This may seem only partly related, but I have found that I have won many games once I have blundered away a piece and then decided to wake up and start playing seriously. I was also recently introduced to a quote from Lasker I had not heard of before: "Chess is after all a fight." Seems obvious right? But I looked deeper. I realized I need to start fighting from the beginning and not wait around for interesting things to develop. I have WAY too many games going on right now, but when I finally cut back, I'm going to start limiting the number of games and focus more intently on this newish approach and see if it helps. I am fairly convinced that my weakest play is transition from opening to middle game-due to a lack of planning and not taking the opening as seriously as I should, particularly because I don't play standard/orthodox openings. Your article was well put together; it would be interesting to see you post an example of when you did actually follow your advice! Good reading!
It is the last blunder that decides a game, not the first!
An even worse thing happened to me. I was in a totally winning endgame: I had B+K against rook and even more pawns than my opponent. I made some mistakes and we reached a drawish position. I was so annoyed that I missed the win that I even thought I was losing. In the end, I resigned in a dead drawn position! I was so angry with myself afterwards! Here's the final position.
"It is the last blunder that decides a game, not the first!"
Yes, I absolutely agree. But the thing is, at higher levels the first blunder in the game also turns out to be the last blunder.
hey guys,
thanks for your cool comments!
@trackdad: yep, exactly what you tell is something that happens to me also. i am pretty sure that most of us could rise their rating without any "real" enhancement in the chess-play-abilities, just by beginning to play focused and with enough consideration put into every move. just as you i usually have a whole bunch of games going on at the same time. and when there are too many games naturally my blunders come more frequently. it is very interesting: i had that discussion concerning the focus on every single move with a very good chess friend of mine several months ago. when we first met he had a relatively stable rating around 1550. i beat him almost effortlessly, because at one time in the game he reliably made a horrible blunder. we played more and more games, and we talked about "focusing on every move", and he did so, at first alsmost only in our games, and it became evident in no time that he understands exactly the same about chess as i do. finally, there was the first game he managed to win against me. and from then on, he kept on winning his games against his other opponents, and his rating kept rising and rising, and now he is stable above 2000! he gained 500 points in a few months just by taking every move seriously and checking the move instead of just glimpsing at the board and doint what came to his mind immediately. for me, that was the most astonishing development proving my point of focusing in chess.
thanks for liking my article!
@krestez: yep, I know these kinds of developments of games. sucks, sucks, sucks! have you analysed that end position? it clearly looks dangerous for white, i am not sure that it is draw, this is too hard to calculate without a board, since obviously the king cannot reach the pawns promotion square, so you have to bring your knight into play. but probably you have checked it, and you found that the knight reaches the proper square in time. be that as it may, ending in a position like this is awful after having a totally winning position.
@macer75: i completely agree, see the second sentence of my article where i write almost the same notion. i think this is what makes chess such a cruel game: you can play compeltely solid for 40 moves and then you make one weak move and all is over. really cruel! in tennis, you can lose two sets zero to 6 and still win the match. on the higher levels you have just one chance, normally. therefore, i am happy to play at a lower level 
No, the biggest one decides.
In our rating range errors are a frequent event throughout the whole game. Where in grandmaster games often the first serious error is the last, for weaker players - as us - blunders are often a lot easier to find then good moves
A lot of players - myself included - often forget that aspect. As a logical consequence they often also tend to internally give up a position, even if they keep on going through the moves ("Ok, game is over, I made that stupid blunder, lets make a few more moves, but wont do any good..."). That is just plain stupid! Because not so seldom our opponents answer blunders with blunders themselves, even if they dont do so in the very next move. So the essence of this is: if you keep on playing a bad position, then put everything you have into your play. Perhaps a chance arises, but you wont see it if you are not prepared to check your opponents play for errors.
In one of my last games I demonstrated how to NOT follow that piece of advice...
As you can see: my game was totally and utterly lost, but had I just kept my attention on I would have had a second chance.
Therefore, Macs advice for us blunder experts:
Keep your attention up for every move you make! If you dont want to do that, then resign!