Defending Pieces

I know that one of my biggest weaknesses is that I end up with undefended pieces. I usually do all right during the opening moves, but then I go downhill from there. Yes, I understand how important it is to defend my pieces, but I don't know how to do it!

Are there any tips anyone can give me for learning how to advance my pieces and begin an attack while still keeping them safely defended? 

https://www.chessstrategyonline.com/content/tutorials/danger-sense-protect-your-pieces

Yep... I know all about the need to do this. What I'm lacking is practical information on HOW to do it.  

https://pawnbreak.com/how-to-protect-a-piece-in-chess/

It's never worth asking how, because nobody ever tells you. Apparently you've just got to figure it out for yourself.

"How" is easy in theory, hard in practice. When you decide on a move, before you make it, look at it again. What you are looking for is easy winning moves for your opponent.

When your opponent makes a move, try to figure out what that move does. Is any of your pieces attacked?

Doing these stuff requires time and concentration. Not easy.

If that was true, most players wouldn't still be blundering at least half of their moves. The only thing that definitely, undisputably works, is getting ludicrous amounts of experience, in tens of thousands of games over many years. And like many people, I've lost the patience to do that. I'm actually considering building my own chess engine to do exactly what you people never do, which is explain WHY moves are good or bad. And honestly, I pledge right now to make it free and open-source if it gets that far.

I am learning a lot by experience. Yes, I lose almost all of the games I play, but for the first time, I'm having fun playing chess. Here are some of my thoughts, based on my learning-from-experience efforts:

1. Make sure I'm not accidentally moving a piece to a square that's under attack. 

2. If nothing is attacking a piece, it's all right for it to be undefended for a move.

3. If I see that a piece is undefended, I can (hopefully) find a way to protect it on the next move.

4. If pieces are of equal value, don't sweat the trade.

5. Look at my opponent's pieces and see if anything is undefended. If so, can I capture it?

Do these sound like good "general" starting points? Any other tips you would add from your experience to help a beginning level player?

If you could do that, you'll probably get a Nobel Prize for that. Building an AI that understands and teaches chess is very far away from what engines are doing right now... in my opinion it would require decades of work, of dozens of experts, with no guarantee of success.

On the other hand I don't know who "you people" are. On this forum there are dozens of guys who are happy to tell you why a move is bad or good. (Mind you, I wouldn't trust the judgement of some of them.)

If it helps newer players to understand the game and encourage them to keep playing rather than lose patience, then it's worth trying.

Worth trying the impossible? Maybe. Maybe not. There are thousands of books and millions of articles and million of videos that do that already.

@1

"I understand how important it is to defend my pieces, but I don't know how to do it!"
++ Nimzovich stressed the importance of overprotection.
Count how many times your opponent attacks a square. Count how many times you defend that square. You should aim to defend 1 more than it is attacked.

Then by an additional attack on that square your opponent cannot force you to a defensive move, as it already is defended.

On the other hand all your defenders are free to move without abandoning the defence of the square.

"how to advance my pieces and begin an attack while still keeping them safely defended?"
++ You can only attack after your opponent has weakened himself, i.e. neglected his defence.

Ah! See... this is something I've never heard before. Every time I've attempted to learn chess, I've been advised "Attack the king, attack the king, attack the king." 

My goal now will be looking for pieces my opponent leaves undefended or weak. Maybe I can learn to spot mistakes and, eventually, know how to capitalize on them.

I'm finding that giving myself small goals each day -- and then playing lots of games for experience -- is helping me gain a greater appreciation for chess. Even though I'm losing almost all of my games, I'm actually enjoying the learning process now. 

 In chess we achieve what the rival allows us to do, which is another way of saying that even playing very well you cannot win if the rival does not make mistakes.

You should always establish which one of your and opponents pieces are undefended before you move. Scan the board for undefended pieces and be extra careful whether your opponent has a tactic with regards to your undefended pieces or whether he can straight up take them for free. Strive to have most of your pieces defended. I rarely have more than 1 minor piece undefended in the middlegame, if I have 2 undefended minor pieces then one of them is probably behind my pawns and it is not easily accessible by enemy pieces. Strive to have no more than 1 minor piece which is in front of your pawns undefended. If you get some benefit from putting pieces on squares such that 2 of your minor pieces will be undefended you can do it, but you need to be extra careful not to lose them due to tactics or due to 1 move blunders. Try not to have this situation of having several pieces in front of your pawns undefended for more than a couple of moves and again, you need to be extra careful during those couple of moves. Here is another thing, every time you want to move a piece to a square where it will not be defended you need to establish whether it is safe to do so. 

Ok, so I have seen one of your recent games. The biggest issue by far was that you didn't see when your opponents were attacking your pieces and when you moved your pieces you often moved them to the squares where they can be captured. Now, here is how to cure this problem. Before making each one of your moves you need to look at all your opponents pieces and see what they can capture. You should also look for all the checks that they can give. Next, when you decide which move you want to make before you play it you need to check whether the square to which you want to move your piece is attacked by enemy pieces. If it is and if you are going to lose material in the trade, then don't play that move. Don't expect to immediately stop blundering completely. This takes practice. And also, you can never completely eliminate silly blunders, even the likes of former world champion Kramnik blunder mate in 1 from a winning position sometimes (but very rarely).

Most players aren't blundering half of their moves. Maybe you think otherwise because most of your friends are below 600. People play a lot of chess games because they like chess. People often do explain why a move is good or bad, if you want to continue to believe that they are consistently wrong and you are consistently correct, even though they are hundreds of points higher rated than you, then that's a you problem. I am saying this a conto what you said in another forum thread, that people call out your bad moves despite you being convinced that your logic was good. Reality doesn't care about what you think.

I really appreciate the helpful advice. I'm trying to figure out what my opponent is wanting to do, and sometimes it's a real struggle, especially where knights are involved! I especially miss diagonal attacks, so one of my goals is to watch all the diagonals more closely. I lose pieces to bishops a lot! 

Of course I'm still struggling to understand when and why to make trades and/or sacrifices. There's so much involved in this fascinating game. I'm hoping that my learning to pay attention to one thing at a time I'll gradually begin seeing some improvement. 

It takes practice. You can avoid missing long diagonal captures by looking at your opponents bishops and seeing all the squares to which they can go to. With time, you will get better at it and this process will be faster. You can do the same with opponents knights. But don't worry if you still make some mistakes, as everything else in life, it takes practice to get better. Starting a manual car when 2 wheels are in a small hole in the ground is easy to a person who is used to manual cars, yet it is impossible to do for a person who has never driven a manual car before.

#11 You know, that comment makes me realise more than ever that this entire community is full of upper class-holes. That's how you respond when I'm pledging to help newer players with my intelligence and innovation. Meanwhile, you toffs believe whole-heartedly that advice counts as spamming the same four sentences, so-called 'guides' without context, meaningless quotes from people I've never heard of and couldn't care about, and an endless tirade of insults when people challenge you. I am so tempted to ditch chess, because I don't want to be involved with this pathetic community any longer. You're like a bunch of used tampons with severe autism.