How do you make blunder checks?

Hi,

I just picked up chess again and have played some really great games against strong opponents, both positionally and tactically, and I have even beaten a 2100 rated player in a standard rated game.

However, I just played a tournament against very weak opposition and the only reason I did not win the tournament was because I somehow managed to blunder a piece in two of my games. In one of the games it was due to timetrouble, which is another issue for another topic. In another game it was only after ~10 moves.

There is a contradiction because because in quite a few of the games I made piece sacrifices and calculate several moves and won in quite beautiful style.

The blunders is clearly soemthing I need to fix to reach the rating/playing strength corresponding to my chess understanding.

Therefore I am curious to know:

1. Do stronger players consiously make blunder checks before making a move?
2. Is there a way to train to avoid simple blunders?

Thank you!

good question. probably experience matters here.

hi! I'm trying to understand what is a blunder check exactly?

It's a good idea to have a mental checklist of blunders to avoid before you make a move.

• Does your opponent have any checks?
• Are your pieces hanging?
• Are your pawns hanging?
• Are you moving a piece required to defend something?

If you are prone to a specific error, put that on your list.

The more you do it, the faster you'll do it.

At first you have to consciously force yourself to make sure you're not making a huge blunder.

After you practice a long time though, you develop good habits, and it becomes more of an unconscious process i.e. you do it automatically.

It also helps when you face strong players. The sacrifices and "beautiful" wins in some of your games may have been blunders, but if your opponents were bad then they rewarded you, which only reinforces your bad habits. So for that reason too, as you get better, you just naturally stop doing certain things.

And by "a long time" I mean a year or two after you started playing seriously 

You're not going to suddenly stop blundering after a week.

Good advice, llamonade. In fact, I can confidently predict that you, like the rest of us, will never stop making blunders. But if you make fewer than your opponents, you will do all right.

I've just had a run of 12 games at 2 1 time control with 8 blunders in total, an exceptional run for me (score 9/12) . On a bad day I might have 8 in a game.

Sure, I even trip sometimes, or fumble to pick up a cup on a table right in front of me, but for events like that I can count all the occurrences in a year on one hand.

New players might blunder every game.

Seems like the OP could not get the advise in time.

Checking for any possible blunders so that players can avoid making those moves.

I misunderstood the title the first time and had this thought in mind.

Making a check which is a 'blunder'.

Sorry, llamonade, I was imprecise. I was speaking to the original poster. As I said, we all blunder!

It merely means to calculate short sequences of forcing moves. Surely you do that all the time.

But it's not advice for 2200 it's advice for U1200.

I saw a kid's game tonight, he played in some scholastic championship (U1200 section or something) and he threatened mate in one... but didn't notice his queen could be captured for free. "Don't do that" isn't very useful advice, so you make it a "separate step" until they're doing it automatically.

In the beginning it sort of is though right?

That kid's game I saw that I told you about? The kid that lost his queen (on move... 10 or so)? In the end he won that game... the time control was slow too (not a G/30).

If you don't see short forcing sequences the game becomes completely random.

It an hardly be a bad idea to take a moment to make your move in your mind and to see if it's safe before making it on the board. I don't know if that constitutes a "blunder check," but it just seems like common sense

What you need is a little sign saying "look at the little sign saying 'Blunder Check'".

yeah