Improving the observation skill & making less blunders

I've noticed that the most common reason for me to lose a game is not lack of knowledge but failure to observe whats happening on the board. This is specially true for rapid games but it happens in slow chess as well. In a recent game i moved a rook to a square where it was captured on the next move for free, although i spent several minutes before making that move! It also happens that i "forget" that a piece is defending something and move it away, or i don't see my opponents threat, even if it is straight forward. When doing tactics puzzles it happens sometimes that i look at it for several minutes and then suddenly realize something like "oh, i have a passed pawn in the top left corner on the board!"

If i could observe more quickly & accurately and reduce the amount of gross blunders i would win a lot more games, specially rapid games. What do you do to improve your observation skill and blunder less? I am already taking my time before making a move (in most cases).

You're considering things upside down, most likely.

The very first thing to do is to make an activity inventory (for both sides!): What is been threatened, which squares are under effective control, which material is inadequately defended or just hanging. From here is about looking for ways to coordinate the pieces, into the attack if strong and fast threats are within reach, and into the defense if the rival is the one threatening fast and strong. If the situation is somewhat peaceful (not much activity or weaknesses for neither side), then we check which pieces and pawns that can be "improved" and other general considerations.

Players committing the sort of tactical mistakes you describe often begin with piece improvement, general considerations... and skip all the rest.

Hmm, you are on to something. When the game starts i think about which opening i should play (because my opponent hasn't made any moves or made very few moves), and from there i continue to think how i should develop, how i should attack etc. Thinking of my opponents plans and analyse the consequences of his last move only comes later and i spend too little time on that part. That's when the blunders happen.

If i switch to begin my thought process by asking myself what my opponent is trying to do and make an inventory of the current position before starting to think about my plans & pieces, maybe the amount of blunders would decrease. Acquiring a habit of performing blunder check is also a really good idea. 

I'll work on making a list to ensure i don't forget about what to think and in which order.

Ya, the point is that the plans are deduced from the reality in front of you, which is the piece activity detectable and foreseeable. To build castles in the sky is usually a bad idea.

To tell you the truth, it amazes me how millions have heard and read about "precision", but don't investigate what's being measured: Activity.

For example, say Black has space advantage in a sector, which increases the chances of the existence of an effective disposition of his forces to coordinate threats on White's camp. Then White should consider if prophylactically defending the possible targets with the utmost economy, or if taking control of the necessary squares for the Black pieces to complete their coordination, or if developing threats somewhere else as to not allow Black the tempos to fulfill his plan. There are other contingencies, and the solution can be a mixture of several, but you get the idea.

So you see there's a method with contingencies, where the precision when choosing and combining depends on the piece activity on the board. General considerations, on the other hand, save analytical time but can be incredibly imprecise the more activity exists on the board.

The novice sees and dreams like others. The master observes and acts upon his own conclusions. In Lasker's words: "The good observer can resist almost everything".

I find what helps me is expecting and then neutralizing every individual move from the opponent and then waiting for a mistake or opportunity.

That's good stuff.  My paraphrase, as inaccurate as it may be, is to observe and evaluate "Piece and Pawn Activity" (and "activity" would have to be described and defined in a separate post), and then make decisions based upon that key observation which in turn will reduce blunders.

I can define activity as whatever logically influences the rival's choices.

Playing chess –as opposed to pushing wood– is about developing an unstoppable initiative, and the initiative is composed of activity. By the way, the "unstoppable" part is the key. Some believe that chess is about jumping on the rival's throat, without properly evaluating if their activity can be stopped or will run dry. This is important as developing activity may require an investment in static and dynamic values, therefore should the investment not pay then it will be the devil to pay.

Be as it may, by committing tactical mistakes on a regular basis a player tells everybody that he's not checking both side's activity when choosing how to arrange his pieces and pawns.

Horizontals threats are harder to see than verticals or diagonals ones. 

There's no middle ground between objective and subjective evaluations. Strong players are strong because they know how to play from the needs of the position. Sometimes, tho, it's not easy to determine which are those needs, and a player may lead the game into such scenarios assuming he will solve the problems better than his adversary. In other words, a strong player may speculate at times but doesn't make a living out of it, no matter who's in front of him given that, if anything, he will be scorned by his peers for playing like that.

Amateurs, on the other hand, often assume that any attack is advantageous just because having the initiative is an advantage by itself, right? And since they have the advantage they have to attack, right?

Truth is that speculating about the reasons why amateurs speculate rather than analyze won't improve our chess. What will improve our strength is going behind the reasons why we speculate instead of analyzing. Self-discipline? Knowledge? Laziness? Whatever the reason(s), that's what we should focus on because it's well known that speculation may win us some games but will cost us dozens and hundreds in the long term.

Interesting how you infer from your own experiences into general cases for everybody, mixing engines' evaluations, subjective assessments, and drawing a line in the middle too.

By parts. It's not to same to avoid getting into an easy to handle position than to speculate by using false activity in the hope the rival won't be capable of solving the problems. Context matters, as I was talking about seeking activity –for the sake of it– without considering what's being invested and how objectively stoppable could it be. Example? 1. e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nc6 3.Qh5. Considering that the number of chess players has been estimated in several hundreds of millions, it's a safe bet to say that at least a hundred million will fall for it. Having a hundred million "customers" should be good, right? Maybe not so in chess, particularly when we're seeking to progress because we won't be playing against that one hundred million but the few thousands that will see through such a "plan".

Engines' evaluations are inconsequential to humans' thinking process in chess. The reason is that the engines don't make abstractions but work with a few filters on large amounts of data (calculations), while humans use a large amount of filters (mostly based on abstractions) to calculate as little as they deem necessary. This can be seen when an engine says "winning" while few to no humans can see the piece arrangement that justifies it, or when an engine says "advantage" while any master understands that some "advantages" cannot be transformed into an unstoppable initiative, such as a K+Q vs. K+R+P when the active side can't coordinate against the rival's King.

Practical considerations exist and can be useful, in that particular game where they were discovered and validated as useful. So we can build on the methodology behind their discovery and validation, but not into using them to contradict the position's inner logic by any amount.

I've played an OTB tournament this weekend and i really gave this idea a try. That is, after the initial opening moves, considering my opponents plans & ideas before starting making my own. It didn't lead to any miracles but i got more sound positions than usually. It feels like i have a better foundation to improve further, which will be developing my tactics. This approach might be what i was missing to keep climbing the rating ladder.

@Nicator65

If you are not a chess coach already, you should be! Your feedback has been helpful to me more than once.

Great thread! I need to re-read this regularly.

Do you play on the computer or with the iOS app? I like to play my more serious games early in the morning on my iPad. The iOS app has a feature that the browser app doesn't have, which is "Confirm each move". I always have that set on for 10 minute or longer time controls. That lets me play my move and THEN have another look at the board to see if I've done something stupid.

I'm just new

@kaukasar I'm glad to know my writings have been of some help to you. And although not full time, I've been involved in teaching chess (nowadays called coaching) for some 36 years by now.

On your Post #17, I find it interesting because it resembles the historical development of the romantic to the positional school of chess. Tired of the hazardous job of checking tactical shots everywhere on the board, masters began to play to limit their rivals' activity chances while building their own initiative, getting sure it wouldn't be stoppable.

Take the following game as an example.

Black commits an inaccuracy in move 12 which costs him 2 tempos (Bc8–b7–c8–d7). As a result, White gets time to modify his Queenside pawn structure to limit the extent of Black's counterplay in the sector (moves 15, 16, and 27).

Most attacks are about introducing the pieces into the rival's camp, so they can attack multiple targets beyond what the defenders can protect simultaneously, and this often requires securing more space to increase their working space while diminishing the defenders'; this can be seen in, for example, White's moves 21 and 22.

An interesting point in this game is that White doesn't follow the standard plan of pushing the g–pawn to open the g–file to coordinate his heavy pieces with the Nf5 against g7, because he foresees that Black's standard defensive setup (Pg7–g6, Pf7–f6, Be7–f8–g7, Nb7–d8–f7) might prove too tough to break as some of White's pieces are also require to defend the invasion points on the Queenside. So instead White goes after preparing Pg2–g3 and Pf2–f4 to attack e5 based on Black's incapacity to defend e5 with Nf6–d7 due to the square being occupied by his own Bishop (yeah, the same from Bc8–b7–c8–d7). White is also aware that a minor piece alone may not secure enough squares inside Black's camp, so his plan also includes trading the white squares Bishops on g4 to allow more squares for his Knights before modifying the Kingside pawn structure with Pf2–f4.

Black, on his part, tries to defend his Kingside with the utmost economy by building a barricade on g5 (Pawns on f6, g7, h6, Knight on g5 –setting pressure on e5–, additional support from Bishop on f8, white squares coverage from Bishop on d7 and Queen on c8, thus leaving the rest of his pieces to try to make something out of his b–file control.

So, we see White trying to fulfill his plan while paying full attention to prevent any effective activity from Black on the Queenside, but by White's 44th move (intending Nf1–g3–f5, Pg2–g3 and Pf2–f4, opening up the Kingside with targets for the Knights, the black squares Bishops and the heavy pieces) it's clear that White's attack will succeed, so Black tries to complicate matters with 44...f5, but after 49.f4 White's attacking in full strength numbers while Black's Nb4 is out of range and his Rooks have limited effectiveness on the Kingside (due to White's minor pieces). As I often say, positional play is tactical play saw from afar (pay attention to how to the tactical themes, the activity on e7, f8, and h6, plus the Knights waltzing on e7 and f7, occur because of White's previous play).

I will go back to what three-time World Championship Candidate, former top-10 player, and one of the greatest living trainers recommends in the first book of his 10-volume series. In volume one, "Boost Your Chess - Build Up Your Chess", chapter 9, which is two-move mates, including composed problems:

"The aim of this lesson is to improve your calculation of short variations. It is more important to find a lot of options in the first few moves than to calculate moves long variations. (his bold, not mine) Most mistakes occur in the early moves in variations. What is the use of calculating a long and correct variation if your opponent has a much better reply on move one?

You must develop your skill at calculating short variations, while at the same time taking into account the possibilities available to your opponent. This skill should reduce blunders.

Exercises with mate in two moves are very well suited for training in the art of calculating short variations with great accuracy."

I will take this one step further with my own suggestion. Try to train yourself that before you make every move, look at EVERY move your opponent has. I am not saying that you are calculating anything. You are simply looking at it so you consider it. It will do two things: If you are hanging a piece, just looking at it will usually "hit you in the face like a brick", and second, I have done many combination problems over the last 40 years, and sometimes, when I cannot figure it out, and look at the answer, I realize immediately that had I just LOOKED at the move, I would have seen the combination.

So, again, you are not trying to calculate, just consider every move. You will be amazed at what you register immediately.

Yesterday i played an OTB game against an opponent 300 elo points higher than me. He was white and he was quick at building an attack against my queenside. But since i was constantly thinking about what his next moves might be, i was never caught off guard and i managed to coordinate my pieces accordingly. At some point his attack has lost its steam and i found time to start my own attack against his king, forcing him to defend! 

That's what naturally happened and i rarely had to calculate anything longer than 2 moves deep and it was fully sufficient to avoid making blunders! Now i can focus on improving my tactics.

Here is the game: