How to Find Silent Moves

Hello everyone!

While working through "5334 Problems, Combinations and Games" by László Polgár, I realised that I am REALLY struggling with finding silent moves.

The system with "checks, captures, and threats" does not help much, as the first move (the silent move) is almost always a "threat", and not a "check" or a "capture". You basically have dozens of possibilities as the board is almost empty.

Let's take Puzzle 1478 as an example. White to move and checkmate within two moves (Source: Puzzle 1478 of "5334 Problems, Combinations and Games" by László Polgár):



The solution 1. Qf3 seems almost impossible to find without a clear system and I just wanted to ask you:

How do you guys find silent moves, and is there a system or a logical way to go though all those endless possibilities and variations?

Thank you in advance!

The reason it's a "silent move" there is because it's a fairly trivial position.

First I looked at a mating position. The Q on e4 would be mate. How can I move the Q to e4 without letting out the King. Hm, Qf3. But what if he plays f5? Then I can’t mate on e4. Hm, but look, I can then mate on c6.

@selzzuP said in #1:
>The system with "checks, captures, and threats" does not help much, as the first move (the silent move) is almost always a "threat", and not a "check" or a "capture"

Obviously wont work. You are using the wrong tool for a the wrong job. Its like getting a wrench to clean a window.
Why do you use the "checks, captures and treats system?
You use it to find good moves. If you find a check, you do not always need to check, you just scan it to see if there is one to gain a tempo and see if its worth it. If its not, you find a capture that is worth it. If there is no decent move, you check if there are treats to you, or that you can make. If no move is found within those, you move to development, etc, until you find a move.

Again, you use this system to find good moves, not to mate.

> The solution 1. Qf3 seems almost impossible to find without a clear system.
There is a system, its quite simple.

When you are looking to mate, you see which squares are available to escape, which ones are currently restricted, which ones you want to restrict and which ones you are going to stop covering if you move a piece. You are not looking for a good move, you are looking to restrict squares,

There are some considerations that you have to do. For instance, if you are not starting with a check, you have to be wary as the opponent might actually have a unstoppable attack, you need to see if you are safe first, or if the opponent has an intermezzo, but when there is no direct treat, you can scan for restricting moves. The exercise is quite straightforward and you just need to enter "restricting move mode" from the start, but during the actual game, you need to change between "systems"