Help seeing the whole board

Hi all. My biggest weakness is failing to properly take in the whole board.

I feel like my plans are generally good, and I have a decent understanding of making the pieces work together. What stops me from being a good player is my failure to read the whole board - I'm constantly leaving pieces hanging or failing to read discovered attacks or pins.

Short of just having a pre-move checklist ( what *was* this piece protecting? What pieces threated this space? etc.) are there any tips, tricks, or exercises you'd recommend to improve at reading the whole board?

Thanks.

Do you know the board? Can you visualize it? Can you instantly know the color of a square and name the diagonals on which it resides? Can you know where a knight can move to and from for each square? Can you imagine a piece on one square and in your mind give multiple shortest paths to get it to another square on the board?

If not, learning the board so that you can better visualize the consequences of your moves can go a long way to solving your problem.

The method I use is to take 5-10 minutes each day and look at a chess board. Physically touch each square and name it and state the color of the square. Run your finger along the diagonals and name them as well.

After a couple of weeks of doing that, start memorizing short games and replaying them in your mind, visualizing each move.

Pretty soon you'll be able to play a game of blindfold chess. At which poing you're going to be making far fewer visualization errors.

That won't mean you'll be seeing everything, but you won't be missing simple things nearly as much anymore.

In my experience,

1. Closely review the games you play after they are over to see where to you went wrong or right.

2. Inspect every one of your pieces and your opponents pieces before each move you make, specifically looking at which pieces can attack and where.  Doing this routinely may help you find good moves and prevent them for your opponent.

3. Look at the board even when it is your opponents turn.  Seeing the board more times makes it less likely that something obvious will escape your notice.

4. Do the tactics puzzles.

5. Practice! Practice! Practice!

Good luck!

An exercise that is quite useful is to set up a position (any position, but preferably a tactical one with many pieces). For each piece on the side you are playing, examine all squares to which it may move, training your mind's eye to follow the line of the rank and file to which a R may move (even through other pieces, such that you will naturally start picking up pins and x-rays), all the pocket squares to which a N may move, the diagonals of a bishop, etc.

Once you can do that effectively, extend the exercise such that you examine all squares two hops away for a N, squares a rook could get to in two moves (that means for each square on the file, examine the rank), etc.

It gets laborious, but done regularly, really improved my board vision.

On top of that, study tactics the regular way. And yes, use a checklist or a safety check before committing to a move.

I agree with teamdan. 

1.  train tactics

2.  start with the endgame and move backwards

learn the basic checkmates, key squares, opposition,

develope a plan in the middle game.

control the center, develope your pieces, and attack to gain tempo.  I see mosty your slow development in the opening, never play a3, h3.. they're a waste of time/tempo.  

cheers,

- - Steve

I have a little bit of the same problem, I can only see the part of the board that I am concentrating on. (queens side, center, kings side...)

Seeing the board has been a great problem for me too. My eyes always deceive me during the game.