How do I stop blundering in timed & live chess?

Sort:

ChessCaviaar

Nov 1, 2022

So I am currently ~1100 in daily chess, ~1050 in rapid 10 min chess, & ~1950 in puzzles. I've made some serious progress that I'm proud of in those areas. And overall, I can tell I'm improving & playing better, more sound chess.

My concern though is that I still make some pretty terrible blunders. Like painfully obvious blunders. These tend to occur in rapid 10 minute & live chess played over the board. When I'm playing over the board they're often 10 min timed games or games where my opponent & I press each other to make moves fairly quickly.

On the one hand, I know mistakes are apart of the game. Chess is humbling. I often lose games based on mistakes I make rather than exceptional play from my opponent. It is par for the course to an extent. However, I wonder sometimes why I continue to revert back to old habits & avoidable mistakes. When I experience reversions, I'll often lose 2-4 games in a row, in which all of them there are some terrible blunders. For example, today, I lost a game over the board where I was up 5 points in the endgame & forgot about back rank mate, blocked by rooks ability to retreat & boom! Game over.

My question is what advice do you all have for me here? Am I missing something? Is there certain exercises or trainings that can help with this? Or do I simply need to carry on & accept that these mistakes are apart of the process?

I'm including below one of my recent blunders that made shout out loud in agony afterward. It was a 10 min rapid game. I am black. The computer at this point has me up 1.3. My next move was Rb8??? After Bxb8, the computer has me down 7.8. I went on to lose (obviously).

Here was my thought process: I moved Rb8 because I was hoping to protect b6. I also was aware that I needed to move one of my Rooks because white had the option of Nc7 next forking them. The best move was Rd8. In the moment, I did not realize that Re6 already protected b6. I realize a few recurring themes with my faulty thought processes:

1) I tend to get tunnel vision. I zero in on one aspect of the board & neglect other dimensions. That usually comes back to bite me.

2) Sometimes, I will see a threat & note it, then go through other sequences, & ultimately forget about the first threat I saw & fall into that trap anyway! (Those moments are particularly frustrating.

So again, any advice or encouragement anybody has is greatly appreciated! Thanks.

stmhb

Nov 2, 2022

I am struggling with the same issue. our play styles and ratings and games are not that far apart.

I will set a temporary goal which is to end N game without blunders and focusing more on that and less on winning .

Once I do that, I love myself to pay a human game

If I blunder in that human game, I repeat the cycle