Anyone want to analyze my games and give me any pointers?

1400 rapid player, only have time to play a game or two a week. Still enjoy playing though - if any stronger players want to look at my games and see what weaknesses I should prioritize, it'd be appreciated. 

The biggest reason people struggle in lower-level chess is because of blunders. They make them in almost every game.

A mistake can instantly put you in a bad position, no matter how well you played earlier: if you had great opening knowledge, great positional skills, great endgame skills, whatever; a single mistake can change everything (you lose a piece or get checkmated).

So, how do you avoid blunders? Follow this simple algorithm:

While avoiding blunders is crucial, I also share a few basic principles with my students. These principles help them figure out what to do in each part of the game - the opening, the middlegame, and the endgame. Understanding these simple principles is like having a map for your moves. I provide my students with more advanced algorithms that incorporate these fundamental principles. When you use this knowledge along with being careful about blunders, you're not just getting better at defending. You're also learning a well-rounded approach to chess. Keep in mind, chess is not just about not making mistakes; it's about making smart and planned moves to outsmart your opponent.

thanks for this! i took a quick look at my last 10 games, and according to the chess.com analysis, i'm blundering on average 1.8x/game. i then looked at my last 7 losses, and the blunder rate shoots up to 2.5x/game.

i went ahead and looked at the reviews and figured out where things went wrong. out of those 7 games, there were 4 'easy' blunders i could have stopped - the kind of thing where you just hang a major piece for no real reason. aside from that, i lost a game due to poor king safety, there were two tactical mistakes where i didn't calculate things well, and two bad decisions where i put a piece on a bad square and it gave my opponent a 2-move tactic that resulted in me losing a major piece. the rest of the 'mistakes' and 'blunders' are beyond me - things where the engine says i'm suddenly way down, but the line requires about a dozen high-level moves before my opponent can capitalize on anything.

all things considered, out of 7 games with a total of about 200 moves, i made 4 easy blunders. so maybe 2% chance i'm going to do something dumb that could have been avoided if i spent an extra 20 seconds looking at the board.

this is just a small sample of my games, but generally speaking it seems like maybe blunders aren't my biggest problem after all. maybe i'll take some time next week and see where else i fall apart, and where i need to focus.