"How I won more games by improving my chess thought process" - article

NM Dan Heisman has posted an article by one of his students on his Chess.com blog - "How I won more games by improving my chess thought process" - that is one of the better practical descriptions I've seen of the central importance of your thought process to gaining chess strength. The main issues described, constantly calculating variations while also missing good candidate moves, are common ones and unlikely to be overcome unless the improving player is self-aware enough. Of course, once you are aware of the problem, it is then useful to have some concrete guidance on how to address it, which the article offers.

In my own chess improvement process, through analyzing my own games, I early on identified the lack of a consistent thought process as a significant handicap, resulting in the Simplified Thought Process (That Works). More recently, I've had some success in better identifying my opponent's resources (i.e. their candidate moves which result in threats) using tactics training to strengthen the thought process.