More thinking leads to more blunders.

Like many people who post on here, I find I'm struggling to make progress and am stuck in the 400 rating range. I've been trying to follow advice an eliminate obvious blunders and hanging pieces, but it seems to me that when the analysis shows a blunder, those are often the moves I spent time thinking through.

Has anyone else had this sort of experience?

I looked at your recent daily loss to Glyn38. 12. Rfb1 and 23. e4 are blunders. 23. e4 just misses the knight fork on e2. 12. Rfb1 may be a case of overthinking: counter-threats can be good moves, but if you are still learning to calculate there is a lot more risk vs. moving your threatened piece to a safe square.

Thanks.

12.Rfb1 is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. My initial instinct was to go Qd2. I spent ages thinking over the options for that move before I made it, and according to the analysis I should have just followed my gut.

I'll try a few games where I just make the simplest move that makes pieces safe when they are threatened and see how it goes.

Don’t overthink things yet as that is not how the game is decided at 400, just move pieces that area attacked out of the way and wait for your opponent to blunder, this strategy works up until even 1200

"it seems to me that when the analysis shows a blunder, those are often the moves I spent time thinking through." That is not so uncommon. At least it happens to me too. We can be so immersed in our plan, that we miss something very obvious. It is mostly a matter of good habit: just force yourself, before you make the move, to think something like "Ok, move made. What would I do if I was my opponent?" and you will be surprised at how often you will spot a tactic. With practice and as your calculation skills improve, it should become automatic, but initially it may require a conscious effort. Hope that helps.

I'm also trash at chess (stuck at 400 Elo) and I agree with you. When you think too long, you often get distracted by complicated lines and completely miss the basic tactical threats right in front of you. I struggle with this as well. 

Good chess players don't look @ more, they look @ less, they just look in the most potent directions.

Well, that makes a sort of sense though doesn't it? The moves we think most about are in situations where it does not seem obvious to us what the best move is. When the position is simple, or forced, you don't need to spend much time. But as it becomes more complicated, either because there are many threats or there seem to be a number of decent options to choose from, that's when we have to spend more time - and it is also when we're most likely to make a worse choice. There will be occasions where one overthinks things, and starts seeing ghosts, but I would not be surprised if the vast majority of times is that in situations that are complicated we are both likely to think longer and also make a sub-optimal choice.

At 400 elo, you should be focusing on making moves that dont blunder pieces and attacking undefended pieces. Dont look for crazy tactics and dont overthink. Overthinking was what held me back from reaching 1300 sooner

I overthink now as well lol. If I dont, I would easily be 1500plus and Im being serious