Why am I missing basic tactical threats more often?

I rose up to the 1100s quickly after having been a 900s player for 2 months. I've been in the 1100s for 1 and a half months. Now I'm starting to miss basic tactical threats more often than before. I've been playing every day. I thought I was well on my way to 1200 until now. For example, I get forked more often than I have during the first month of being in the 1100s. I've been playing for about 5 months since a one-year break.

Before making your move, try to find your opponent's best response to your intended move.

About how long would you recommend?

The problem is that I try to do that and still miss them. I watched an anti-blunder video by Igor Smirnov and after watching it, I started blundering even worse. Maybe just a coincidence. link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N0E0eahWnQ

part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xASlcNhMXwg

Try solving tactics problems and play with time control no less than 30 minutes. If all else fails take a break from chess. Chess is about having fun first. How long a break depends on you. Usually 1-3 months should be about enough.

It's possible I might be doing it too quickly. Its hard to know how long to do that for since I often run into time control issues. I realize that my anti-blunder checks are naturally getting shorter. I think they're done when they are actually not.

use tactics trainer everyday (I gained about 400 points in 3 months here online went from mid 1100's to a peak of 1537) 

I play at 30 0 all the time. I try 90 30 as much I can but the wait is too long most of the time since no one plays it. I've been very successful under that time control.

I've been doing that. I usually do it right before the game to warm-up. Sometimes I forget but I still blunder when I remember to do that.

Try first thing when you wake up. the theory is if you can solve tactics before your morning coffee then you can solve them in game under preasure.

If you are playing stronger opponents, it could be the nature of the forks you are missing are a bit more subtle, even though they may look obvious. Otherwise, their forks are the result of a bit of planning, rather than just being more random.

yes that is true, I typically play above my level, and I routinely meet people who are able to out plan me. (though I may be tacticaly equal, I still miss basic plans sometimes.)

Suppose you wanted to get stronger. So you tried doing pull ups. Do you know how you get better at doing pull ups? You do more pull ups. That's it.

Tactics are the same. To improve at tactics, you do more tactics.

But you say it's not working. What if you were doing pull ups, but you never increased the number you could do? Then you would have to find someone who knows how to exercise, or hire a trainer, and show them what you are doing. You can't post on the internet and ask, "I'm doing pull ups but it's not working, what am I doing wrong?" People can guess 100 different things, but you won't find out until you get an expert to watch what you're doing.

In other words, get a coach.

If your weakness is tactics... work on it. Solve tactics puzzles, read books on tactics. If it does not improve your tactics, continue solving puzzles, reading but add more time. If it doesn't, repeat and spend more more time. I bet it would work.

It's not uncommon to experience a decrease in performance after learning some new things (especially something like a thinking process) because you're trying to incorporate it into your play and it distracts from basics like seeing a fork.

At least in my case frustration is a good sign.  You've noticed a problem and you want to fix it.  If solving tactics and playing (and giving it some time, maybe you're just tired?) doesn't help reduce the blunders though then do some brainstorming on how to fix the problem.  For example tell yourself your next game is a "training game" and it doesn't matter if you win or lose, your goal is to not get forked at all.  Every move spend 90% of your time / focus on checking for forks.  Look at every one of his pieces one at a time for example.

It may be a bit tedious, but this focused training will force you to come up with efficient ways to look for forks and check for blunders in general.  As you get better your goal is for these "blunder checks" to happen automatically and for your board vision to be good enough that it doesn't take much time or energy.  It's definitely hard at first.  But like anything it gets easier with practice.  Find ways to force yourself to practice.

Other ideas... compose your own tactical puzzle with a fork theme.  In your own games whenever you miss a tactic record the position and write under it "white wants to move Ne4, is it safe?" and after you accumulate a few try to solve them a few days later.  Or make it multiple choice "white wants A or B, which is safe?  Even if you remember which move was safe, it's forcing you to remember and think about the pattern.

Just wondering, did you see the videos I was talking about?

I skipped though them to look at the main points before I posted.  I thought half of the suggestions weren't useful for beginning type players (the ones most likely to look for a video about avoiding blunders).  Talking about openings and warm ups and simplification?  You need some experience to choose playable sidelines and to know if going for simplification is safe (if your endgame will be ok).  Warming up is good for tournament players.

His good points were to look for the opponent's threat (he calls it plans) and doing a blunder check where you look at all the forcing replies (checks, captures, and threats) your opponent can play.

When I'm playing blitz and getting tired I'll actually spontaneously say out loud after an opponent's move e.g. "what's he threatening... what's the threat... oh b7."  Seeing the immediate threat (or seeing that there is no immediate threat) is the basis for everything else.  You have to do this first.  If you play a move without making this determination (if a threat exists, and if so what it is) then you risk immediate loss on every move.  They could have threatened checkmate and you'd never know.

Then before you move, imagine your move as if it's made, and look at all the attacking, forcing, annoying moves your opponent can make.  If you still like your move in spite of all those responses then go ahead and play it.  Often newer players only look at the responses they want to see or responses that are direct reactions in the same 3x3 square area like a defending move or recapture.  However you have to look at the attacking replies.

With minimal knowledge of everything else in chess, if you can successfully do these things on every move every game (which takes a lot of practice to do 100% of the time) then you'll already be rated 1500-1600 in live chess IMO.  Dan Heisman call this "real chess" and says if you can't do it for every move then you have an artificial ceiling of about 1600 no matter how much you learn.

So anyway, just about everyone has heard this advice.  I assumed you had too.  But of course hearing "remember to blunder check" doesn't help us stop.  So I assumed that's where you were coming from when you made the topic "why am I missing threats."  My advice was to find a way to force yourself to practice this blunder checking, to force yourself to develop new habits while breaking out of an old routine.  e.g. before the game set artificial constraints like only checking for forks, or making your own puzzles.

another way to practice is to say your line's out loud, and mabe move your eyes where your pieces are going in your variation