How to solve chess tactics problems?

I have started posting 2 move tactical

studies, solving those is a very effective way to
improve tactical vision and the overall chess
intuition. Today’s writing I’ve decided to devote to
explaining the ways and methods of approaching
these chess studies (aka tactics problems). Not only
these methods can be applied for solving chess
compositions and tactics problems, but the following
guidelines can also be applied during the actual
game (complimenting how to analyze a chess
game I wrote before).
Let’s say you have a chess position in front of you in
the form of a diagram, a chess board, a computer
screen, a notation (if you’re really advanced) or
whatever else. Let’s imaging, your job is to find a
forced mate in a specific number of moves. How do
you approach this task? Do you take the most
powerful piece available and start checking the
opponent’s King? Maybe. But let me assure you that
that is not the most efficient way of solving a chess
problem.
A lot better way is to leave the pieces on the board
alone and to approach solving tactics by first
analyzing the initial position. You should check out
the squares available to your opponent’s King. You
need to identify what job each of your pieces does:
what diagonals or files controls. This is different
from a regular chess game, when all the pieces
appear at the squares they are at by your will. In
tactics problems, each and every piece is placed
where it is long before you see the position and has a
specific task, so your job is just to identify it
(assuming the problem is correctly composed). When
analyzing a position, first you need to take into
account the most powerful defenses by your
opponent such as checks. The check is so special
because it forces you to do something you don’t
necessary want, in order to announce that mate in 2.
As a rule of thumb if your opponent can check your
king, it’s a bad sign for a tactics problem. I’m not
saying it’s never going to happen, it’s just
uncommon. Therefore, you should prevent moves by
your opponent that will force your further replies.
Other examples of strong moves are captures of your
vital pieces, blocks of files and diagonals, pins or any
other moves that prevent you from mating the
opponent’s King. You need to find a reply leading to a
win for each and every move your opponent can
make.
Sometimes, after the analyses of a chess position, a
chess player comes to the conclusion that he found
all the replies. Then, it is necessary to find a waiting
move, passing move to the opponent, who doesn’t
have any more useful moves and every move will
lead to defeat. This position, when an opponent
would rather skip a move than play one,
called Zugzwang. The theme of zugzvang is very
popular in tactics problems.
Basically, there are some general rules which are
used by problem composers in order to create a
good, hard tactical problem. First of all, it’s not
recommended to make the first move of the tactics
study to be a check, capture or a pawn promotion.
I’m guessing the reason for that is since these are
the moves that solver looks for in a first place. For
problem to be difficult such first moves are usually
avoided. In a good tactics problem each piece has a
specific purpose and each diagonal and file is being
unavailable to the opponent’s King only due to one
reason. Remember, this are just general tips that will
help you solve the problems, there are however
exceptions, which are always present in our world.
Otherwise it would be too boring, don’t you think?
Good luck solving tactics!