Jeremy's Web Site -- Tactics

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Part 13l of an Online Tutorial Written by Jeremy Cone

Did those songs you were hearing end? Would you like to hear them again?

So, Jeremy, What's a Combination, Anyway?

A good place to start! The combination is regarded as a series of moves which must involve the sacrifice of a piece and result in the player of the combination achieving an advantage. In other words, you sac a piece, you recover it and achieve an advantage.

The combination, although sounds very simple, certainly isn't. It often involves several tactical themes (the means of achieving the advantage after the sacrifice) and can be very difficult to spot. Is the only way to spot them to search the board inside out mindlessly? Certainly not! The board will tell you. No,m it's not going to jump up and say, "there's a combination on this board, look for it!" but there are certainly subtle signs which tell you whether or not to look for a combination on the board.

In order to get the go ahead to look for a combination on the board, one of the follwoing criteria must be met.

A Weakened King. A king which is open or vulnerable to attack is a sure sign to look for a combination. This includes a stalemated king, or a king which has no square to move to because they would lead to check or are blocked by his own pieces.
An Undefended or Ill-Protected Piece. A piece which has no protection or support from its fellow army is vulnerable to attack. This includes pieces which although look defended may not be as well guarded as they appear. Pieces which are both attacked and defended once cancel out, and can be considered as "unguarded" (although not in the literal sense).

It has also been mentioned by a great GrandMaster, Averbakh, that the double attack is regarded as the basis for the combination, and he was not referring to all combination involving a fork. If you think up to now, all the tactical themes that we have covered up until this point. They have, in one way or another involved the double attack, the fork is the most basic example, while the X-Ray shows a slightly more complex example. Keep this in mind in your hunt for the combination.

So, up to this point, we haven't done any calculation (we haven't actually looked for the right move yet), but have only searched to make sure that looking for a combination is a waste of time or not. Let's say we now have found out that the board says it's time to look for a combination. Now what? It's time to crunch down the board and search for the blockbuster move that sends our opponent's position to shambles. Unfortunately, (and you're not gonna like htis), the only way to develop an eye for the "right move" is to practice, practice, practice. Soon your brain makes associations with the board for certain patterns that make sense to check for. For instance, after the thirtieth time your opponent falls for a knight fork of his king and rook, you begin to develop patterns in your brain that make sense to look for when searching for a knight fork.

Ok, so now we know what a combination is and when to look for one, it's time to take a look at how they work, here we go, get ready, because this is some really cool stuff.

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Here is an index of all of the pages in my tutorial:

This page was last updated on: Tuesday, March 17, 1997.

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