Wednesday Workout: Too Weak, Too Slow

Like most chess players, I enjoy competing with stronger opponents to test myself and my progress. Recently I had the chance to play an online nine-round blitz tournament (G/3+2) and faced a field that averaged over 2200 lichess. 

It didn't go very well.

But there's a silver lining - now I have plenty of fresh tactics puzzles to tempt you with!

Try your hand at these five positions, which are arranged in order of relative difficulty. Can you find the critical moves I missed? Solutions are below in a lichess study!

Tactic 1:

Tactic 2:

Tactic 3:

Tactic 4:

Tactic 5:

Solutions: