How do I recognize if my opponents plan/threat is bad?
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16 days ago
0
#2
The best answer is for you try your best to analyze and calculate out the position as best as you can. As you get better you will analyze and calculate better which will help knowing when the threat is something to be worried about or not. Castling is good in this position though. You can play Bb7 to protect the pawn after that (if they play c4). Giving it enough defenders. Now your bishop is pinned instead of the rook. Playing Bc6 or Qd7 after Bb7 protects the bishop, and frees up the position a little bit. That way you can move that pawn (if not traded already). White will want to castled quickly though before opening up the position so if they don’t castle then opening up by trading pawns usually doesn’t end well for them. Hope this helps.
15 days ago
0
#3
The short answer without taking a look at your game is: the more tactical puzzles you solve, the more patterns you will learn and remember. You'll also get practice calculating lines too.
This has a direct translation into your real world games. So simply, when the opponent makes a threat, typically what happens is your intuition will alert you (which is refined during tactics training) whether the threat is real based on all of the pieces involved and if there's a genuine attacking pattern at play, what resources you have (ie. to attack, block the threat, or counter attack if it's not real).
Now if I spent a moment reviewing your line... if 8...O-O, 9. c4 and bxc4, 10. dxc4 -- you do NOT have to play dxc4 and give up your rook. You could in-between develop even with something like Bb7 and that adds another defender to your pawn. There are better moves than Bb7 but the main point is there is time to defend the pawn since it's not checkers where captures are required. 
me vs. sumayamaria
And it went 1. e4 c5 2. Bc4 e6 3. d3 d5 4. exd5 exd5 5. Bb3 b5 6. a3 Nf6 7. h3 Be7 8. Qf3 then my opponent resigned bc I was thinking too long for his patience. But in this position I really just wanted to castle but I was too worried about a move like 9. c4 which pressures the pawn that is pinned to my rook. To make a quick decision. The computer thinks there is nothing to worry about and castling is perfectly fine but I was really worried that I would be up losing the pawn and be down material. How do I get better at recognizing which plans by my opponent are bad? Is it all just calculation, bc even though I was struggling to calculate if after castles 9. c4 loses the pawn I felt intuitively that I would still be better even if it did lose my the pawn. But losing material is a big commitment and I was too scared to allow this so I ended up thinking for a really long time. Any tips for recognizing when the move you’re scared of is actually bad? thx in advance.