Can you really learn from all games?

I've heard that you can learn from all games so you should analyse every game you play to improve. Is that really true? I once played a game where I was playing with no mistakes and winning until I dropped a piece for some reason out of nowhere and from there lost the game. How would I even learn from that? All that happened is that I didn't see something but is there anything I could even do about it anyway?

If you could show the position or whole game it would be easier to say something specific.

I have similar problems of not seing things too. So after the game I ask myself "How could I double-check my candidate move? Was there something in the position to hint about the problem with this move?" Then I try to fix my thinking process and to apply it in future games. It doesn't always work but I believe it's good for my chess. Then of course it better applies to slow games.

Whenever you make a mistake try to figure out why you made it. Did you move too fast without thinking? Did you fail to see a piece that was further away from the part of the board you were looking at? Were you so engrossed in your own moves that you wanted to play that you paid no attention to your opponents move? Try to play as safely as possible, take your time when you move and keep in mind that whenever you make a mistake you will ultimately learn from it. Once burned, twice shy!

This does seem a little contraversial. It seems that if you make a one-move blunder in a game you can-

1: Spend an hour analyzing the game trying to come up with excuses (what people on this thread suggest)

2: Spend an hour doing tactics puzzles so you can practice your ability to not blunder in the future.

Option 2 seems better to me.

I mostly agree with what you say but:

1. Analyzing one blunder should not take more than 5 minutes. And it's not about coming up with excuses, it's about why it was made and how similar blunder  can be avoided in future games

2. Tactics puzzles are an absolute must. They teach you to see patterns. But that was not a problem in this case - JSB53 saw a pattern - it was a fork. What was missing was a double-checking if the tactics works. From my experience puzzles from books or databases don't push you to double-check, they don't punish you for a wrong answer. However rated puzzles do - that's why I try to spend some time at chesstempo - it puts you in conditions much closer to real game.

Today's article 3 Tips To Avoid Blunders is actually closely related to this topic. When analysing a blunder one can always ask himself whether he properly applied the 3 tips when choosing his move.

No matter how many checks, tricks, or habits you have, every blunder can eventually come down to "I just blundered". I very much disagree with Silman when he said in a recent article that all blunders have some sort of deeper mean or necesarrily have something that can be learned from them.

Consider that a player blunders. Now well meaning players can tell him "Of course you blundered, you forgot to do x." 

Now later, when he blunders again, he can respond with "This time, I forgot to do x."

Players continue by saying "Of course you forgot to do x, you didn't do y. If you don't do y, you will often forget to do x."

Later, he forgets to do y, and then blunders. This blundering player, taking the advice he heard previously, will look deeply into his blunder and say "I forgot to do y. Therefore, I forgot to do x." He simply decides this is lack of focus, practice, and skill, and remedies it by cointinuing to practice chess.

But then, yet another player comes along and says:

"Of course you forgot to do y. Every time you make a move, you need to do z. This will ensure you remember to do y."

In this case, x, y, and z can be substituted for things like "check all of your opponent's checks, threats, and captures" or "check all of your legal moves" or "Always first check what you can do to the opponent's king before anything else."

When players say that you have to change your habits to avoid blunders, there is sometimes practical advice. But often times they are just changing the location of the blunder from a blunder made on the chess board to a blunder made in your mind.

If you make yourself check all of your checks every move, then sometimes you will overlook your normal habit of checking all checks and blunder. The only logical way to continue is to take time every move to check whether or not you have checked all checks. Of course, sometimes you will overlook that you forgot to check if you have checked all checks. Frustrated, you may continue by taking every move to check if you have checked if you have checked all checks.

This can continue forever, but all it does is move the location of the blunder. There is no real value in trying to look deeply into the psychology of a blunder when at some level, no matter how deep, something was just overlooked. It is better to just practice and get better at chess.

uri65 wrote:

If you could show the position or whole game it would be easier to say something specific.

I have similar problems of not seing things too. So after the game I ask myself "How could I double-check my candidate move? Was there something in the position to hint about the problem with this move?" Then I try to fix my thinking process and to apply it in future games. It doesn't always work but I believe it's good for my chess. Then of course it better applies to slow games.

Sorry for the late response, here's the game (my computer is broken) I play as white here e4 c5 nf3 nc6 d4 cxd4 nxd4 a6 bc4 e5 nf3 bc5 bxf7+ kxf7 qd5+ ke8 qxc5 d6 qa3 bg4 O-O h6 nfd2 b5 qg3 qd7 f3 be6 c3 b4 rd1 bxc3 nxc3 nd4 nf1 nf6 be3 nc2 rac1 nxe3 nxe3 kf7 na4 qxa4 ( where I dropped the knight) rc7+ bd7 rxd6 rhd8 qxe5 rac8 qe6+ kg6 rcxd7 rxd7 qf5+ kf7 qe6+ kf8 e5 rc1+ kf2 qh4+ g3 qxh2+ ng2 rc2+ ke3 qg1+ kf4 nh5+ kg4 rxd6 qxd6+ kg8 qd8+ kf7 kxh5 rc5. At the end here I think I could of forced a draw but I was feeling pretty bad already for dropping a piece earlier so I didn't care much and I ran out of time anyway (my opponent and I were chatting)

There's a 100% probability that a GM looking at your 'error-free' game would find quite a few significant alternative moves that could have improved your position. 

hhnngg1 wrote:

There's a 100% probability that a GM looking at your 'error-free' game would find quite a few significant alternative moves that could have improved your position. 

I understand at GM level I probably played far from perfect and there were plenty of innauracies but I'm talking about at my level there wasn't any obvious/drastic blunders until I dropped the piece

It's incredibly common to lose a winning game, often through overconfidence.  We 'know' we are winning and thus change our approach.  We often play quicker, don't look for opponent counterchances, that type of thing.  This is dangerous, as our opponent is at the exact same time looking his hardest for any tricks he can come up with.

If you dismiss your blunders as just 'oh darn it, random chess blindness,' it's really hard to improve and eliminate blunders, as you don't know what is causing them.  If you look deeper, you can start finding reasons.  It might be chess reasons, like overlooking Knight forks, or it might be personal reasons, such as overconfidence or tunnel vision on side of the board.  If you can idenitify factors like this, it's much easier to reduce blunders in the future.  If you just dismiss your blunders, though, then you have no real hope of eliminating the non-chess reason variety of blunders.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about from my own games.  I had slowly outplayed a higher-rated opponent, and I was all set to take the game in an endgame.  He had no real chance.  I mean, look at this position.  Does White even have a threat?

I could have written such a game off as bad luck, but I dug deeper.  That was my third straight loss from a winning, even dominating, position, and that was the problem: I called it 'winning', and so I backed off.  I didn't take it as seriously as the previous 30moves, and that's what cost me.  After this game, I stopped declaring positions in my head as winning for me, simple as 'advantages,' and such mental gymnastics greatly reduced my collapses.  You may find something similar is at work for you ... but you'll never know if you don't take a look.

Any game you put serious thought into and lose, then you should figure out why.  Maybe not necessary for blitz games, but longer games definitely.

Honestly I'm kind of siding with xman here, I just don't get the whole idea of thought process and finding why I blundered, in the end I just didn't see it am I not understanding something here? Is the best way to resolve or prevent this is by improving calculation and visualization via tactic puzzles? Honestly I don't go through an official thought process or mental checklist every move, is this a bad thing?

SmithyQ wrote:

It's incredibly common to lose a winning game, often through overconfidence.  We 'know' we are winning and thus change our approach.  We often play quicker, don't look for opponent counterchances, that type of thing.  This is dangerous, as our opponent is at the exact same time looking his hardest for any tricks he can come up with.

If you dismiss your blunders as just 'oh darn it, random chess blindness,' it's really hard to improve and eliminate blunders, as you don't know what is causing them.  If you look deeper, you can start finding reasons.  It might be chess reasons, like overlooking Knight forks, or it might be personal reasons, such as overconfidence or tunnel vision on side of the board.  If you can idenitify factors like this, it's much easier to reduce blunders in the future.  If you just dismiss your blunders, though, then you have no real hope of eliminating the non-chess reason variety of blunders.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about from my own games.  I had slowly outplayed a higher-rated opponent, and I was all set to take the game in an endgame.  He had no real chance.  I mean, look at this position.  Does White even have a threat?

I could have written such a game off as bad luck, but I dug deeper.  That was my third straight loss from a winning, even dominating, position, and that was the problem: I called it 'winning', and so I backed off.  I didn't take it as seriously as the previous 30moves, and that's what cost me.  After this game, I stopped declaring positions in my head as winning for me, simple as 'advantages,' and such mental gymnastics greatly reduced my collapses.  You may find something similar is at work for you ... but you'll never know if you don't take a look.

Any game you put serious thought into and lose, then you should figure out why.  Maybe not necessary for blitz games, but longer games definitely.

Thanks for the help it was very instructive

No worries.  I went from 1400 rating to 1800 rating by reducing blunders to a minimum.  It's not fun or sexy, but figuring out why blunders happen, and then stopping that, is probably the single best thing you can spend your time on as an improving player.

You try to avoid analysis of this game so hard you even didn't bother to present it as a standard PGN

I can only speculate what was going on in your head while you were thinking about your 22nd move. I did my share of similar blinders and for me it was always clear what has happened. Here how it goes - I have an idea (more often tactical, sometimes strategical). Here I see a possibility of knight fork on b6. I get so fixed on this idea that I don't consider my opponents moves even for a split of a second. It's as if I was moving white pieces while black was sitting still. That's basic checking that is missing! I still do this kind of blunders, but they became quite rare and I am consciously aware of checks that should be done before moving a piece. And when I do blunder I blame my laziness and hastiness not some random factors.

Now may be I am wrong and you did consider your opponent replies and genuinely didn't see the knight capture. Then only practice can help. But from my experience this explains no more that 10% of blunders.

Sorry I don't understand what you are talking about. There is nothing to go forever here. Just basic cheklist. Like in JBS53 case - just have a habit of considering your opponents reply. Don't think at depth of 1 ply. It's not so much about psychology - it's rather about laziness and hastiness.

Personally I think NM Dan Heisman explains this in the best way in his wonderful book "A Guide to Chess Improvement".  In short he wrote that getting better at chess is a balance between adding positives and subtracting negatives.

Doing tactical puzzles daily etc. is an example of adding positives. 

Reviewing your games and perhaps creating a "personalized study book" with all your mistakes is an example of subtracting negatives.  If you review your "study book" often you might start recognizing a pattern of faulty thinking and attempt to improve on this with every game, which will (in the long run) prevent you from making the same mistakes.

Only concentrating on "adding positives" will offer some return, but perhaps not as much as focusing on both.   Obviously the only way to subtract the negatives is to review your games (or have them reviewed by stronger players) and staying as objective as possible.