[Magic_Man]

Vicious, I go on little chess sprees a few times a year, and it is always frustrating to me that I can be very smart and yet still be so bad at chess. I can cream a novice, but anyone that is decent completely destroys me. I do ok at chess puzzles, especially if they tell me that I'm looking for a pin, or a fork, or whatever; I get those pretty much every time. But the problem is that in a real game, there's no one to stop you and say "ok now this is a puzzle. Find the best move." I never know whether I should stop and not move until I find a tactic, or whether I should just make some completely non-obvious positional play. It's these "in between" moves that give me the most trouble. I am starting to get feelings like "I want my knight on that square" or "my opponent's weakness is f7," but it's getting to those squares where I have trouble. In the middle game, I never know how to decide which piece to move, whether I should have a definite goal in mind, or whether I should just move to "generally good" areas. If I don't know what to do, should I just make general developing moves? How do I know when to look for specific moves and when to just develop?