How do I stop missing hanging pieces?

12. Qc3 Nd4

I only saw the queen was simply hanging immediately after I Nd4. I was so caught up with Nd4 13... Nxc2+ that I completely missed Qc3 just left his queen hanging. I never expect my opponent to accidentally leave their valuable pieces hanging and so I just keep missing these opportunities. How do I start seeing them?

My first thought was to check the time control but I saw that it was a rapid ten minute game. It can happen to anyone.

/ Do you drive?

Drive a car or is this a chess term I'm not familiar with? I don't drive a car.

Yes, I was asking if you drive a car.  It has nothing to do with chess. I just had a vision of a pedestrian 🚸 somehow narrowly avoiding getting hit trying to cross a road.

When people start missing things like that, it usually means they are tired. Maybe you just need to get a good night's sleep.

I don't think that a player under the rating of 1000 should be playing 10 minute chess. It is just too fast and it inevitably leeds to making random moves and calculating very little. Play slower time controls.

Other than that, the solution is to improve your tactics and your board vision with this:

https://www.chess.com/puzzles

If you're playing fast chess like blitz or bullet, it's a hopeless case. If you are playing slow games, you need to scan the board looking for threats: not just direct threats but indirect ones. Hanging a piece is just an ooopsie. The biggest threats to your material are two-move setups where your opponent is setting up a discovered check or a future fork. Over time you may come to recognize these standard gimmicks, but you may not.

If you find a good move, look for a better one.

In bullet??? You'll lose every game.

You are not even 900 Rapid, 700 Blitz, 1100 Bullet, or 600 Puzzles.

What do you expect to find in the forums?

Do puzzles, play 15+10 or slower games, and go watch Chess YouTubers like Chess vibes, Gotham Chess, Chess network, agadmator, Krishna prem, Hanging Pawns, etc. And just try to enjoy the game - then, you will begin to notice hanging pieces more often.

One piece of advice I do know, though, is: When your opponent blunders a piece, you miss it, notice it right after you move, and get frustrated: Accept you missed it, and don't make it worse - just like when you yourself blunder (and your opponent notices it).

13.Bf6 was a bad move, and even thought you were still completely winning, it lowered your advantage (if your opponent had played correctly).

I get that you wanted to attack the Queen, and *Hope* that your opponent just doesn't notice it, but they just blundered their Queen - so excepting them to blunder it again one move later is stupid.

(I suck at Chess-notations, so if I messed it up, that's why)

To stop missing hanging pieces you need to start looking more carefully. Look at every single one of yours & his pieces every turn. You can't be lazy in this game. Good luck!

You are playing way too fast. This was 10 mins rapid, but you were playing all your moves, incl. the critical ones at blitz tempo.

Just don't expect any sort of progress if you are playing without thinking.

In this case, time control can't be the issue. This is the beginning of the game and there must have been enough time on the clock. Also, there aren't that many pieces developed, so there wasn't that much to check tactically. Therefore the mistake is that you didn't do a tactical check. So the problem must be that you don't (mentally) do what you should do every time it's your move. 

During a move you should look at the following. 1. What are the tactical possibilities in the position (for them and for me). 2. If there are no game winning tactics, what are 3 good moves to play? 3. Decide which move you want to play of those 3. 4. Check to see if that move doesn't blunder anything tactically. Stronger players do all of this much more intuitively, and less structured, but when starting out it's good to try and practice this. In time it'll become intuitive.

So the problem here lies in finding the tactical possibilities. How do you 'see' what tactics there are in a position? Many players think this is done solely by doing tons and tons of tactics, but that's not completely true. Tactical puzzles improve your pattern recognition: you start to recognize typical tactical traps in a position. But there are also solving strategies to solve tactical puzzles that you can (and should) use in your games. One of them is 'check, take, attack'. What you do is you look at every move that puts your opponent in check, every move that takes something and every move that attacks something. Checks, unprotected or insufficiently protected pieces and checkmating threats are the main targets for a tactic and that is nicely incorporated in this solving strategy. 

In this instance at move 12 you would look at the following moves:
- Check: none
- take: Nxf2, Nxc3
- attack: Qh4 (attacking the pawn on f2), Qg5, Nd4 and Nb4, Ng3, Bh3 (yes, even the silly ones can be powerful sometimes!). With attack it usually is sufficient though to look at unprotected or insufficiently protected pieces. In that sense, Qh4 would be the only move to look at, although Qg5 (threatening a very annoying check on c1) is nice to spot too, even though we usually try to attack checkmating squares and Qc1 (after Qg5) is not a checkmating threat.

You can go piece by piece and the more often you do it, the faster you'll get at it. This should help you limit the amount of blunders you'll make. If you find it difficult to quickly see all the moves a piece can make, you might want to do visualization exercises. Doing more puzzles will actually help you with that.

Hi! My name is Lauren Goodkind and I’m a respected  chess coach and chess YouTuber based in California: 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP5SPSG_sWSYPjqJYMNwL_Q

I have tips and resources to help you improve your chess skills so you can win more games.  

-I recommend two books for you: “50 Poison Pieces”   and “Queen For A Day: The Girl’s Guide To Chess Mastery.”  Both books are available on Amazon.com.  Both books are endorsed by chess masters!  

-If you are serious about chess, I highly recommend you hiring a chess coach to help you.  

-Also consider all checks and captures on your side and also your opponent’s side. Always as, “If I move here, where is my opponent going to move?”

-Play with a slow time control, such as G/30 so you have plenty of time to think before every move. 

I hope that this helps.  

A great video. He even gags on food at the beginning!

I notice that on October 11 you played 18 games. Did you take any time to analyze them? Or did you simply click the Next button as fast as possible and go on to another game? Take some time every day to study tactics, to play over some games of the great players, to do some practice drills, or some endgames (under puzzles). Just playing one game after another as fast as you can isn't going to get you anywhere.

No, I didn't. Two reasons, 1. I've been told that you don't learn much from games you win and I was on a big winning streak that day. Highest rating I've ever had. 2. I intend to analyze my day's games at the end once I've played a bunch. Although it doesn't seem I can stick to that plan.

Edit: But's not to say I don't analyze them. I just don't take my time to analyze them. I just run through them real quick to see where I blundered and why, what were missed wins and why, and move on.

10 min rapid games are mostly all I play. Blitz and bullet ratings don't accurately represent me because I've only played like 4 games of each compared to the 200+ games I've done in rapid.

I find chess puzzles frustrating because the goal is never clearly defined. Take Sudoku for example, you know what you're going for: get the numbers into their correct boxes. But chess puzzles don't tell you whether you're supposed to find a checkmate or fork a queen or get yourself into a position that's good even though it seems like you just lost your bishop for no reason. It seems like I'm expected to think like a computer and get myself into a position that's good 10 moves down the line. I don't understand what I'm meant to be doing and so I don't play them all that much.

In this forums, I expect to find a nudge, a direction, a "hey, check this out", or "you should try this".  Something to help me find a path.

Chess puzzle is pretty obvious once you get used to it. And if you want to improve, you have to do puzzle. You won't even know tactical position exist during a real match. Those puzzle will help u to become more aware when the position appear during the real match. Most beginner also didnt calculate when doing puzzle. You are supposed to calculate your move, not just making a guess.

You also need to do several checklist whenever you do puzzle:

1. Count material value. If you are down a lot of material, obviously winning material isnt the solution, you should look for checkmate or perpetual check to draw. If you have even material, then either checkmate or winning material will be the solution. (material = knight, bishop, rook, queen)

2. Enemy king safety. If enemy king is under a lot of attack, you need to look for checkmate ideas first.

3. Your king safety. If your king is about to be checkmated, then you will need to look for the most forcing moves. (At lower rated puzzle, this is usually not quite important but still a good habit to help with your tactical awareness)

Consider check gm Naroditsky's video about solving beginner puzzle: https://youtu.be/yomCUtZukPE

Here's a nudge:

But chess puzzles don't tell you whether you're supposed to find a checkmate or fork a queen or get yourself into a position that's good even though it seems like you just lost your bishop for no reason. It seems like I'm expected to think like a computer and get myself into a position that's good 10 moves down the line. I don't understand what I'm meant to be doing and so I don't play them all that much.

This right here is why you will not really improve. This confusing mess of "What's going on?" is what chess is.