As a good paranoid who thinks everyone uses an engine in the Lichess Tournament per hour, I discovered that the best way, in my supposed hyper-super-defensive theory, would be to start by hunting the knights because the engines know how to use them divinely and it is very difficult for a human to calculate several moves ahead, then the bishops and, obviously, in the meantime, force an exchange of queens. In the end, I am left with rooks and pawns, a frustrating victory for my opponent.
I tend to feel much more engaged with the game and interested in calculating variations when I'm attacking - there's something about looking for winning tactics that's much more compelling than trying to find the best way to consolidate after winning material.
Your point about seeing ghosts when defending is an important one. It's so easy to trick ourselves into playing strange moves that we would never consider if we weren't worried about our opponent's threats. That's why I think one of the most important principles of defensive play is to prioritize moves that continue to follow logical principles: keeping the pieces defended to avoid tactics, maintaining flexibility, etc.
As I understand it, to be a good defender, you have to have a pretty good idea about what kind of attack you are going to face. That means you should study how to attack first and then defense second. In attack, checkmates patterns are a prerequisite and so are tactics generally. Did you mention that Crafty Raf has a Chessable course devoted to preventing checkmates?
I hadn’t mentioned that, so I’ll look. But yeah.. you do need to understand how tactics work before you can defend. Defense though is such a slog for me!
I got my copy of Chess Defense by Hellsten today.
As a good paranoid who thinks everyone uses an engine in the Lichess Tournament per hour, I discovered that the best way, in my supposed hyper-super-defensive theory, would be to start by hunting the knights because the engines know how to use them divinely and it is very difficult for a human to calculate several moves ahead, then the bishops and, obviously, in the meantime, force an exchange of queens. In the end, I am left with rooks and pawns, a frustrating victory for my opponent.
I tend to feel much more engaged with the game and interested in calculating variations when I'm attacking - there's something about looking for winning tactics that's much more compelling than trying to find the best way to consolidate after winning material.
Your point about seeing ghosts when defending is an important one. It's so easy to trick ourselves into playing strange moves that we would never consider if we weren't worried about our opponent's threats. That's why I think one of the most important principles of defensive play is to prioritize moves that continue to follow logical principles: keeping the pieces defended to avoid tactics, maintaining flexibility, etc.
As I understand it, to be a good defender, you have to have a pretty good idea about what kind of attack you are going to face. That means you should study how to attack first and then defense second. In attack, checkmates patterns are a prerequisite and so are tactics generally. Did you mention that Crafty Raf has a Chessable course devoted to preventing checkmates?
I hadn’t mentioned that, so I’ll look. But yeah.. you do need to understand how tactics work before you can defend. Defense though is such a slog for me!