Why I Use Tactics Books

I've gone through a few tactics books in my years of chess study. I've also put plenty of hours in various tactics trainers. If I had to choose between 1) A never-ending supply of tactics books or 2) Every online tactics trainer ever, I'd have to choose the first option. There's a wide range of online tactics resources: chess tempo, chess.com tactics trainer, lichess, CT-ART, blitztactics.com... I could go on and on. They're actually pretty friggin great and I'll discuss some very important PROS at the end, but first...

Here's why I think tactics books are better in general, in order of importance:

(Throughout the article, I'll refer to any online tactics trainers as 'apps.')

No "Click-And-Hope"

With apps, there often is a tendency to struggle with a puzzle and think, "It's been ten minutes, I'll just make a f***ing move." In other words, click-and-hope you've seen everything. Determining if your candidate move is right or wrong is always one touch or click away. I argue that for some, this can develop a sort of arcade-game experience with apps because you know if you make the right first move, the computer will play its best move and you can continue on to the next move, or the "next level." Consider a tactic that requires three moves to fully secure the advantage. If you're not diligent in finding all the lines the opponent might play, you might just play the first move and "figure out the rest after that if it's right" and tell yourself "oh I woulda seen that move in a real game." This is pretty clearly detrimental to your calculation and visualization skills. With books, I can much more easily sink my teeth into puzzles without feeling pressured to try out my first move and see if it's right. I'd write down all three moves of the solution and any variations in parentheses. Writing things down (let's be honest, 'typing it in a spreadsheet') sets it in stone before I check the back of the book. It also gives me opportunities to note any more important variations and jot those down as well. I feel like I get extra credit if one of my variations was noted in the back of the book. A good tactics book with comprehensive solutions will reward extra efforts like these, an app probably won't.

Good books don't have errors

Neither do good apps. Of course. What I mean is that the solutions section of a good tactics book will cover all important variations and other common moves you may have considered along with the refutation. So if you see a solution and you don't understand something, it is a learning moment. See this reddit thread 

• Using an App: "Oh okay, back-rank mate and my rooks are doubled, so I can take twice on d8 and it's mate." ~ ~ You play the first move and the app engine responds with ...Nxd8 ~ ~ "Oh shit, he has Nxd8... oh well, okay yeah so I can play Qe8 and that'll be mate, yeah I woulda seen that."
• Same tactic, but in a book (BUT using the book lazily): "Oh okay, back-rank mate and my rooks are doubled, so I can take twice on d8 and it's mate." ~ ~ Now, ideally you aren't lazy, you take more time, you check everything you can, and you write down all the variations you see including Nxd8 BUT in the event you quickly check the solution... ~ ~ "Ohhh, Nxd8...duh, shit I missed that move completely, and now I see that I still have Qe8# but I need to be more careful." 

You should view moments like this as a failure of visualization and I argue that this is easier to do when you're using a good book and writing down your solutions before checking. Comparatively, if you came across this puzzle in an app and messed it up, you might be inclined to gloss over the mistake as a "whoopsy-daisy" since you saw the mate right after the Nxd8 move anyway so who cares? IM Andras Toth discusses this in his Perpetual Chess podcast episode. Listen around the 49 minute mark of the episode. And then listen to the entire episode. Toth is a motherlode of improvement advice.

Themes

Books often group tactics by motif or theme. For instance a skewer chapter might have five different common skewer ideas, including several puzzles in a row that utilize a decoy sacrifice to line up pieces, then several puzzles that use a fork which, after re-captures, gets pieces into a skewering line, etc. They all rely on skewering patterns at the fundamental level and you get introduced to multiple variations on the theme. This is surely a blessing and a curse as the solver is essentially getting major hints for each position. So the positive is that it can be great to drill similar tactical patterns in a row, but you should understand how "100 Fork Tactics" is going to be a lot easier than solving "100 Randomized Tactics."

More than just tactical positions

There are amazing books such as Cheng's Practical Chess Exercises that combine both tactical AND positional puzzles with zero hints--thus, negating the 'con' of the previous bullet point :). This is tremendously helpful and you'll be hard-pressed to find an app that offers something similar that also gives clear explanations in the solutions.

Repeatable

They are easily repeatable if you'd like to try spaced repetition on a set of problems. I've spent a lot of my tactics training work reviewing problems from books I'd already done many times over. I also plan to re-visit books I've completed a year ago. All of these things are harder to do with any given app.

Morale

They are finite. You can complete books and that boosts morale. I feel that this is greatly under-appreciated. Books also often have an impressive-sounding number of puzzles. The numbers 1001 and 5334 will always be seared into my mind. Apps are usually endless. You'll always immediately be fed another puzzle and you'll never accomplish something in quite the same way you would with a book.

Chess Culture

You can start to absorb some chess history and culture because books often use real-game examples and famous puzzles. They will usually give the context: the player's names, the tournament and year. The Woodpecker Method sources all their puzzles from games of the world champions. It's how I began learning the names of the champions and their respective time periods, and it's how I first learned about the split titles in the 90s and 00s. You might also learn famous games or moves like the Opera game, Anderssen's Evergreen game, Nigel Shorts' King Walk, and Carlsen's tactic to beat Karjakin to retain the WCC title. That Carlsen tactic is among the last in the Easy section of Woodpecker. I recall seeing the names and year underneath the puzzle in the book, and so I googled that game and I was able to find video footage of the exact tactic being played in the World Championship! Very cool to see a piece of chess history, however recent, being played out on my screen and the same tactic is in the book I was holding.

Notation

Books help practice with notation. Writing down your solutions and reading the solutions back is a great way to get comfortable with chess notation for the beginner player.

Pros of tactics trainers

Clearly there is a lot of benefit to tactics trainers so it should be obvious that a combination of apps and very good tactics books is probably the best approach. I'll list a few important positive aspects of apps since I can't just bash on them the whole time. They are, after all, better than books in many ways. 

• If the app/online trainer allows you to filter tactics by difficulty or type/theme then that can be hugely beneficial for the beginner player for targeted practice. You'll probably never find a book titled 500 Removing the Defender Puzzles at the 1500-2000 Rating but a similar problem set can be made with a chess.com or chesstempo membership and a few clicks.
• Puzzle Rush Survival Mode is great. I'll never stop saying that. There's something to be said about the simplicity of climbing the tactics-rating ladder in a matter of twenty or thirty minutes, going from simple hanging pieces and mate-in-ones all the way to advanced tactics.
• The classic (obvious) reasons: apps are often free, they're always with you assuming you have your phone, they automatically track some of your progress as you solve.

1001: A Tactics Odyssey

I completed every tactics problem in 1001 Chess Exercises for Beginners in one day. I got 953 problems correct (95.2% accuracy) and it took me 8 hours 1 minute (cry). That's an average of 28.8 sec/problem.

(See this previous post about my methods)


Notes on the final day of solving

I started at 9am and finished around 8:30pm. So that's 11.5 hours on the clock. It's a full day commitment.

Going through a physical book (well, PDF) is slow. If this was an app or on a website, I'd surely be able to go a bit faster. It'd be a luxury to see a single puzzle, play my move, have my accuracy tracked, and have the next problem present itself automatically. The way I did it required looking at the puzzle, getting the solution, then checking the solutions page in another window, finding the problem number and verifying my answer. It was a slog to wade through the material in this manner but I knew what I was getting into so whatever! This method helps me take my time and limit guessing. I'm aware this book is on chessable but....uh.....this is how I did it, haha.

It was pretty helpful to keep a list of problems to come back to so I wouldn't get bogged down staring at one for long periods of time. When I finished, I had a list of about twenty problems that I circled back to and most of them were much easier when I had a "fresh" set of eyes on them.

"Fresh" isn't the best word to use there actually. I was definitely exhausted towards the end, which was a blur to be honest. I had a few beers afterwards to unwind but even then, I remember having a hard time going to sleep. Chess positions were cascading through my brain.

For my own records, here are those problems I got wrong on the final attempt: 99 234 260 291 292 295 316 339 354 357 389 396 398 424 428 451 526 546 548 554 559 569 576 588 615 649 650 707 719 739 740 741 742 746 749 771 796 810 832 849 864 882 900 933 940 952 967 968

I noticed that I missed quite a bit from the second half of the book which was not what I was expecting since I thought those would have been fresher in my memory. Although the first half of the book is the easier half because they're categorized by motif so that must have really helped me. Additionally, my speed increased as I was approaching 1001 (and 9pm!) and I missed a few I normally wouldn't have because of it. Of the first 492, I only missed 16 problems. Of the second half 509, I doubled my incorrect number to 32.

I tried my best to never use the hints under each puzzle. I was much more diligent in the morning but as the day went on, I'd guess maybe a hundred times my eyes wandered to see the hint.

In retrospect, it's very cool that I had some memory of basically every single position. I didn't get them all right but every one was familiar to me. It's amazing that you can log in 1001 chess positions in your brain. Can I re-create all of them on a board without looking at the book? Of course not. I certainly do have the patterns and ideas in my head though and different things would get triggered each time I saw the next problem. I think these "triggers" are one of the takeaway lessons. For example, I might have seen a problem and immediately thought, "Okay this is a fork that's possible because of the pinned f7-pawn." Or "Yep this is that one that ends in a king-queen skewer but we need to trade minor pieces first so remember move-order carefully!" Any given tactical chess position might have many themes going on but it's up to us to find the relevant ones that actually accomplish something in the position. I successfully trained my brain to automatically trigger certain themes after seeing these positions so many times and through the course of cycling through them, I could automate the filtering process to see the relevant themes pretty quickly. We'll have to see how it carries over to real chess games!

How did this affect my chess?

To be determined. I need to get a larger sample of games. (Edited Feb 2021) Classical games will be the best gauge since I'll play my best chess in that time control. At the end of June 2020, I had played 248 classical games on lichess. I wanted to get a sample size of 100 games to see the changes and as of early February 2021, I made it! I've always said that I don't play that many games! 

Here is where my classical record and rating stood on June 29, 2020 when I was in the middle of working through 1001 Chess Exercises for Beginners:

CLASSICAL +32 win differential
1726 Rating
132 wins (53%)
16 draws
100 losses
248 total games

And NOW, I've finally played 101 (whoops) classical games and I have some ratings changes to show! Here are my numbers as of February 2, 2021.

CLASSICAL +56 win differential
1864 Rating
191 wins (56%)
23 draws
135 losses
349 total games

Across those 101 games: 

CHANGES
+138 Rating
59 wins
7 draws
35 losses

There ya go. That's what everybody came here for. I should note that I will NOT claim my tactics work I describe in this post is the sole reason for the ratings gain. I'll never tell anyone, "Hey, just do this 1001 Chess Exercises book and you'll gain 138 points!" I don't think I was plateau'd at my 1726 rating and so I don't think doing the tactics training got me out of a funk or anything. I believe I was still trending upward anyway so these changes could have been part of the natural trend of things. Additionally, I've done more master game analysis lately and I changed my opening some, so those are factors. However, I'm certain this training I began last summer and continue today (I began working through 1001 Chess Exercises for Club Players in September) has made me more tactically aware so I don't play so many tactical blunders and my sense of criticality has increased.

"Seven" Circles of 1001

Introduction
One of Dan Heisman's list of recommended books is Bain's Chess Tactics for Students. In the note, he provides a guide for completing that book using a spaced repetition method (Edit: I now understand that it isn't really spaced repetition because, with that method, you typically increase the length of time between successful solves (and decrease review time for those problems you miss). My method reviews all problems regardless of accuracy and consistently decreases review time, thus being more like the woodpecker method). Here's my rough outline of that guide:

1) Set a limit of 5 minutes per problem the first time through the book. If you don't get the answer, look it up.
2) Each time through the book, cut the time in half.
3) Repeat going through the book faster and faster until you can get 85%+ within 10-15 seconds per problem.

It's some form of de la Maza's Seven Circles Method. 1001 Chess Exercises for Beginners is quite an easy book for me and that's the book I've chosen to start with. I'd already started working through the first part of the book multiple times when I came across Dan's list. The first half of the book encompasses 492 problems categorized by motif along with hints so it's pretty easy to find the right idea. So at the time of writing, I'd decided to wrap up the first half and then more diligently follow this Seven Circles Method for the later sections.

Here's my plan moving forward:

1) Complete the 492 problems with 95+% accuracy (completed 6/19).
2) Complete the other sections of the book in piecemeal fashion, doing small 150-200 problem sections at a time until I can complete them at a rate of ~15 seconds per problem with 95% accuracy.
3) Systematically review all problems.
4) Complete the entire book in one day with at least 85% accuracy.

The Four (Half-Assed) Circles through first 492 problems
I just completed this last weekend, June 19. What a crazy Friday night. For my records, here are the solutions I got incorrect: [removed to different section] That list will be helpful to review before I try the entire book! I finished with 477 correct out of 492, or 96.95% accuracy.


The REAL Seven Circles
I should note that the Seven Circles idea is not without controversy, probably due to some things I mention in the Reflections section below. I'm just going to ignore that and use it as a reason to continue to train tactics diligently. I tend to be better at finishing things if I keep metrics on my progress and the Seven Circles method is a format that allows me to do just that. My only other note is that the study routine requires going through 1000 chess exercises every cycle. As already explained, I'm breaking the second half of this book into smaller subsets, only to try the final 1001 exercises later on. Here is the breakdown for the second half of the book:

Mixed Motifs - White to Move
Problems 493-690 - 198 total 

Mixed Motifs - Black to Move
Problems 691-864 - 174 total 

81 Mate-in-3 problems
33 Mate-in-4 problems
23 Curiosities

I will begin with the 198 White to Move problems. As inspiration, I'm taking ideas from this blog and so I will take some statistics throughout my work. For each problem, I will start a timer, get my solution, and write it down along with how long it took me and whether it was correct. I'll compile and summarize numbers at the end.


Seven Circles for Mixed Motifs - White to Move
My goal is to complete the set with 95% accuracy at a rate of ~15 seconds per problem. I hope it doesn't take me seven cycles, but we shall see. Once I reach that milestone, I know it's time to move on to the next section.

Cycle 1 (completed 6/25): 
   Number of days of study: 4
   Overall Time: 5h 11m (18669 seconds)
   Time per problem: 94 sec/problem
   Overall Accuracy: 87.88%

Cycle 2 (completed 6/29): 
   Number of days of study: 2
   Overall Time: 2h 1m (7260 seconds)
   Time per problem: 36.7 sec/problem
   Overall Accuracy: 92.9%

Cycle 3 (completed 6/30):
   Number of days of study: 1
   Overall Time: 47m (2843 seconds)
   Time per problem: 14.3 sec/problem
   Overall Accuracy: 97.3%


Summary:
So after three cycles, I've reached my goal for the Mixed Motifs - White to Move section. As expected, my accuracy improved and I went faster each time. Here are some graphs to visually represent how quickly the time-to-solve metrics dropped after each cycle. To make them easier to read, I decided to segment the time metric into larger "chunks" of time.

So in the above graph, you can see the blue bars are my first cycle through the set of 198 problems. As mentioned, the problem set is relatively easy for me and I did a pretty good job of solving many of them in 0-30 seconds or 31-60 seconds. Granted some were incorrect but I decided not to display them in this graph since I was more concerned with showing how time-to-solve changed through the cycles. As expected, the blue bars are more evenly distributed throughout the time chunks but with the second cycle (orange bars) and third cycle (gray), I started to get a lot more confident and faster in my solving. The third cycle shows nearly all were solved within 1 minute.

Here's a graph of smaller 5- or 10-second chunks:

This shows a little bit more detail. Looking at cycle 1 first, you can now see how many took me over 60 seconds to solve. The second cycle shows more even distribution and by the third cycle, I was solving a lot more under five or ten seconds.

Here's the data:

The Rest of the Second Half (edited on July 24)

I did the same process on the other sections from the second half of the book (509 problems) but I'll forego any deeper analysis. Here's a quick summary of my time spent working on the second half:

• June 22 to July 23 - I completed the second half in piecemeal fashion.
• 19 sessions (days) of solving
• 13 rest days
• 1527 total tactics solved
• 80.4 tactics solved per session

Reflections on the Second Half
I cannot say for sure if this is worth it.

:)

It's at least interesting to do and I encourage everyone to try it. It gives you a sense of mastery of tactics but I'd guess it is partly artificial. I sensed a feeling of "memorizing the book" on more than one occasion. To be fair, I certainly also noticed times where I was picking up on general patterns, my eye quickly jumping to the idea, and only needing a quick calculation check before I had the solution (the goal I think!).

If I recall correctly, in the introduction to The Woodpecker Method, the authors state that the reader should make it a point to go through ALL calculation no matter which cycle you're doing. I found that during my final cycles, because I was timing myself and I was aiming for the quickest solve that was possible, I would often get the idea and stop the clock after 1 second. I wasn't doing the full calculation. 

When I say I was "memorizing the book" I mean to say that there are some puzzles in this set of 198 (and in the larger set in the first half of the book I'd done previously) where I had simply made some mental shortcuts. I had been noticing small little details in the position, say an unusual king placement in relation to pieces, and I really quickly remember that puzzle in particular and I see the move instantly. No extra calculation required. Going through the positions the third cycle, an obvious example might be "Oh this is that one where the king is boxed in by two rooks and I have that simple queen fork." I may have just been remembering "king boxed in, so play the queen-fork" without checking for counter-play or other moves the opponent might have.

Another example is an endgame problem I remember taking me over four minutes to solve and I didn't get the solution right the first time. The solution was a crazy castle-queenside move that ended up forking two pieces. Since it was an endgame position, 0-0-0 is really off your radar. Granted it was a bit tricky, but the point is the first cycle through, I'd calculated and analyzed for nearly five minutes and had to write some answer down. Once I saw the real solution, the second and third cycles through, I got that answer in a matter of seconds. "Oh this is that dumb one with the long castle." Did I learn much from that? Did I hardwire in some master-level pattern recognition or automate some calculation techniques? I doubt it, at least as far as positions like that are concerned.

So that's a case against this method. How about some positivity?!

In this set, there is a king and pawn endgame position with locked kingside pawns but there is a possible breakthrough. When I first encountered the puzzle, I saw the pawn breakthrough idea (the only non-king move actually) so I calculated it but it took several minutes of checking pawn races and if black had other intermediate moves or tricks. By my second cycle through, I recognized the puzzle immediately and knew the answer was g3-g4. Again, the question is, "Upon my second, third, fourth cycles through this position, am I truly practicing pawn-race counting, checking intermediate moves, or am I just seeing that familiar locked-pawn configuration that I saw the previous cycle and I know without having to check anything that the solution is the only pawn move in the position: g3-g4?" I'd have to say in cases like this, I may be simply memorizing the solution, but is this okay? Maybe it is, at least for positions like this. Perhaps next time I have a similar locked pawn position in one of my games, I'm hopefully more tempted to immediately check what pawn breakthroughs I have--thanks to this training and seeing this pawn breakthrough many times over in the last few days. Granted I will still have to calculate and count, as I did in the first cycle through, but the hope is that I'll have a shortcut now to know what to look for.

And lastly, I think the biggest revelation is that, regardless of the pluses and minuses, at least I was doing many hours of tactics training per day. Sometimes it was legitimate full calculation during the first and second cycles, and other times it was simple memorization with only minor pattern recognition. But still......tactics? They say any time spent studying chess is good to some degree. Did it help to see a bunch of these very easy problems a second and third time and know the solution in a matter of seconds? To be determined I guess. All I know is that I just devoted an entire month of training in which two out of every three days I was solving an average of 80 tactics per session.

A final final reflection: It is really slow going, especially during the third cycle when you know the solution but you have to stop the clock, double-check the solution, write down the time, and then get the next position pulled up. That's the main reason I didn't continue the diligent time-keeping stats for the other sections of the book. :)


For Future Cycles

Another idea to do in the future is to try Ray Cheng's Practical Chess Exercises using this repetition method. With that much more challenging book, I think I will have to try the true "X number or problems per day" version of the 7 Circles method as it was intended whereby you pick a number of problems to do per day and stick with it for the first cycle, doubling that number for the next cycle. Say 10 problems per day for the first pass through, the next cycle through would be 20 problems per day, the next cycle is 40 problems per day, then 80, 150, 300 and then all 600 problems in a day. That is following the 7 circles exactly.


Other Information
For my records, here are problems to review before full attempt:
Incorrect problems in first 492: { 26 , 109 , 154 , 241 , 245 , 263 , 274 , 293 , 358 , 366 , 426 , 429 , 459 , 464 , 476 }.

Incorrect problems in "White to Move - Mixed Motifs": { 503 , 505 , 507 , 509, 511 , 521 , 522 , 523 , 525 , 526, 531 , 538 , 542 , 552 , 558 , 560 , 563 , 564 , 565 , 567 , 571 , 577 , 578 , 590 , 596, 602 , 609 , 613 , 619 , 624 , 639 , 640 , 644 , 651, 654 , 657 , 658 , 661 , 662 , 664 , 674 , 680 } 

Incorrect problems in "Black to Move - Mixed Motifs": { 745 , 750 , 759 , 767 , 774 , 777 , 778 , 783 , 785 , 794 , 806 , 807 , 809 , 817 , 831 , 856 , 863 }

Incorrect problems in Final Section: { 884 , 890 , 891 , 894 , 902 , 915 , 923 , 924 , 954 , 957 , 960 , 961 , 964 , 969 , 970 , 991 , 992 }

Tactics Principles

I already had a blog post about the topic of tactics principles but this one will be more in-depth.

Opening Principles
We've heard 'em before: get a pawn or two in the center, develop most of your minor pieces, get your king safe, try not to move the same piece a lot in the opening, and keep your pieces coordinated. These are but a few and I'm sure most "advanced beginners" are aware of them! If not, read Chernev.

What is the purpose of these? Without them, a new player might play 1. a4? followed by 2. a5? "Hey, I'm getting my pawn only three squares from promotion, right? I can maybe get a second queen soon! Oh, maybe I'll bring the castle out, too. He seems super destructive!" 3. Ra4??

I remember teaching my nephew the rules of chess over Christmas and he opened with 1. h3. I probably played something similar back in the day so I can't blame him.

Another new player might make his or her decision by going through each possible move until one looks good. "1. a3? nah. 1. a4? maybe. 2. b3? hmmm.... 2. b4? Ohhh I like that. Ohh, the horsey can jump over pawns, so Nc3? Ohh wait the Queen is the best, how fast can I get her out? Oh god what do I do?"

The opening principles help the beginner navigate through the jungle of options they have to face when starting a game. Once you understand them, you can more easily identify moves that align with those principles and ta-da! You have a set of candidate moves to calculate!

Tactical Principles
We have opening principles, why not have tactical principles?

All games begin the same so it's sensible to make a general guideline on how to approach the opening. My theory is that most tactical puzzles begin the same in that often have one or two common elements present and you can develop a structured approach to help your decision-making. 

Over time this approach will hopefully become more instinctual.

In the same way that a beginner might have no idea how to begin a chess game, he might not know how to solve a typical tactics problem. Like the jungle of options in the opening, a player might also see a jungle of options when presented with a tactical problem. They might think they have to check every single possible move but we know that is not practical. He is told "look for checks and captures" but that is probably all the advice given. In reality, there are usually some common elements at play. These are (with the help of a redditor):

Underdefended Pieces - First off, completely undefended pieces are easily prone to attack! There are also poorly or under-defended pieces to consider as well. These might be pieces attacked as many times as they are defended or pieces only defended by heavy pieces (overworked piece tactics!)

Favorable Geometry - Lines. Diagonals. Fork-able positions. Major pieces (both white's and black's) may fall favorably within those geometries. Such a position may also be forced!

Trapped Pieces - This can include the king obviously! Usually it is the heavy pieces or a bishop trapped by pawns but keep your mind open!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

These are the elements you'll want to search for in most tactics puzzles. They serve as tactic locators. From these, you might be able to use tactical motifs in combination with calculation using checks and captures as shortcuts. I look at it in terms of the situation, the tools to use, and the work needed to use those tools. These tactical elements comprise the situation, the tools you will use are tactial motifs like forks or removing the defender, and the work needed is calculation often using checks and captures to begin.

Granted, as you get better, you might immediately see a weak king, spot a quick check and then see that that'll attack something else. You obviously won't need to list out all the under-defended pieces and such. That's okay (ideal!). This guide can be for when you're truly clueless or for those just beginning tactical study and you want to build the proper instincts.

A caveat before the examples: you need to be very familiar with pretty much all of the tactical motifs available. See ChessTempo.

Examples
Below are some simple examples of ChessTempo tactics puzzles. I'll try to highlight some of what I see in regards to the tactical elements I mentioned so you can try to develop your own approach.

1. Black to move

Let's be methodical! 

Favorable geometry?
I typically think of this in terms of lines and diagonals and I look at the opponent's king as well as all major pieces of mine and my opponent's that might be on any of those lines or diagonals. This is an important element in pins, skewers, discoveries, x-rays, and forks. Keep in mind the unusual formations involved in knight-forks. I lovingly call these "fork-able" positions (think king on h1 and rook on d1). 

So in this example, I see that white's queen and bishop are on the same diagonal. Typically a queen and rook on the same diagonal is better for tactics since it's hard to attack a queen and bishop on a diagonal. Likewise, a queen and bishop on the same rank/file is better suited. I also see that my (black's) knight is one move away from checking the king. This should excite the "forking" part of your tactical brain! Of course, you can quickly see that you don't have a great knight check right now because white's pieces guard it well. But it's still good to spot this! You never know if/when those pieces will move. Just being aware of that possibility five moves down the road might be helpful so it's good to train your brain to spot this geometry, however impossible it might be at the present moment.

You might see more possibilities in the 'favorable geometry' department and that's good! But we'll move on...mostly because this is getting long and I already know the answer ;).

Trapped Pieces?
Trapped pieces are a bit more rare, but remember that a King is considered a piece so a king with few options could be considered trapped! Anyway, let's go to the other pieces first. The queen isn't really close to being trapped. I could trade bishops and then the queen has to re-take but I don't see much after that to threaten the queen. Bishops are hard to trap unless they are blocked in and attack-able with pawns. Knights are easy to block in with bishops. I don't see anything promising with those though. Ditto with the rooks. Always check for trapped pieces, especially for the king and when a queen or rook's movement is seriously hindered by pawns and other pieces. The king in the corner has only one escape square if it's threatened--back-rank issues may be present here!

Undefended and underdefended pieces?
This is getting long and I won't go into specifics but underdefended pieces are those attacked at least as many times as they are defended. These are prime for tactics such as a simple removing the defender or a tricky intermezzo! In our first example, one thing that should jump out is the rook on e1. Completely undefended! And remember that well placed knight from the "Favorable Geometry" section? It can't really give a strong check right now, but it is watching h2. That in itself is almost a form of favorable geometry-when a piece is guarding over a mating square! And black's queen can swing over to h4 to threaten mate in one on h2! Qh4 also attacks black's undefended rook! Tactic!

See how that came together by highlighting some of the elements! It may have seemed like I fed it to you towards the end but the point is that you can take stock of a position by checking these elements and the answers slowly reveal themselves. Naturally, many reading this probably saw the mate threat pretty quick and shortly after that, saw that it hit the undefended rook--which is good! But this system is aiming to help those less familiar with tactical ideas or when you have no clue as to what's going on in a tactical position.

Now typically, you aren't gonna have time to run down this insane checklist to take stock of the situation. Instead, make it a priority to at least notice some of them and usually they'll point you in the right direction. If that fails, you might have to sort through all of them and then resort to calculating all checks and captures. For this puzzle, I remember pretty quickly seeing a knight check I had with Nf2+ so I was looking for favorable geometry for a fork but it really didn't work. However, that still brought to my immediate attention that I had a knight very close to their king. Then my eye saw that the queen could come in to h4 to threaten mate. And that's when I spotted the undefended rook. Oh! I then saw the move! So you see, I didn't go through a whole checklist, but just spotting one of the tactical elements pointed me in the right direction. It highlighted the undefended piece and boom, I had my tactic!

Answer: Qh4 threatens Qxh2# and it also attacks white's rook. 

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2. Black to move

Clearly, it's easy to be verbose about any given tactical position. Instead of trying to be comprehensive, I'll try to simply highlight one or two examples of any given element, as I might do when solving these myself.

Favorable geometry?
Black has a knight one move away from check--the queen guards it but keep an eye on it!
Black's queen is aligned with a rook, a simple pawn capture with dxc3 opens up that line which could be good or dangerous.

Trapped Pieces?
It looks like white's knights have escape squares. 
His rooks have a fair amount of freedom to move.
White's bishop is hemmed in quite a bit, but even if I found a way to scare it, it can always just take my knight on f4. Bishops are trapped nicely with pawns surrounding them! Here, white could simply trade out if, say, I had a pawn ready to come into h4.
What about the queen?? Hmmmmm... Queens are good to trap. As you check white's queen's movement, you will see black has a lot of the squares covered! 

Undefended and underdefended pieces?
You may already have the answer but I'll continue for illustrative purposes. White's knight on c4 is a classic example of an underdefended piece. Yes it is defended by the a3 knight, but is attacked exactly once by black's bishop. Same number of defenders as attackers = underdefended piece! This piece tension is prime time for tactics simply because one side is almost always going to re-capture (unless they find an intermezzo!!!) and you know with what piece they will use, so the calculation is far easier. Maybe there's a removing the defender idea, or maybe the piece guarding the other piece has other duties, thus making it overworked! In this case, Bxc4, Nxc4 doesn't result in a lot but wasn't that simple to check? 
White's bishop and rooks aren't being attacked at all, and they have sufficient defenders so that's about it for this section.

Yes, the queen is trapped! You may have had to try out all the possible ways to attack it or perhaps it's a bishop sacrifice...anyway, if you found out that the queen was oddly placed with few escape squares, you'll eventually see the move. 

Answer: pawn to g4 attacks the queen with no safe squares.

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3. Black to move

Favorable geometry?
Immediately, you'll want to see that white's king and queen are on the same diagonal. This is a perfect example of favorable geometry. Hopefully you see black's move that takes advantage in one move!
White's rook is on the same rank as his king. As mentioned, it's hard to attack rooks that share ranks or files with bigger pieces and ditto with bishops on diagonals with bigger pieces. Make sure you understand why.

Trapped Pieces?
Nothing is really trapped for white. Wide open positions are less ideal for trapped pieces.

Undefended and underdefended pieces?
The rook on e1 jumps out to me as an undefended piece. And it can be hit in one move by the Queen. Qb4 could be something to look at if you otherwise didn't see the solution.
White's bishop on c4 is an underdefended piece as it has the same number of attackers as defenders. So, again, it's always worth it to see what would happen if you initiate a trade (keeping in mind the possibility that your opponent is not required to re-take). Bxc4, bxc4 and then Qxc4 wins a pawn but A) your opponent might not care about that pawn, B) your king is very open so white might simply play some devastating intermezzos, and C) black has a much stronger move anyway that you probably spotted. Find a seemingly good move? Look for a better one.

Answer: Bc6 pinning and winning the queen. White has no intermezzo tricks with the rook.

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4. Black to move

Favorable geometry?
White's bishop and king are on the same rank.
Blacks' queen and rook are lined up; that can be powerful battery. Too bad it's not currently pointing at anything. Perhaps you spot a queen trade on e2 because then Rxe2 and I can play Rxe2 pinning the bishop. Not much followup though. (see how I used some favorable geometries to start some quick calculating?)
Black's bishop is on the same diagonal as white's queen; that's a definite strong tactical opportunity. You'll want to see that the f5 pawn is in a relative pin.

Trapped Pieces?
White's queen could potentially be trapped. Notice that black's pawns on b5, c5, and g5 are shutting down six of the eight squares on the 4th rank! That's a lot of key escape squares if I could find a way to attack the queen.
White's rook on f3 doesn't have a ton of options, but it's also attacking my queen!!! What about the other rook....  

Undefended and underdefended pieces?
Oh, that other rook is totally undefended. I can't even bother to look at the other pieces. I see a tricky queen move that actually traps it! See how an undefended piece turned into a trapped piece!

A note on "checks and captures"
The idea to always look at checks and captures is a good one. You'll want to get very fast at visualizing a board after a series of captures. Tactics are great for visualization practice. But going over all possible captures can also be a time-waster to avoid. For example in the above position, you might consider sacrificing black's queen with Qxf3 (hey, Queen sacs are common in tactics, right?) thinking you can win it back later. But Qxf3 leaves a lot of options for white to re-capture. You don't want to get bogged down with working through all the possible re-captures unless you see nothing else. So a shortcut I use a lot is when I see a possible temporary sac like Qxf3 but I also see three possible re-takes, it's probably not going to be worth my time in a game to check all the responses. Therefore I often nix ideas like that early on. If you're truly perplexed or you really need to double check, by all means look at all the options. Just know you might have to be practical during a real game!

Answer: Qc1

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5. Black to move

Favorable geometry?
Black's queen is on a diagonal with white's king, pinning white's e3 pawn. Very important! 
Black's knight is one move away from attacking white's queen on two different squares.
Black's rook is on the same line as white's bishop (discoveries?).

Trapped Pieces?
Looks like white has sufficient escape squares for their pieces.

Undefended and underdefended pieces?
Rook on c1 is only defended once but no black piece is attacking it. So it's not quite ready for tactics. Rc8 could attack it but you can run some visualization to see that that doesn't really work.
White's bishop on d3 is defended once, but only by the queen. Heavy pieces make for poor defenders as they can be overworked or easily scared away. Hey! Remember that we noted black's rook is on the same line as the poorly defended bishop! Hmmm....And black's knight is one move away from attacking the queen which is the sole defender of the bishop. Moving the knight also opens up the rook's attack on the bishop (favorable geometry)! Oh this is looking juicy! And the e3 pawn is pinned so black has Nf4 as a move! That attacks the queen and puts two attackers on the poorly defended bishop!

This example is a great display of how tactical elements can come together!

Answer: Nf4

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Checks and Captures
I didn't include these in the "elements" list but they are vital to solving tactics. Calculation is necessary and checks and captures are the things to calculate first. Sometimes calculation can spark ideas if looking at the 3 elements doesn't present many ideas. Sometimes observing the elements can lead to calculation and you spot the idea quickly! 

An example of the first is when you see a piece attacking another piece so you do a quick calculation and you see that the defender of that piece has to re-capture and that leaves another piece undefended! So quick calculation pointed you towards a removing the defender tactic because of underdefended pieces!

An example of the second situation might be that you see a queen and rook in a position ready to be forked by your knight but the forking square is covered. Ohhh, but then you see that the only piece defending that square is being attacked so you can trade it off and your fork works! You spotted favorable geometry here then some calculation pointed you towards an overworked piece!

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Conclusion
Clearly not every position will be tactical and you'll have to work on your awareness to know when a position might become sharp. From there, hopefully this lesson can help you spot the weaknesses prone to combinations! Do you have to go through a checklist of all undefended and underdefended pieces, trapped pieces, favorable geometry, every single capture and on and on? Of course not. You work on these tactical problems so you develop your own method and you develop intuition on what the position might call for. You might immediately see back-rank issues and you calculated mate in 2 so clearly you won't care that their queen is undefended or you have favorable geometry with a bishop. BFD.

Being aware of some of these common elements and pointing them out yourself will certainly help you in building your intuition! 

Moreover, you'll start to gather broad takeaways that are kind of like tactical truths. For instance, knights and bishop trades are very common in removing the defender tactics, a bishop or rook is really good at reducing escape squares for a queen, a knight that is one move away from checking a king or queen is very strong, a few pawns on the same rank or diagonal are extremely efficient at shutting down escape squares for a piece, a queen and rook on the same diagonal can be prone to a skewer or pin just as a queen and bishop on the same rank/file can be, major pieces make poor sole defenders of a piece since they can be scared away easily and/or overworked...

Some of those were even discovered in the examples in this post! These tactical truths are too numerous to list out. The point is that studying tactical positions can highlight the power of the pieces and how they work together and you'll start ingraining these truths into your chess vision.

A final FINAL note - Take your time with tactics! 
See how some of these example problems were pretty simple but I still took the time to show other things going on? It's great practice to do this. Yes it feels good to find the queen pin in a split-second in example three but it can never hurt to double-check anything else. Remember in the fourth problem, I noted that the f5 pawn was pinned to the queen? This didn't play a part in the rook trap, but it is important practice to notice these things when you look at a position. In a real game, you'd want to be aware of pinned pieces and pawns all the time! Pointing them out in tactics problems will help to train that muscle even if they have nothing to do with the problem. 

Training tactics can sometimes turn into a casino game where you try to guess the move ASAP so you get the reward of a ding sound or +7 tactics ratings points or whatever. Take the time to really check all possible moves and counterplay you see and go for 100% accuracy. A good tactics book is ideal because you are more forced to check other lines and all replies by your opponent. If you're not careful, online trainers can turn into addicting games where you start moving too fast without fully thinking the combination through. The online trainers are great, just be wary of moving too fast!

My Tactics Training Schedule

It seems like my training schedule is a constant work in progress. It's a balance of how much time to spend on tactics, gameplay, analysis, book reading, and watching streams while still having a life. After working through the first section of The Woodpecker Method, I started to really like the idea of spaced repetition. From that I bought a ChessTempo membership. It's $4 per month so it's completely worth it for me.

My ChessTempo Plan

I started a custom set of problems rated 1000-1200 and set it to spaced repetition. The plan was to build a set of 200 of these problems and review them every day or every few days. Once I got to 200, I would start a custom set of problems rated 1200-1400 and solve 200 problems in it, reviewing them as well as the 1000-1200 set periodically. From there I would move to 1400-1600 and evaluate the difficulty of those. Spaced repetition works best for somewhat easy puzzles that don't require a lot of grinding calculation so if the 1400-1600 rated problems are too hard, I'll stop my spaced repetition there.

I'm not sure on the best schedule for all of these so it's a bit haphazard. Currently I have the 200 problems in the 1000-1200 set completed and I open them for review periodically. Usually when I open that set up, there are anywhere from 30-50 problems to review. When I'm done reviewing them, I'll open the 1200-1400 set and add to it. 

Make it Your Own

A takeaway here is to customize your training schedule! You might want to start with checkmate in one puzzles, or focus on tactical motifs and do 100 fork puzzles, then 100 discovery puzzles, and on and on. I chose general problems and focused on rating ranges. At some point I'll also filter through all my attempted problems on ChessTempo and find the tactical motifs I struggle with most. I've read that there is a way to do this and I think it's brilliant.

Try different things until you stumble on something you can do day after day. I started my current tactics addiction by deciding I'd do 500 lichess tactics puzzles over and over until I have them all memorized. I made a big google sheet and saved every URL of a puzzle as I attempted them. I'd do bundles of 25 and re-do them later that night, then periodically re-visit them. After posting my idea to reddit, I decided this was a bit silly but I already had 75 or 100 puzzle URLs accumulated so I altered it to 200. I ended up memorizing them all and I was able to do the 200 puzzles in about an hour one day. Granted, this may not have helped me with much more besides memorizing 200 exact lichess puzzles but it was something!

The point is to start with anything and you'll quickly find out how you best learn. I got addicted to tracking the URLs, timing myself, graphing improvement, scheduling when I'd review old puzzles, and when I'd attempt the full 200. From there I was able to get The Woodpecker Method which I strongly recommend. I completed the 222 easy problems at the beginning of the book (with yet another spreadsheet to hold me accountable and help me keep track of progress) but the intermediate problems were a tad more difficult and I was slower so I moved to ChessTempo from there.

How to Solve Tactics

I'm not going to get into the reasons why you should study tactics if you're around my level. I've read enough to convince myself but here's one of the first sources I read that did the job:

http://www.masschess.org/Chess_Horizons/Articles/2001-01_Sample_400_Points_Part_1.pdf
http://www.masschess.org/Chess_Horizons/Articles/2001-04_Sample_400_Points_Part_2.pdf

Strategy vs Tactics
Long-term strategic moves are very hard for the beginner to understand (something I need to start working on!) but tactics can be seen pretty much immediately because of the forcing nature of the replies. Here's an example of explaining a strategic move versus a tactical move:

STRATEGIC: You'll want your rook on b8 because the pawn structure you developed is begging for a minority attack. First you'll need to prep a knight maneuver and before that you need the rook on b8. After the minority attack is initiated, the b-file will likely be opened in the middlegame and the b8 rook will come alive!

TACTICAL: You take here, your opponent has to take back otherwise they're losing a bishop, then when he takes back, you can take on e5 which is also a fork and you'll win you two pawns!

A Guide to Solve Tactics
There often aren't guidelines provided to a beginner on what to look for when doing tactics training. "Look for checks and captures" is good advice to start but it doesn't apply to a whole lot of puzzles. I got some helpful advice from a redditor who told me a "structured approach" to tactical problems is extremely helpful to familiarize yourself with what's going on in the position and figure out where on the board to attack.

Generally, any of three elements may be present in most tactics puzzles. Knowing what these are and being able to spot them quickly is a great head start in solving tactics. By "elements" I don't mean pins or forks, I am talking in broader terms.

The three elements:

1. Un(der)defended Pieces - Pieces with the same amount of attackers as defenders. The remedy: Either remove the guard [by some other tactical mechanism or by exchange] OR add a marginal attacker

2. Favorable Geometry - Important or undefended squares on the same diagonal or file, or on squares that can be forked by a knight or pawn. Remedy: pin/fork/skewer!

3. Trapped Pieces - Pieces on awkward squares or with little to no available mobility. Remedy: Attack it with a piece of lower value OR add a marginal attacker

​For a tactic to work, typically there must be at least 2 of these elements present.

I will hopefully later add some screenshots describing the elements in more detail.

If you can take any tactics puzzle and list out the underdefended pieces, all instances of favorable geometry, and any trapped pieces, you will be well on your way to knowing where to start calculating. As you train tactics more and more, you'll start to find yourself spotting these elements very quickly and intuitively knowing which ones to start calculating. For calculating, it can be helpful to go through all checks, captures, and then threats with a priority of checking the highest value pieces first.