Blunders

My son has been playing chess for several years and is capable of some pretty amazing upsets. He's only 11. Of late he's been making these one move blunders even when he takes time. Sometimes 3-4 per FIDE tournament. He plays 2 or 3 amazing games, holds some strong players to a draw and then just lets it go.

I'm interested in why blunders occur and what can be done to avoid them.

Thanks from a Chess Dad 

Boltell

He should drink more coffee.

He should take more steroids.

Chess is a tuff game to learn, and without experience, you will blunder. At some point, in my experience abou 12-13 years old, he will stop blundering.

What he can try to do, is when he found the move he will move, where he would normally move, say to himself, now i think 30 seconds more, to be sure i have not blundered. This is of course not necesarry in the opening.

Good luck!

Yahoollian, blunders are more often an emotional deficiency rather than an analytical one.  As your son matures and grows  his emotional conformation will adjust to the rigers of the chess challange.

His oponent will purposely anger him to tempt him into a move without a plan and draw him into a trap.  We must gain emotional intelligence as will as intellectual understanding and discipline.

I hope this will help.

i'm almost 30 and i'm still trying to figure this one out. i guess i'll try steroids.

Practice makes perfect, but remember if chess is not fun for him, he will not play as well so don't over do it. Also if you yell at him when he makes a blunder, during his next game he will be thinking "my dad is gonna yell at me" instead of thinking "the right move is..."

wait a minute. does that mean that i shouldn't be beating my child when they mess up at chess? maybe i'll just give him steroids for mistakes as well. can't hurt.

If he's blundering after rushing to play a move, he needs to slow down and do sanity-checks more often before moving.  Also worth noticing if he's playing hope chess prior to the blunder. If so, that's another problem that you can invest energy in correcting.

If he's blundering after actually spending time on the position, then he needs to work on some visualization exercises and play more slow practice games to improve his board vision.

As the other posts indicated, "non-rushing" blunders  really go down only with practice.  It's the "rushing'" type that your kid has the power to control.

GM's and even World Champions blunder a little. Sometimes it is a huge blunder, like hanging a queen as Petrosian did or missing a mate in one, like Kramnik.

So it shoulden't be a goal to stop all the blunder, but they can be extremly reduced with pratice.

A friend of mine said  "I make careful mistakes"

My problem is plain old-fashioned burn out. I try and play on experience rather than hard calculations and end up with mediocre wins and losses.

The game requires one to check,   every piece, every square, every combo, every move, every game.  Year after year.  Like a computer does.  There is little reward, no money in it, you are the only one that can celibrate your victory, all of this for the mere fact that we want to "beat sombody" lol.

The game is only statistical in nature. Sure we can play Napoleon or Einstein but we are the only one's that know it. We try to love it but get very angry at our losses.  Fights break out in tournaments (more entertaining than the games lol), is it really to hard to understand blunders?  Perhaps it is just self-preservation to hurry the cognitive process.  

As I have told my own students, first ask yourself, if I move my piece to that square can my opponent take me. Second, before moving, make an x or some mark on your scoresheet(don't write the move down), then look at the move again. That 1or2 seconds will sometimes allow you to see the position in a new light. Many are the times when I've done this and stopped myself from making a blunder. 

Only the first move is perfect. After that there is a BUILT IN mistake in every move. We have built in weakness's. We can not spend all our energy fighting tiny mistakes but focus on strategy which has its own mistakes.

We can not drive through an intersection consentrating on our blunders. Im sure what I just said is full of mistakes but maybe it will fit in some dog gone place. lol

Great input, looks like many of you have lived through it. glad to know i'm not alone. If I were to summarize for my benefit mainly -- 

on the lighter side :

- take a chill pill, dad. steroids was frequently suggested, i'll probably end up needing them.

on the chess side :

let him grow and learn, suggest that he take a deep breath and recheck, look for all opponent piece and pawn threats, analyze why he made the blunder - both emotionally and logically, create a testing method after thinking of the move he's going to play but before he plays it. don't over emphasize that he made a blunder.

thanks again, everyone.