Tactics, tactics, tactics, ...

Pretty much every article I've read states that studying tactics is the most important thing for novices. Looking at the blunders I am making at every single game (even the few I've won so far), I can only agree with this. So, how does one learn tactics?

I simply love books, so I started with a book on chess tactics: "Learn Chess Tactics" by John Nunn. However, the exercises in this particular book were a bit too hard for me. Back to the internet, I've found the "How to get to 1900" webpages by John Coffey. The tactics chart gives many problems ranging from easy mates in one to quite tricky combinations. At the beginning, it took me a long time to figure even the simple ones out, but after solving all the one move prolems at least once I am getting better. As for now, solving "win in 2 moves" problems still takes a lot of time.

That doesn't keep me from committing the wildest blunders, though. I somehow have to find a technique to avoid giving away pieces for free, but how? Dan Heisman published his view on this problem in this article on "real" chess. I also found an interesting exercise idea on learning to avoid blunders in another chess blog. Guess I should give it a try.