Monkey sees a check, monkey does a check.
So I've begun to play the 800 games I said I was going to play for a period of 80 days. I played two games so far. In those games, after analyzing them a bit the idea of learning to calculate all your candidate moves and your opponents responses was reinforced. I lost the first game due to an opening trap that I knew about but wanted to see if I could manage to win because I read somewhere that that paticular opening trap wasn't sound. I thought if I give it a go without consulting my previous reading material it would be installed in my memory. I ofcourse made an error in my game and ended up losing my rook and a minor piece for nothing. Here is the game:
The other game I lose a pawn in the opening but I managed to create counterplay with an attack on his king. Had I of listened to Dan Heisman and thought about all my opponents responses I would have saw that my pawns would have been hanging if I did what I was planning to do. Instead I just did what I normally do, create a plan without considering what my opponent would do to stop me. in this game, later on, I still manage to make moves without thinking of what my opponent would do in response, and I make a check that made the game drawable, however, my opponent chose to continue playing, and he lost on time. Note that this game was a 30 minute game. I just simply used my blitz skills to beat him at the end :D. He spent way too much time thinking about his moves when he should have just made blind checks he was running out of time.
The lesson learned is that it's going to take time to get rid of my bad habit and start learning to look at my opponents resources while I am playing chess. In two critical moments in this game I could have got a winning position had I have stopped to think rather than seeing a check and just doing it without considering the consequences.