How to stop blundering?

Came here because I’ve been having the exact same problem lately. Thanks for tips everyone, some real gems here. And for the most part it’s common sense, I just needed to hear (read) it out loud.

i feel tired 24/7, what should i do? -.-

Slow Down and Take Your Time. The most common reason for blunders is simply rushing your moves. In Blitz or even Bullet games, this is often unavoidable. But especially when you're looking to get better at Rapid chess, you really have to slow down your playing ://

Be warned! I thought that puzzles will do me good, but instead it turned out to be disastrous for my game. I decided to decrease my blundering rate and I spent an entire day doing puzzles. My puzzle rating went up to 2400 from zero. When I went back to the game the next day, I practically tripled my blundering rate. I've never played so bad as if I had become suddenly blind.

I believe that the reason is that when practicing puzzles there is always a forced way to win and all other pieces not involved in the master plan are passive expendables that you tend to condition your brains to ignore.

However, in a real game, blitz or otherwise, you are not always having a forced way of winning when your spot an potential opportunity.

I wish there were more tricky puzzles where it is not clear if there is a forced way to win or not. One has either find a way to check mate or indicate that it's not possible. This would help with decreasing your blundering.

When you’re 1200-1500, focus on technique and ingraining a systematic thought process whereby it becomes second nature.

Hi!

I wrote a post on the subject, please check it out if interested: https://www.chess.com/blog/maafernan/instructive-games-ii-prevent-blunders-and-profit-from-your-opponents

Good luck!

do lichess puzzles, they are more practical and realistic than chess.com's puzzles.

a lot of people downvoted this person

i dont think they mean the analysis with the lines and eval, they probably mean it like the one you can open in games for calculations

For what it's worth, I have set up a small and free chess app exactly for the purpose of avoiding blunders by learning from your own past mistakes:

You import your own chess games, and the app will screen your moves and generate puzzles from the blunders and mistakes that you have made in these games.

Then, you can replay the positions and find better moves. The app will support you by assessing your moves and recommending best moves based on chess engine evaluations. Like this, you will learn from your past blunders and improve your chess skills!

Try it out on the Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cbt.chess_blunder_trainer

Let me know, what you think!

You can find more info hier: www.chessblundertrainer.com

I agree with that, blunder-check each move. If you're playing bullet all the time then switch to 10 mn rapid, you'll learn patterns that will help you both in blitz and bullet. Analyze your game so you don't do twice the same blunder (pawn fork, queen fork, back-rank mate)

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Play slower games and think thoroughly before making a move, with enough time and experience you'll be able to see all threats on the board (at least obvious ones).

Dear Crunchtime88,

I am a certified, full-time chess coach, so I hope I can help you. Everybody is different, so that's why there isn't only one general way to learn. First of all, you have to discover your biggest weaknesses in the game and start working on them. The most effective way for that is analyzing your own games. Of course, if you are a beginner, you can't do it efficiently because you don't know too much about the game yet. There is a built-in engine on chess.com which can show you if a move is good or bad but the only problem is that it can't explain to you the plans, ideas behind the moves, so you won't know why it is so good or bad.

You can learn from books or Youtube channels as well, and maybe you can find a lot of useful information there but these sources are mostly general things and not personalized at all. That's why you need a good coach sooner or later if you really want to be better at chess. A good coach can help you with identifying your biggest weaknesses and explain everything, so you can leave your mistakes behind you. Of course, you won't apply everything immediately, this is a learning process (like learning languages), but if you are persistent and enthusiastic, you will achieve your goals.

In my opinion, chess has 4 main territories (openings, strategies, tactics/combinations and endgames). If you want to improve efficiently, you should improve all of these skills almost at the same time. That's what my training program is based on. My students really like it because the lessons are not boring (because we talk about more than one areas within one lesson) and they feel the improvement on the longer run. Of course, there are always ups and downs but this is completely normal in everyone's career.

I hope this is helpful for you. Good luck with your games!

Hi!

You should apply a blunder preventing method (CCA). I wrote a post on the subject, please check it out if interested:

https://www.chess.com/blog/maafernan/instructive-games-ii-prevent-blunders-and-profit-from-your-opponents

Good luck!