Improving board vision

I need some pointers. I used to play chess quite a bit, even played for my high school team but stopped playing for many years due to various reasons. Now that I've started playing again I find that I sometimes miss important things (ie: possible mates, forks/pins of my material which I discover when I lose a piece, etc.). How can I improve my board vision so I don't miss so much? Thanks.

take your time over the move... theres no hurry

Conversely, you can force yourself to play some chess games at very high rates of speed. Playing bullet chess will definitely help with pattern recognition and the likes, it wont help you develop solid strategy however.

Lol well I am due for an eye exam. 

lukeyboy_xx and alabaster_knight you both make valid points. I'll see which one works for me.

 You have to study books on chess tactics to gear your brain to automatically search for certain patterns. Also you should practice problem solving so you get in the habit of looking at every possible move. Playing correspondence games (3 days, 1 day ...) is helping me tremendously in getting back my chess vision.

there are some exercises you can do, particularly with the knights, that can help as well.  I recall a post on here, or an article - can't remember which - where the person was touting a rapid method for learning chess and it revolved around pattern recognition.  You might try looking that up? But I personally can't testify to how great it is.  Another way is the tactics trainer because it forces you to recognize opportunities quickly similar to bullet chess.

In the end, nothing will help more than playing and feeling the pain of blunders.

i agree with the tactics books and tactics trainer idea, it help me alot

I dont disagree, but another way would be to NOT take your time, just play loose, play again, loose, and after a few hundred games you will begin to win :)

moonwalker, do you mean lose or loose?

Thanks for all the advice. I've been using the tactics trainer here and also on chesstempo.com and I'm hovering around 50% success on both sites (as of now 46% here on tactics trainer). I'll also try to slow down. I sometimes push ahead with a plan and miss my opponents moves that undermine it. As for books, can anyone recommend a good book on tactics? Thanks again.

I would think that if you are trying to develop board vision you should avoid playing fast games. When you play slowly, against somewhat better opponents, you get punished for your mistakes.

If you want to get some software, there are tactical exercises on both Fritz and Chessmaster. I have both and they seem to help.

Check out:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/board-vision

go to http://chess.emrald.net/ and work as many puzzles a day as you can.  Its free to sign up and very effective.

I don't know if this is the kind of board vision you mean, but I think this is helpful: do mental exercises to develop your sense of the board.  It's actually best to do this without a board and just in your head.  For instance, what color is e4, or what color is the c1-h6 diagonal?  Or if my knight is at f3, how many steps does it take to get to b6?  Or just try to memorize a short game and play it out in your head.  These kinds of exercises can be helpful, but in more a fundamental way than recognition of common patterns. Think of it as speed training for your mind's eye, which will certainly help your board vision and in turn your tactics too.

 The book from where I learnt about tactics is "Winning Chess: How to see Three Moves Ahead" by by Irving Chernev and Fred Reinfeld. It is an alltime classic - you can read it without computer or a chess board, full of diagrams, and explaining every middlegame tactical principle with lots of excercises. Unfortunately, it is in Descriptive Notation, but that is described at the beginning.

Other books highly recommended by others are "Learn Chess Tactics" by John Nunn, "Winning Chess Tactics" by Yasser Seirawan - but I haven't read them.

Bin there, done that, got the T-shirt. (Got the whole bloomimg wardrobe actually!) I usually find it is because I have got so wrapped up in my own cunning plan that I rush my move and don't examine the board carefully enough. Nine times out of ten I promptly lose my queen. I have also found that when I do take my time to examine the board I am starting to find potential traps two or three moves ahead.