Lessons from my 1st chess.com turn-based tournament: Round 1, Game 4 - Board vision problems

Opponent: eysgar

Game #4: eysgar vs. Narazadd

   The one important thing about weak players' games is that they are almost always decided by great blunders! The winner is certainly the second to last player to blunder.

   It becomes obvious that weak players like myself and my opponent shouldn't even be bothering much with more abstract concepts as strategy, plans, etc. Even tactics must be practiced at a very basic level. Let's be frank: players at my level are simply missing hanging pieces!

    Since this is correspondence chess, there is no excuse for such misses. I mean, it's one thing if a begginer has to play blitz or bullet and simply doesn't notice a hanging knight or bishop. But in this case we have 48 hours to analyse the position before making any move. There's no question that the problem is with thought proccess. And by that I mean the most basic kind of thought proccess. In other words, this is what Heisman is talk about when he says that safety is the first priority.

  Every time the opponent makes a move, I am supposed to ask "is it safe?". Check if the moved piece is not attacked, if it is not alligned with other pieces (alloweing pins, skewers and discoveries), and if the move didn't unblock an attack to another hanging piece. The same must be asked before any move that I considering myself!

   I am sure there is a level when one keeps a subconscious awareness of what pieces/squares are attacked and defended, but before a beginner reaches that level, they must ask (consciously) "Is it safe?"