Why Do You Blunder?

   After making my most recent blunder, I tried to understand how I could have made such an obvious mistake. It wasn't  subtle, it was major and really very obvious.

   It seems to me that one or more of the following are present when I make an obvious major blunder.

1. Carelessness - not looking at consequences of move through haste.

2. Laziness - just being to lazy to work out results; 

3. Overconfidence - because of a superior position or just an unjustified attitude.

Again, I'm talking about blunders that afterward you kick yourself, not the minor or subtle ones, but then again, maybe even the subtle ones are made because of some of the above but to a lesser degree.

Why do you make those blunders that have you slapping your forehead immediately after you make the move?

I might add another reason:

4. Falling "so in love" with a plan or series of moves that I fail to look at what has changed with my opponent's last move.

Anyone?

any or all of those.   For me I would say about 1/2 are some sort of blindness.  I spend the time, think I took a good look at all the options, and then move.  Then my opponent does something that wins a piece or rips me to shreds on the king or the like, that I simply either 1) did not consider as a move at all for him or 2) considered it and it looked poor/useless/dumb but turns out to have dire consequences.

I am the Grandmaster of blunderers( well it is kind of successful in a perverse  sort of way) but I too often wonder,,,,why did I do that? i can accept losing when I am out  positioned or strangled or just outclassed...it still hurts though...what i hate most is virtually giving the game to my oppoenent because I hung  a rook or worse.I am an intermediate player who knows my limitations..... in a tight posotional struggle I get tired and bored.....I like exciting gambits and exchanges and I fancy my chances  in those kind of games. I am probably too lazy to put in the time needed to improve significantly but what I can do is concentrate on not 'giving the game away through carelessness'. if i could decrease careless errors by as little as 10 percent then I am confident I will win ( or draw) more games against players who are positionally or technically better than myself. Perhaps if i work on that one aspect of my game, any successes i have might just influence me to study chess a little more... or perhaps not. I am at least pinpointing one thing I can do to improve( counting to 5 after deciding my move while I rescan the board before commiting to my response). My ambitions are not lofty...but if I focus I hope i can gain some small successes and then plan another target chess behaviour.

Not always checking for checks, captures, and threats, not looking deep enough, playing off general principles when calculation is called for (assess the position five moves from now, not simply move a piece for being the least active), or going ahead with a plan when preventing theirs should come first.

I'm lazy.

Some blunders come from investigating one move first, deciding it is bad for an obvious reason, going on to burn time calculating the outcomes of a few other candidate moves and not liking the results, then banging out the first move in haste after realizing how much time has been spent. I have done this many times.

I get tired and in time trouble.

because i suck at chess.. i just saw a guy with 2000 otb rating playing 5 minute blitz and he played 3 times better than i play in 30 minute blitz...

Im absolutly horrible

Why do I blunder? I didn't think there was any other play ?

I blunder consciously and unconciously. That's right I blunder so that I don't blunder.

that is far too advanced for me to comprehend. you definetly should write philosophical books

It's an easy concept. Did Thomas Alva Edison never fail before? Then why was he so successful? Failure is just Success in the making. Do you believe that? If you don't, maybe you are the one who has to make a new philosophical approach. Buddy, lol.

Impatience.

Lots of good things to think about from all of above. Posting in another thread, it dawned on me that I really know what I should do to analyze a position and choose the proper candidate, but I simply lack the discipline to do it EVERY move. Chess_gg was one of the best of the above.

My last major blunder was from overconfidence.

It was KQ+6P vs. KQ+4P, 2 of my pawns were passed-pawns and quite close to queening.

Then I gave a check to my opponents king who hid behind his pawns. Had no way to recheck and no way to bring my queen back close to my king.

I had overlooked a check from my opponent which would allow him to keep me checking and force a draw.

I saw the draw but then played another move "hoping" that it would avoid a draw and Queen my pawn.

But the move that avoided the draw allowed a mate in 4.

So having a massive advantage in material shall not keep you from calculating and especially not get you into "hoping".

Why do I blunder?

Because I'm a freaking idiot, that's why.

For me, it's mostly carelessness which happens for a variety of different reasons:

1. exhaustion: at the end of a 3-hour or longer game, I've often thought so much and calculated so much on many moves that I'm mentally exhausted
2. time pressure: sometimes combined with exhaustion, but not necessarily, as in the case of blitz; in slow games, I have a tendency to use too much time, which contributes to exhaustion and getting into time trouble
3. not taking my opponent or the game seriously enough when I have achieved an overwhelming winning advantage: I really hate to lose, and even though I know I still need to finish a won game, I have trouble staying as motivated after I've attained a decisive advantage (say up two pawns or a piece with no compensation for the opponent), and I sometimes don't put as much into the game after I'm "winning easily"
4. lapsing into "autopilot mode", and forgetting to look at all my opponent's checks, captures, and threats; this is more likely to happen when I'm exhausted, under time pressure or otherwise stressed, or am no longer taking my opponent and the game seriously, but it happens much less frequently in slow games now than it used to