Defense Wins Chess Games

The importance of Defensive Drills

The Philadelphia Eagles inspired me to write a post about an underexplored topic in chess puzzles.

You guessed it: Defense.

Defensive tactics (like defending against a checkmate threat) are relatively neglected. There are logical reasons for this. Avoiding a loss is not as engaging or joyful as checkmate.

There are practical reasons why defensive tactics get the short end of the stick too: more are from drawn games, which are often lengthy and arduous to mine tactics from. AI may find it harder to pluck out the best ones for human training.

But the payoff of being a good defender is huge, especially in rapid time controls. I’ll never forget Mark Dvorestky’s take on Prophylactic Thinking, where he explained that in life and in chess, it’s always harder to think from our opponent’s perspective. When we do something our opponents of a similar level are NOT doing, it makes us stronger.