how do I study/train tactics

I've been hearing all over that to improve in chess I need to train my ability to identify and implement possible tactics in game. But... I have no idea how or where to train my tactics, puzzles don't really teach me stuff, they really just test my abilities. Can anyone help me out /give me advice?

I mean, doing puzzles are the way most ppl train their tactical vision. What tactics does is that it trains your visualization of what is going on more. Since your brain memorizes that patterns. If you do enough puzzles/tactics, you eventually will get better tactical vision.

All of this are my personal opinion only, so it may not be the same for you.

Work first on calculation skills. You can do puzzles till you're blue in the face but never actually improve if you do not understand how to calculate first. Take an online course for it or get yourself a good book on it. You might even do a search for some videos where people describe it, and go from there. Typically those videos will recommend a book. Do a Google search for Azel Chua and go from there. There's lots of ways to sharpen those skills.

My suggestion is to learn all the basic tactical themes first (pin, skewer, fork, revealed check, double attack, etc etc…), and do puzzles by category until you’re familiar with all the themes. Then just dive in to the uncategorized puzzles here and continually set goals for a higher and higher rating.

When I first started, I could barely break 1000, and I thought I must be dumb or something. But then I hit 1700, finally broke 2000, passed 2400. And now I’m in the 2800s. It’s just training your eyes to see. That’s all there really is to it.

But don’t be surprised if you jack your tactics rating to the sky and still play like crap. It’s a pretty common experience for there to be no obvious carry-over from tactics to play.😆

do the puzzles but visualize the entire solution in your head without drawing arrows before you make the move

puzzles, puzzles and puzzles

Puzzles, puzzle storm/rush. The book "The Woodpecker Method" also helped me quite a bit.

Visualizing the entire solution is hard for me, I’m struggling just to get past two moves.

What do you suggest?

You're 1400+ in rapid and 2800 in puzzles here, surely you're better at calculating than that.  

I kid you not.

I am struggling to see past two moves deep in the last week.

Before I would sit on my hands, see 3-4 moves deep and 2-3 lines.

Now I stare at the board clueless. I may have lost my patience.

Stop playing for 2 days.  I'm sorta similar, I dropped almost 200 pts of puzzle rating the last few days, and it's just laziness and boredom.  And I'm only allowed 25 puzzles a day, so I got em all wrong!  Lol.  Instead of thinking, I'm guessing at moves. Too much in a hurry to see what the answer is I guess.  I don't let it bother me really, I just accept that at least I know what I'm doing so I keep perspective of what my problems are.  My income doesn't depend on chess, so I treat it as such. 

The 25 puzzles per day is more than enough if you are going for quality over quantity. At some point, they become time consuming and overkill. The premium is in the execution, developing the correct thought processes (which I lost at the moment) and habits.

I use to fluctuate between 2400-2700 when I was doing 25+ puzzles per day and hit a good streak to 2800 to call it a retirement.

Thus, I’m doing practice puzzles trying to get my mind  back in the game, got one wrong, took a 15 minute break. Came back and randomly got the exact same puzzle, guess what?

I proceed to get it wrong again smh! The kicker is I made the exact same wrong move lol.

That's funny!  I have done the exact same thing! Happens often to me on Chessable. Now there, you don't get them back to back, but you've seen this problem a dozen times before, and still solve it wrong... Lol. 

I have said on the forum in the past, I would not want an account with >25 puzzles because it's no help for me. Even at 25, they say chess is mostly pattern recognition; well most days, I can see the pattern that I solve better at the beginning of the session and by 12-15, my mind is burnt.  Sometimes, that might reach to #20, but that's rare.  Mostly, I try to continue just to work on my mental stamina, but I really need to be relaxed, awake and alert to solve well.  

Yesterday I hit a personal high of 49 on survival.  Of the 3 I missed, omg, 2 were complete brain  dead moments. This is the third. I looked at the move easily 5 minutes, and totally missed the theme...  I was at the solution and it was forcing, but for all my looking, I didn't see that... Rrrrrr....  Which way should I go?  Oh (*&#$%(&....

https://www.chess.com/puzzles/problem/1290871  This is what I missed. 

Congrats on 49!

I considered all checks and then it was a toss up with the double check?

I kind of went off instincts and pattern recognition after that.  

I am going to start over slowly and force myself to visualize a little deeper. I think playing blitz in the last couple of months has stunted my visualizations and deep calculation skills. Hopefully I can get it back soon.

 

Thanks.  I missed the Bf7 move and played it to h7... I even saw that any capture with the K is instant #, and still didn't see it was forcing...  I mean, how can you miss that?  My thought was, if he takes w/pawn, now I've got 2 connected passers on g6/g7 to deal with, and what do I do now...   I was just brain dead...

If you work on one skill, others suffer.  For instance blitz doesn't help deep solving, daily doesn't help quick thinking and intuition, etc. after you lose it some, it's still there, it just needs brought back to the top priority for a bit.