How to Blunder Less | Chess Middlegames

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Everybody blunders sometimes, and that won’t ever change. You can, however, reduce the chance of blundering by changing your thinking process and practicing.

Blunders can happen at any stage of the game, to players of any strength, and in any time control. A 2800 player could hang his queen with two hours on the clock. Those things just happen. It could be a moment of blindness, stress, over confidence or something else, but there is no player who didn’t blunder horribly at one point.

To reduce the chances of blundering, you have to stay focused during the entire game. One move can mess up five hours of excellent play. Staying focused sounds logical, but in practice our minds wonder and miss stuff. The best way to make sure you stay on top of things and avoid ?? moves is to double check. Once you have finished your calculation, before touching the piece, just ask yourself whether your move loses a piece or gets mated. It takes 10 seconds. You’d be surprised… Sometimes it’s going to save you!

Blunders can, same as chess, be divided into three groups; opening, middlegame and endgame blunders. Opening blunders are a result of bad preparation and the lack of knowledge, and there is no excuse for them. Choose your repertoire and master it. Then they won’t happen. Endgame blunders can in the most part also be eliminated by studying in advance. Endgames are much simpler than the middlegame, which makes them possible to learn. If you learn the common principles such as the opposition, the rule of the square etc., the risk of blundering should reduce significantly.

As for middlegame blunders, they are a whole different story. There is no way to anticipate them, and no good way to prepare in advance. The best thing you can do is study tactical problems. Even though some blunders are played out of pure blindness (like Petrosian hanging his queen in the first example), most are a product of miscalculating or missing a certain continuation.

It often happens that you simply miss one of your opponents moves five moves deep into your calculation, and you’ve blundered. This is why it’s often said that bad players play less blunders then intermediate ones – they don’t even try to play a tactical sequence because they didn’t spot it, hence they don’t blunder.

Solving puzzles and tactical problems will make you less prone to missing tactical opportunities, faster at calculating and this in turn will result in less blunders. Try to do as many as possible. Every day!

#chess