How to Do Well at Chess Tactics

By Josh
To start I'm going to tell you the three types of puzzle

• Checkmating
• Material Winning
• Avoiding Checkmate and/or Capture

The biggest thing in tactics is deciding what type of puzzle it is.
Checkmating
These are usually easy to find, but can be mistaken for material winning puzzles

This is an example of a checkmating puzzle that can be mistaken for a material winning puzzle. That mistake would be 1.Qxd4?? which would lose your queen after 1... Ba5+! 2. Ke7, Qxd4. Instead, the correct move is 1. Qg3! which will checkmate the opponents king after 1... Ke2, Ba6+ 2. Nb5, Bxb5#. Mate.
Material Winning
These puzzles are about giving yourself an edge by stealing pieces.

This is an easy tactic that probably won't give you many points. If you don't know what to do, the answer is 1. Ne3 which will take the queen in the next move.

Defense

I couldn't find any easy ones, so I went with one that even after completing the moves it still makes 0 sense to me. You can ALWAYS tell when a puzzle is about defense.

I have told you the biggest thing in chess tactics! Happy puzzling!