How do you scan the board?

I look for what my opponent is planning on doing and create a plan accordingly. 

So you wait for the opponent's move and play accordingly. So you look at squares or pieces? or both? so how do you go about it? The board is infinite!

I look at both, but a lot of it is just thousands of games giving me a strong understanding of where the tactics are, what the good plans are, if i should be worrying about my opponents plan or continuing with mine, etc. So i guess the short answer would be strong pattern recognition.

Good question. Just keep playing and keep solving ttacttics puzzles yyour subconscious mind will get richer with more posittional sense and understtanding and soon tha will reflectt over tthe board in your games

That's what I was aiming for to train the subconscious. I wanted to learn the proper steps on scanning the board so I wouldn't be all over and wasting time to repeat. I am hoping to to it consciously now until it becomes automatic... like muscle memory or auto pilot. There are ideas on looking at where pieces can go or what squares they control. But how do you do it? Do you look at pawns first then minor then major pieces? King checks? Do you look at opponents camp first, or your camps first?

There are different ways to look at the board. First there is a scan for all the forcing moves in the position. You need to do this multiple  times even during one move. For example you need to do it for your opponent, for yourself and you need to do it again for the position you'll reach after you actually make your move (as a blundercheck before playing). Then you can also look at the board to see what your assets are: more space, which piece is better or worse than your opponent's counterpart. You could do this for example when your opponent is thinking. It can all help you pick the best move or prevent your opponent's plans.

Thanks RAU4ever those are higher level ideas that I want to get into some day. Right now I need a foundation as simple as possible. I guess I am more focus on what pieces you start looking at a glance i.e. the pieces in the center to the pieces in the corner? I'm sure you probably at the level that these board vision is automatic and you go straight to looking in for ideas.

Looking for forcing moves is fundamental. Every chess player needs to look for them. You need to see all the checks, all the captures, all the moves that threaten to win a piece or threaten mate. That's the basis of all tactics. Of course I do understand that this is time consuming at first and that it is hard for lower rated players (at fiest). 

As to which piece you start with: that should probably be the queen as they are powerful in tactics. It doesn't have to be a set pattern though. Usuay pieces that are in the middle of the action are more likely to have a tactic than a piece on the backrank. But that's something experience will help you with.

So I plan on playing 1 - 3 days per move chess games. Train to get a habit in scanning the board optimally. I will look at the opponents king first and the squares it can go to then to its queen, knights, bishops, rooks, then pawns. And I'll do the same on my side. So if you guys have a better order or even add into the vision training. Let me know. Thanks

If you are playing games where you can think as much as you want for a move (daily games for example), I think there is no reason not to look at where every one of your opponents pieces can go before making a move. Pay special attention to checks, captures, attacks, undefended pieces of the first and second type and overloaded pieces.

the main reason chess players blunder is our brain starts chunking when it shouldn't be sometimes we need to chunk but some times out brains just do it without us wanting to , we have to train checking for captures threats and checks , before every move, and at first you'll forget to do it but you gotta just keep forcing yourself to check for these things before you move and the more you practice it the less you blunder. 

Scanning for undefended pieces of the first and second type is something that is very important which often times isn't mentioned. Especially if it is an open position you need to constantly scan for undefended pieces, both for your undefended pieces and for undefended pieces of your opponent. The more open the position, the more this matters. 

Seeing what squares are controlled by my pieces and by my opponent's pieces is something that I am lot better at than I used to be. It comes with experience. 

If I play a 15+10 or longer game I check where every single one of my opponents pieces can go to, otherwise I scan for checks and how can my opponent capture my pieces and I see some threats but I also miss some threats that my opponent has. Pattern recognition helps with seeing threats. It also helps with seeing tactics for the opponent. Experience helps me see dangerous plans and ideas that my opponent can have. A lot of it is experience, really (even intuition is a result of experience).

Thank you guys for adding great points to add to my training. I do agree that your brain gets hypnotized from certain positions that you miss even the obvious blunders. That is why I want to try repeating scanning the simplest routine over and over so that I if I do get stuck in my present thought I know I have all the pieces and squares in the back of my mind.

Checking whether pieces are aligned on a diagonal (bishop skewer, pin), or if they are aligned horizontally or vertically (rook skewer, pin) helps. If my opponent has a good knight I am paranoid of forks, especially if I put my pieces on forkable squares, but my opponent can't fork me because I guard the forkable square by another piece, I am paranoid about my opponent removing the defender and forking me, or me removing the defender myself (blundering) and allowing a fork. Everything works vice versa as well, I look for forks and forkable squares for myself and I check when my opponent's pieces are aligned (although not always, especially not in blitz games, but even there I try).

The basic blunder checks (taking every tactical motif I've seen and seeing if it at all could apply to my current position or my oponnents') and then more recently as I've gotten better I do "endgame checks" to see if I would have a favorable position if I were to initiate several trades. "Endgame checks" have honestly granted me a lot of wins in middlegame positions that are otherwise unclear. Also it feels great when your oponnent is trying to push into you but you just trade off all the pieces which makes his attack slowly die off until he's just worse in an endgame.