Cures to Hanging Pieces(?)

I have posted a lot of threads on this subject and it seems that some people just have the inate board vision to prevent hanging material while others don't. There are many different ideas as to how to stop hanging pieces and not many of them work in a live game (maybe in correspondence). I can't just say "is my piece safe here" every move because often there is another threat to something else that I don't see. Plus, when you're in time trouble you can't think this way and thus it's much harder to prevent blunders.

A lot of people have told me to check everything I do, literally checking every move to see if it's okay by calculating all of the opponent's possible forcing responses. I don't have the patience to do this and I don't know how to teach myself patience (if the art of learning patience is even a thing. I wonder if others have similar issues). I also don't know people who do this and I see players play blitz or bullet chess when I know they don't have the time to check all their moves yet they still never blunder. I also have the uncanny ability to think for extremely long periods of time about a move, checking all my opponent's possible refutations, making the move and then realizing I totally missed something that wasn't immediately apparent when I made the move. I am currently rated 1400 in live standard chess and I would like to take advice from those rated 1700+ who play more than just correspondence (I rarely blunder in correspondence because I have eons of time). I sometimes think that only luck determines if I blunder or don't blunder in a game and I know that's not true but while I have seen many people tell me why I blunder or how to stop blundering, nothing I've heard seems to have helped me that much. Including O.T.B. games, I would estimate that I play around 300 games of chess a year and I would estimate that I hang a piece in at least 100 of them, so this is really a problem hampering my chess ability and I need to solve it before I can become a respectable player. I don't know if it's my calculation, my board vision, my tactics, my stupidity, or even my pet cats that prevent me from seeing these things, but I want to know if others have had similar issues. I might come off as really frustrated but I want to say I really thank anyone who wants to help me for taking the time out of your day to do something for someone else.

Finally: is this problem something that one bit of advice or one article on here can solve, or does it take a lot of practice and work to eliminate blunders. If the latter is true, are there books that can help one learn about how to cure the "piece-hanging disease"? Thanks, guys.

Also, another thing that happens is I often, after blundering, stop and wait and don't play chess for a few hours, then come back with newfound optomism (don't know from where) and tell myself I won't blunder this game without actually having done anything. While I play a lot (I've played chess seriously for about five years), I haven't worked on this aspect just because I don't know how to.

It's about just playing a lot and really seeing the board, the position and the tactics, not the pieces. If you could stop ever hanging pieces or falling for simple tactics, you'd be at least 1700+ right off the bat. You need to work on it.

I might suggest playing more blitz games. Improve your analysis time for simple tactics, and try to develop a killer instinct, so to speak. I think working with the chess.com tactics trainer has also helped me cut down on needless piece loss.

Really look at the lines of attack for each piece and keep in mind the areas you need to stay away from. After every move your opponent makes, ask yourself how the move changes those attacking lines. Those knights and fianchettoed bishops can be tricksy sometimes, but you just need to be able to practice tactics puzzles and run through numerous situations where you can evaluate numerous tactical situations in a short amount of time. I also like to make sure my pieces are well coordinated. If every piece is working well in tandem and backing one another up, the likelihood than one will be left high and dry for the vultures decreases.

Hope that helps, and good luck! Don't be discouraged if your rating takes a hit in tactics trainer and blitz/bullet, each game played is going to help make you better, even if your W/L record doesn't immediately reflect it.

i'm not entirely sure, but i think that in my thought process i already "automatically" keep track of which squares are being controlled. when a move is made, i just evaluate what has changed.

so, like, instead of thinking "i want to play Bg4, now let's see if it's safe to play Bg4" i already preemptively think "Bg4 is not possible because he has a knight controlling g4".
when the opponent moves, it's like "oh he's attacking c2 e2 and the e-file by discovery, let's see if i have to do something, also maybe d5 got weak".

this all happens effortlessly. unfortunately, i don't remember how i played (and how i got past) my beginner days. :P

That's exactly what I was trying to say! It cuts down big time on evaluation time. That way, you shouldn't have to look over all the pieces on the board again to make sure a move is safe.

Thanks to all who have posted. Soothsayer8, I'm interested in your response because you mention playing blitz. I've heard that blitz can be really bad for one's chess, and I also know I am very awful at blitz. Is this a real tactic for avoiding the "piece-hanging disease"?

According to Estragon, blitz probably wont help, and I'm inclined to believe him. I'm no fan of blitz, but playing a little doesn't hurt, especially not as your level. There are a few skills you can learn by playing blitz. Playing too much blitz can cause bad habits, and it generally wouldn't help someone rated 2000 improve, but it's not bad.

Blitz won't help much if you're one of those people who take a long time per move to think. It'll only help you hang more pieces outright instead of to tactics, a step backwards.

Estragon probably gave the best advice, reviewing longer games. Often we hang pieces to a tactic our opponents don't see, and only in reviewing games do we pick up these mistakes.

LoveYouSoMuch gives a good insight, learning to see which squares the pieces control. Potential control via discovery, the outposts pawns control, the control of a colour complex, this idea really explains positional chess and helps improve board vision too.

For myself (OK I suck compared to them) I also see the squares and lines controlled by pieces in considering tactics. That's enough to avoid hanging pieces outright. To avoid hanging pieces by tactics, there's a subconscious alarm ringing any time (sadly works only 80% of the time) one of the following occur:

• One of my pieces is left unguarded, even if it's not being immediately attacked.
• One of my pieces is going somewhere that can be hit by a discovered attack.
• One of my pieces is in a very awkward, unnatural location that may get it trapped.
• One of my pieces is sitting in the line of fire of my opponent's R/B/Q (may be a pin but not always)
• Two of my pieces are in a position where they can be forked by a knight (the trickiest of the lot; basically imagine if a knight can move from one square to the other in two hops.)

If any of those arise, pause a moment to evaluate if there is any tactic for your opponent. Those cases cover most of the possible ways to hang a piece, so if none of those apply usually you can spend less time blunder-checking.

Thanks, guys. I find that this may be very useful, to look at the squares the opponents control. In a 15 minute game this might be hard to do but it probably comes with experience. I wish there were an intermediate time control between 15 and 30 minutes, like a 20 min game or something.

Also, is there anything I can read that can help me with stuff like this? Did you read anything online or in a book that helped you a lot?

Another of my problems is that I haven't got the patience to use a "checklist" and I tell myself that good players don't use checklists either, which I don't think they do. Everyone tells me to use a checklist but I've never seen a player use one in my life.

I've now lost four games in a row due to blunders. My last one was just a pawn but I resigned because I knew it was over. It was on move six as white- 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 g6 3. c3 Bg7 4. d4 cxd4 5. cxd4 Nf6 6. Bc4 Nxe4 0-1

Problem A: giving up too quickly. A pawn down in the first few moves is nothing. I just won a game from being piece, pawn and position down. Your opponents can (and will) blunder back if you give them the chance.

Problem B: "Good players don't use a checklist" is not exactly right, it's just that the process is more rapid and subconscious than anything so it just seems as though they move on instinct. (especially in 1|0) They probably don't understand what goes on in their brain in those few milliseconds either.

After you play more games, resign a little less, slowly the process of thinking through a move will become faster and more intuitive. Whether it takes 200 or 20,000 games is another matter, but eventually any "checklist" will be internalised, so keep putting in the effort, it'll pay off.

Well a good rule of thumb is on every move think "What did my opponents last move allow him to do?" and then "What did my opponents last move allow me to do?"  And of course consider these questions before your moves as well.  Do this each and every time, and make sure you evaluate each piece in the position as to whether it's undefended or underdefended.. and you should cut down greatly on tactical errors.  At least the obvious ones.

@CapAnson, please don't take this the wrong way, but I've made a lot of threads on stuff like this and I have seen advice like that a lot. I'm sure that I don't do stuff like that enough, but my problems often just include total brain failures where I just don't realize that the moves I am making are disastrous. I certainly agree that I don't think enough about my opponents; I would maybe want to see a concrete example of how a good player does this practically (not just in concept but how it is applied in a real game) before I would know jow to seriously use it.

Well, you can create a 20 minute game. Live chess allows for Custom time controls. You can make, say, a 20|10 game or even something wacky like 23|11. Whatever you want, really.

(by the way, I'd totally play a 23|11 game  )

I wish I could get 20 min games- nobody seems to play wacky time controls...

I hear all the basic stuff, but is there a specific thing, practically applicable, that I can use immediately other than just simple advice? Any books?

You use a check list until it becomes a natural process. In the beginning it will likely make you lose a lot of games because you’ll keep getting into time trouble. You might be surprised at how quickly checking for checks, captures, and threats becomes a natural (and faster) process.

I’ve also heard that games around 15 minutes are the worst for learning chess. They’re too fast to develop good habits and carefully calculate good lines. Blitz is also too fast, but you’ll get 3 times as much experience with three 5-minute games than you will with one 15-minute game.

I'm not sure of any books you can read. I mean, there are books you can read on tactics, but there's only so much you can teach a player to prevent him from hanging his or her pieces.

Does anyone here still use a checklist and if so, can you give me your list questions?

You just have to train looking for unprotected pieces in my opinion. Just look at random positions, and try to find which pieces are unprotected if there are any. You can take your time and even write down which pieces aren't protected like making a list, then move on to another random position. Keep doing this everyday until it becomes second nature for you to look for them.

Anyway, if you have Fritz with the Chessbase interface there's a training feature that does that. Just go to the training tab and on the toolbar you'll see the following:

• Attack training - this will give you random chess positions from a database and ask you to click on all pieces which can be taken.

• Defense training - this will give you random chess positions from a database and ask you to click on all pieces that are undefended.

• Check training - this will give you random chess positions from a database and ask you to click on all pieces that can give check.

I don't think any advice will help as much as training to do it I mean. It's just like asking for advice on how to add numbers, you won't get any better unless you practice it. The real key is using a training method that will help you target that specific problem in your game.

Edit:
Anyway if you want to see the fritz training feature I mentioned in action just go to this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ0obpaArrM