In a nutshell: one must do more tactics (with time limit, in "test" fashion) and play more blitz games if one wants to improve their play, simple as that. ;)
Some personal experience, if you wish: at a certain moment, I hadn't played any slow chess for almost three years, so no wonder my first tournament after this break was next to disastrous. However, I had played blitz at least 3 hours a day, twice a week, and my blitz rating grew dramatically. Now it is some 150 points higher than standard. :) I also noticed that non-chess issues affect my play really greatly. Improper sleep and/or nutrition might throw my TPR some 300 points down, for instance.
Should you find this interesting, consider it. :)
Ahhh...all those blunders!!
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Mar 15, 2014
0
#3
please check my first blog entry: NIGHTMARE BLUNDERS http://www.chess.com/blog/marcelodce/nightmare-blunders
Jan 5, 2017
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#4
It's amazing how many blunders I make and it's easier to realize and identify them now than a decade ago because of the ability to play live games here at chess.com or against strong-as-yourself computer chess engines, save them all as pgn files, then have an ELO 3300 rated engine analyze your games through Chess King or excellent freebies like Lucas Chess, Scid vs PC, and Arena - with the additional help of huge, free, databases.
I recently returned to chess after being very active in the '90's, 1500's rating, was my county's scholastic USCF Tournament Director, coached a high-school team to 3rd, 4th, 5th in state in 3 consecutive years (the teams that beat us had Russian immigrants I lacked!).
I've played live games here at chess.com and have a 1377 rating. I'm very much convinced that blunders cost me a couple hundred points in rating as my understanding of the game is better than most players at that level (I'm well read: Nimzowitch's My System, Silman's How to Reassess Your Chess, various Opening, Middlegame strategy and tactics, Endgame, and instructional game collection books).
I'm looking for a method -something more structured than the three steps in GM Daniel Naroditsky's two-part blunder article here.
I think what happen's is that I see a possibility, say a very good square for a knight outpost or a winning a R for a N or B, and as I get closer to the goal of achieving it, I spend insufficient time looking at the pieces not directly involved in achieving or blocking my plan. Just yesterday, I beat Chess King set at a 1600 rating and winning the exchange was part of it. When I had Houdini 2 analyze the game, I realized that the Bishop that might take the Rook was attacked by an unsupported pawn and the fact I could have just grabbed it for free never crossed my mind during the game: I was too focused on staying on the diagonal that might win me the rook.
I need to do something like look at EVERY piece and the squares each one controls or threatens every move and not assume my positional understanding of the game automatically sets of an alarm if I'm potentially in trouble. Anyway, I'm going to keep searching for serious articles on curing blunders: they're my first order of business as I get back into competitive chess.
I have an interesting concept in mind. I have enormous problems with blunders in blitz especially (I have slow chess rating approx 2000). The reason I guess we make blunders is that we do not train our brains to see them. We look mostly for good knockout moves or strategically "good moves". We search the way to win....its all natural. If we instead played lets say 200 blitzgames (or much more) and in those games searched for moves where we drop a pawn,where the oponent have a fork,or a move that loses directly or a move that run ointo a deadly pin and so on ...and (!!)...not only searched those moves BUT also made these moves during these 200 games. Then we would of course lose all those 200 games but we would actually improve by losing those games. How can we improve by losing 200 games!! Are you crazy you must think! Well the point is that we have learned and let our brains train to identify the blunders . After this training there will be a better balance between finding the best moves and to discover the blunders because our brain has been instructed to do so. Normally the part of the brain who find blunders kinda sleep (or get distracted) when we are overly focused on finding the "winning" moves. Playing "Loosers chess" could also be kind of the same way of training. But I guess its better to go the other way ....in a normal game.