How To Improve: Advanced Players (Part 2)
Hello everyone, today I'm back with part 2 of possibly a 3 or 4 part series regarding how advanced players should improve at chess. Again, this is primarily targeted for players 1800+USCF. If you feel that this will be too advanced and complex for you, feel free to check out my posts for beginner and intermediate players. In Part 1 of this guide for advanced players, I talked about how to prepare your openings well. Today I'll be talking about how to improve your tactics to become tactically sharp in a tournament game. Without further ado, let's get started!
Improving at Tactics
1. Pattern Recognition
Pattern recognition is probably one of the most important aspects of being a tactically sharp player. After all, you can't play a tactic if you don't see it. Good ways to improve your pattern recognition are to read tactics books. Many books will have tactical motifs/patterns listed out in different sections, and working on those will significantly help your brain remember these ideas. Doing puzzle rush is also a great idea, as there are many recurring themes in puzzle rush. (More on puzzle rush here) All in all, the more tactics you do, the better your pattern recognition will be!
2. Speed
Being a tactically sharp player not only involves spotting the tactic, but also doing it quickly. What's the point of knowing all of these tactical combinations if you can't solve them in a time scramble? With that said, you're probably wondering: "Well how exactly do I solve them faster?" The key is repetition. I suggest completing problems in a book a couple times, rather than reading the book once and moving on. This will really help consolidate your speed when it comes to spotting tactics. Puzzle rush and chess.com tactics are great for this too. Another thing I would suggest is trying to play some more blitz/bullet chess. Having a timer in-game can really help you see what your true tactical skills are like. It's not enough to just see the tactic, you have to be able to see it quickly.
3. Calculation
You're playing a blitz game. Both sides have 10 seconds, and there is 1 second increment. During the time scramble, you notice a nice tactical combination! However, you don't know if it works, because you can't calculate all the way down the line. What do you do? Here are some tricks for helping you calculate:
1. Intuition - If you think it's going to work, then it's probably going to work. There are many factors in our brain that revolve around remembering certain positions where similar ideas work, so if you tend to have good intuition, go for it!
2. The "Escape" - This is what I refer to a way out of a mess. So let's say there's a potential sacrifice, but you don't know if it will work or not, and you can't calculate to find anything concrete. If you see a perpetual check there, that's like an "Escape" for you if it turns out to be a bad sacrifice. In that case, if a draw is fine, go for it! The worst case scenario is you just take the draw.
3. Practical Play - Sometimes computers look at a combination and scoff at it, because they can see a concrete refutation many moves down the line. Humans can't always do that. Practically, it is very hard to defend against a strong sacrificial attack, even if technically it shouldn't work with best play. Humans are susceptible to fear, panic, uncertainty, doubt, and many other things that affect their response to your combination. So even if you calculate that something might end up in for instance a bad endgame or down a pawn in the middlegame, if it's not extremely easy to find, you can consider going for it. Going for combinations when your opponent has little to no time is also a good idea, because they WILL panic. The other side of this concept is that if you are low on time and there's a "free" pawn that you want to grab, it's not the best idea. Your opponent will have more time to come up with good moves and better resources, and you might end up falling even if grabbing it was justified. Below is an example:
Above we see that on move 13, white had the option to take on g7. Maybe he saw that after Rg8 Qh6, black's king would be compromised and he wouldn't be able to castle. However, clearly black saw that white could take on g7 when he played Nbd7. So he probably has something better planned, and maybe has already prepped this move at home. So even if you have no clue that the theoretically correct move is 13.f3, you should be able to figure out that that's the best move in the position. Calculation is a key part of being a tactically sharp player.
That's all I've got for you today, thanks for reading everybody! Let me know in the comments section if you thought this was helpful, and I'll talk to you next time! 
