Tactical training.
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tactic training such as puzzles helps your calculating ability as well as your combinational vision, so in a game situation you may see a similar situation on the board and suddenly you see a mating attack four or five moves ahead.
It's all pattern recognition.
Your brain will automatically see similarities between tactical exercises you've done and positions you encounter over the board. It happens gradually, with continual practice, eventually spotting tactics and calculation of lines becomes more like instinct than real "calculation"...you'll just see it.
Anyway, the more tactical problems you solve the better as more patterns are stored into your brain. Also, doing books of problems several times helps to imprint the patterns further. So yes, do some tactical puzzles everyday and your strength will naturally improve.
For tons of free online puzzles and a built in rating system to guage your progress try out the chess tactics server.
(you have to copy + paste the link as you'll get a 404 error otherwise)
Oh, so if you have the best pattern recognition and you see a position and out of instinct, say that it has no tactical possibilities, then most likely there is none? And if you also have good pattern recog. then you will probably see tactical moves faster and faster?
That is true. When a beginner blunders and loses a queen, it is partly because of laziness and not studying the move first, but on the other hand studying every possible move would take too much time. With practice a player begins to quickly ignore bad moves and recognize good ones. Except in extraordinary time trouble, instinct isn't enough to tell whether a move is good or not, but it reduces the amount of conscious calculation needed.
That's what always amuses me. If you're not looking out for combinations, how are you supposed to get one?
Ever think that part of the reasons GM's come up with such great combinations/sacrifices is because they only focus on 1-3 good moves from any given position, instead of the millions that run through my amateur head?
lol
I have always heard that doing tactical puzzles will help your tactical vision but I have been wondering if they really help your tactics in a real game situation or not. Because most of the time, on puzzles, you know that there is a very good move to achieve mate or a good material advantage. You would then look for it (and hopefully find it). But on a real game, how would doing puzzles actually help you know that a good tactical move exists. Is it simply the matter of checking for a tactical possibility every turn?
(Whoops this was supposed to be in General Chess Discussions)