Plan for improvement, part 2 : play chess

I'm fully convinced of the fact that playing lots of games is an essential part of chess training. It's important to learn to use your tactical skills in real game situation. For some reason this isn't as evident as it sounds (for me it certainly isn't). An example :

This position is from a game I played on FICS today, white's last move was Bb2. If this position would be a tactical problem I wouldn't hesitate and play Bxf3 (you can't even call this a tactic, it's just taking the exchange). Believe it or not, but for some reason I did not see this in the actual game. When he moved his bishop I only thought "oh no, he's attacking my bishop, I have to move it!". So that's what I did, I played Ba5. He then played Rg3+, I lost the g7 pawn, his rook is on the 7th rank, the beginning of the end... .

So beside my tactical training I'm trying to play at least one slow game per week. I'm playing these games on FICS (SD/30) or at my chess club (club tournament, time control 40/120 + 1 hour KO). I'm analysing each game, hoping to learn from my mistakes. I'll try to post some of my best games / blunders on this blog.