWN APPROACHES

Patterns help feed the process of calculation. Your goal often is to create a maximum differential between the strengths of your position, which can be realised from very strong calculation skills, and the downsides of the opponent's position, which often requires a trained intuition and eye for potential downsides to ensure you are even aware combinational solutions might exist.

PATTERNS: Tactical Patterns, Mating Patterns, Weakness of Position patterns.

The "patterns" aspect is divided into three key "pattern" areas:

Bold ones below represent really key and frequent visitors to most people's games

Tactical Patterns (alphabetically)

These tactical patterns are very useful to practice and help internalise.

1. Absolute Pin

2. Advanced Pawn

3. Annihilation of Defence

4. Alekhine’s Gun

5. Attraction

6. Battery

7. Blockading defensive resources

8. Capture

9. Capture the Defender

10. Checks - gaining key tempo e.g. winning material via checks

11. Clearance

12. Combine and Win tactics

13. Connected passed pawns

14. Counterplay management move

15. Counter Threat

16. Cross-check

17. Cross-pin

18. Decoy

19. Deflection

20. Demolition of Pawns around opponent's king

21. Demolition of Pawn Structure

22. Desperado

23. Discovered Attack

24. Domination

25. Double Attack

26. Double Check

27. Draw Tactics

28. Endgame Tactics

29. Exchange sacrifice

30. f2 (or f7) weakness

31. Forcing Moves

32. Fork

33. Goal Hanging Tactics e.g. N on f5 (also see Thorn pawn)

34. Greek Gift Sacrifice

35. Indirect Defense

36. Interference

37. Intermediate move (synonym: Zuichenzug)

38. King Aggression in Endgames

39. King Chase

40. Liberational tactics

41. Opposition

42. Overload the defender

43. Weakness of last move

44. Passed pawn creation

45. Pawn-Fork

46. Pawn Tactics

47. Pawn Breakthrough

48. Perpetual Attack

49. Perpetual Check

50. Pins - Absolute

51. Pins - Relative

52. Pins - Celebration

53. Positional Tactic

54. Prophylaxis move

55. Removing King Escape Squares

56. Rook lift

57. Sacrifice (Positional)

58. Sacrifice (calculated)

59. Simplification

60. Queen and Bishop Battery

61. Quiet but killer move (greatly used in Alekhine combinations)

62. Relative Pin

63. Remove the Defender

64. Sacrifice

65. Simplification

66. Situational Pin

67. Soft spot sacrifice

68. Strategic Crush tactic - e.g. locking in bishop, good knight

69. Skewer

70. Stalemate Tactics

71. Tempo Tactics

72. Thorn Pawns

73. Threat making

74. Trapped Piece

75. Triangulation

76. Two Rooks Battery

77. Two Rooks on 7th Rank

78. Under-promotion

79. Weak Back-Rank

80. Weakness of last move

81. Windmill

82. X-Ray

83. X-Ray Attack

84. X-Ray Defense

85. Zugzwang

86. Zwischenzug

Mating Patterns (alphabetically)

These mating patterns are useful to practice and help internalise.

1. Anastasia's mate

2. Anderssen's mate

3. Arabian mate

4. Back-rank mate

5. Bishop and knight mate

6. Blackburne's mate

7. Blind swine mate

8. Boden's mate

9. Box mate (Rook mate)

10. Combine and Win Mate

11. Corner mate

12. Cozio's mate

13. Damiano's bishop mate

14. Damiano's mate

15. David and Goliath mate

16. Double bishop mate

17. Dovetail mate

18. Epaulette mate

19. Fool’s mate

20. Greco's mate

21. Hook mate

22. Kill Box mate

23. King and two bishops mate

24. King and two knights mate

25. Ladder checkmate

26. Légal mate

27. Lolli's mate

28. Max Lange's mate

29. Mayet's mate

30. Morphy's mate

31. Opera mate

32. Pillsbury's mate

33. Queen mate

34. Réti's mate

35. Smothered mate

36. Support mate

37. Suffocation mate

38. Swallow's tail mate

"Opponent Downsides" aka "Tactical Issues" aka "Tactical Liabilities" aka "Weakness of Position" Patterns

These help you intuitively identify if a combination may exist in the position.

1. Awkward Pieces (trappable)

2. King Safety Issues e.g. Back rank

3. Loose pieces (unprotected)

4. Overworked pieces

5. Pieces away from King

6. Tactical Liabilities in general

7. Weaknesses in general