Improving your Thought Process
This is the first in a series of posts about faulty thought process tendencies by beginners. Unfortunately, I am the source of inspiration, but hopefully by writing about these errors my thought process will improve.
The most important thing that a beginning to intermediate player can do to improve their chess is to improve their thought process. There is no point in reading positional books and learning new openings when you do not keep your pieces safe, or you fail to see that your opponents piece is not safe, this is the main reason preventing you from winning your games.
Dealing with Aggressive Moves
When a beginner is faced with an aggressive move by an opponent they tend to think defense first (sometimes exclusively), and as a result they fail to see that the aggressively posted piece is not safe. Both beginners tend to make this same mistake, the offensive player blindly plays the aggressive move thinking it is winning without further analysis and the defender assumes that the move is good and fails to see that it is a blunder which hangs the aggressively posted piece.
Take your time when you are faced with an aggressive move or a difficult situation and always ask yourself Is your opponent’s move safe? as part of your thought process and you will win many more games as a result.
Simply great advice. I have spent two minutes once looking at which square to move my King to when my opponent checked with his queen, before I realized I could just capture his queen with my knight!!!