Hidden moves on Empty Squares

Comments on https://lichess.org/@/mcie/blog/hidden-moves-on-empty-squares/3sHR3PYI

thank you @Mcie :) very nice blog and examples as usual!

Great post! Instructive, clear and even brief!

@leylen said in #2:

thank you @Mcie :) very nice blog and examples as usual!
@mauronicolini said in #3:
Great post! Instructive, clear and even brief!

cheers friends! thank you for the support! :)

Excellent post! I could not solve the first example, but it was rather obvious after seeing the solution. That's how a great puzzle should be.

@Gyllenstierna said in #5:

Excellent post! I could not solve the first example, but it was rather obvious after seeing the solution. That's how a great puzzle should be.

thanks alot! glad you liked it :)

space rules! also often overlapping with quiet moves those "hidden" moves.. Endgame play can teach to see those as less hidden and more in the face. or maybe quiet moves are doubly hidden if the material threat is delayed (if even the objective, unless one counts mate as a material threat).

@dboing said in #7:

space rules! also often overlapping with quiet moves those "hidden" moves.. Endgame play can teach to see those as less hidden and more in the face. or maybe quiet moves are doubly hidden if the material threat is delayed (if even the objective, unless one counts mate as a material threat).

cheers, so true! :)

@Mcie said in #1:

Comments on lichess.org/@/mcie/blog/hidden-moves-on-empty-squares/3sHR3PYI

Excellent blog! I have just started looking at @HanSchut 's videos on the Steps Method. He recently posted "Are you training to raise your ceiling or floor?" I haven't finished and absorbed his videos or done work on the Steps Method. I wonder if I would have solved the first puzzle if I had? I will never know I guess. However, taking both posts together they point to a need to deepen our training and yes indeed look at empty squares as well as pieces and pawns.

The old Check, Capture, Threat mnemonic perhaps should be expanded to Check, Capture, Threat, Occupy. Technically, Occupy (an empty square) moves are a subset of Threat but since they sit in a common blind spot they perhaps need their own Mnemonic letter. Occupying can carry a strategic or a tactical threat. Most of us are familiar with the idea of occupying an outpost on the opponent's half of the board (for example) which can often promise a lasting advantage but not necessarily immediate tactics. But most of us are far less aware of occupying a square for pure and immediate tactical advantage.

This sort of concept deserves its own theme or motif spot in the Lichess list of Advanced puzzles. Would it be possible for @Mcie to lobby for this? It is certainly true that doing repeated puzzles in a theme or motif does get you seeing the necessary tactic more often.

For example, I used to be bad at seeing potentially trapped pieces (mine and my opponent's). So I did a lot of trapped piece puzzles. (I actually do a rotation of 20 puzzle types on "Easiest" trying to 60 on one type in a 1hr. session. All to improve my pattern recognition.) Doing a lot of trapped piece puzzles did work. I got better at avoiding getting my pieces trapped and at trapping enemy pieces. The payoffs in games are rare but they are there. I suspect the ration is something like a 100 puzzles (or more!) to find 1 extra tactic in 1 in 10 games. Something like that. So of course, one must aim at doing tens of thousands of puzzles plus all the other forms of chess training.

I have just really started my chess journey in terms of studying chess seriously. I know now how much work must be done and how slow but hopefully steady progress will be. Although progress unavoidably will always be of the two steps forward, one step back variety.

@Mcie I loved this! but see my game in which I missed a same idea