And to clarify - I know this probably isn't going to get many posts. I'd really appreciate it though if a few really strong players, or really strong tactical players would respond.
Tactical blindness and not having "automatic" tactical vision is actually hurting me a lot.
Well Cherub, if you ask a Grandmaster he will tell you that chess players are not used to play against the clock but against the board. I didn't find the solutions quick either but I understood that something fishy going on and took my time in the first. The second was more easy to spot, sometimes puzzles have ideally placed pawns screaming the solution!
What is important I guess is first to identify the position using composition and elimination process, which you do , but if you really want to make serious work with tactics and become faster then you need to work on them in separate concepts.
Our memory is a tool that as much you take care with pattern recognition and identifications the better accumulate, so eventually experience and systematic work pays off. Recently I am working tactics in the CT-Art program which I suggest to everyone wants to do methodical work. It has different levels ofcourse for all the categories and in the pool 1800-2200 such tricky tactics as a decoy-deflection-X-ray are extended analyzed with hundreds of examples to make practice , reverse solutions e.t.c.
You will pay something to get it but it worth every penny. You will not find something similar solving random tactics on sites.
( edit ) Lol...I didn't realized it was troll time again. You can safely ignore the above post except the suggestion for the CT-Art program.
What are you talking about? This is a serious post.
My concerns here are very real. Notice how it's been up for hours without a response, since it's a serious post.
I'm not totally horrible, but how come I always take forever to see even some basic tactics?
It seems like the good players see tactics very quickly, and almost effortlessly, and so they can move on to more important variations they calculate, while I have to spend a long long time just to find some obvious refutation to a line I'm considering.
What I'm referring to here is pattern recognition, and also tactical intuition. I'm so bad at both of these. What I'm OK at is calculating by brute force, but that takes a long time, and in complicated positions it will fail very very quickly, and tire you out.
Here are some examples I'm talking about. I did both these tactics on Chesstempo.com (mixed tactics), failed them both, and took about 3-4 minutes on the first, then 2 minutes on the second. These tactics were timed, so you can't take too long - you start losing points after around 4-5 minutes, I think.
In the first position, I played 1.Qxe4??. I saw 1.Rxe4?? Qxa5+, winning the f5 knight. But I missed 1.Qxe4?? Rd1+ 2.Kxd1 Nxf2+, winning my queen. It's a simple tactic, and perhaps this was a problem with my calculation, but I focused a lot on some other variations, and just missed this.
In the second position, I played 1...Qxg7?? which is losing to probably 2.Qd5+ and Rf7, or something similar. Instead, the obvious right move to play was 1...Qa7+, forcing a pin on a critical attacking piece or trading queens, and taking g7.
I have this sort of tactical blindness in certain areas (not too huge areas, but I notice it when I try a lot of tactical problems). It's really really bad.
How do you become really really good at tactics and really sharp?
I want to be able to see these simple "cookie-cutter" tactics right away, or at least spot them very very quickly.
The reason is that in slow chess, you have a lot of time to think, but short little tactical tricks will pop up in variations you calculate. You don't have enough time to waste trying to find something and take so long on it.