Study log. 06 Sep 2016
Tactics
I am starting to like chess.com tactics trainer more and more. It is still far from being perfect indeed, but what I like about it in particular is the fact that there are problems that are not about gaining decisive advantage, but rather about defensive moves, exchange etc - the types of problems you're more likely will be solving OTB than conducting crushing king-side attacks with fireworks of sacrifices.
For example today when solving this problem I was looking for some kind of winning tactic for over 5 minutes before I realized that there is no such tactic here and all this problem was about was simple exchange (the black has just took white's bishop on d6) and after the exchange white is a pawn ahead which will give good chances for a victory in the endgame. I believe OTB I would have decided to play 1. Qxb2 a lot faster. Here I was spending so much time just because: "C'mon it's a tactic trainer, it cannot be simple exchange, there should be something more" 
Basically today I did 20 problems on chess.com (16 correct, 4 wrong) which got me to 2122 tactics rating (a little rebound after yesterday fall from 2128 to 2093). I still experience my major problem with not noticing all the defensive opportunities of my opponent. For example in the last problem I solved today:
I saw the correct move 1. Rh7 fairly quickly and also fairly quickly calculated winning lines for two possible defensive opportunities: 1. ... Rf7 and 1. ... Rc7. What bothers me a lot is the fact that I totally didn't see his 1. ... f5 defensive resource. I didn't even took it into consideration. This is something I should get rid of. Another my problem is that I often don't see simple winning moves, for example in this very problem after 1. Rh7 f5 it took me around 14-15 minutes to see 2. Qh5! and I have no idea why, it isn't some kind of complicated tactics, it is a very simple yet winning move. I am seeing no other way to fight this weakness but to solve more tactics.
Besides that I did 3 problems on chesstempo and got all 3 correct
The most challenging was the one on the diagram above. It took me 20 minutes, but finally I got it right. The correct move was 1. ... Qa1+ and it looks pretty natural so it is likely I would play that OTB as well even without seeing the whole line from the beginning.
