Cures to Hanging Pieces(?)

Basic hung pieces should be easy to see (not tactically hung, after a combo, but just a straight "doh, he took it" hung piece).    Look at the destination square.... see if it is attacked, and by how much.   Everyone misses one of these now and then ....  but with practice and focus on the game, it should be rare.    Learning to spot and avoid opponent tactical combos is where it gets difficult, and I know no answer to that except experience.

The hardest thing to watch for are knights and long range (4+ squares away) hits.  Knights... learn to visualize their target squares as a circle: here the knight attacks the circle of pawns (every pawn is attacked).  Note the pawns are on the OPPOSITE color as the knight.  So a knight attacks a circle around it of the opposite colored squares.   Once you can SEE that it becomes easy to see what knights are doing in a game.  

I get this stuff, it's just that I almost don't pay attention to stuff like this during a game. Thanks for all the good tips though, guys.

Perhaps you should be more specific about your problems to get the help you want. Analyze your blunders carefully to find out HOW the piece usually came to be hanging, tell us and perhaps post some examples here, then start working on the specific types of mistakes that you see in your analysis. Here are some starting points that come to mind to make such a categorization of your mistakes (most have been mentioned many times of course):

1. For the most trivial cases, you only really need to check one or two things on every move - not really a "list" to speak of. When your opponent makes a move, check whether it directly attacks a piece of yours that is unprotected (as part of your evaluation of what your opponent seems to be trying to accomplish with his move). When you make a move, check whether the field you're putting it on is controlled by your opponent and also check whether you're moving a piece that shouldn't be moved because it serves an important protective function (as in: it protects something that can be eaten by your opponent on the very next move if the guard is removed)

Do you play portions of your games without these essential checks? (I hope not) Of course you can drop even some of these basic checks if you know from memory that they aren't relevant here (e.g. when moving a knight twice in a row, you wouldn't want to do that "protective function" check on the second move)

2. Beyond that, it helps to be mindful about which pieces you use to protect other pieces. If say a knight is threatened by something, your queen isn't going to be happy at all to be used as a guard for this knight because it is such a vulnerable piece that can be chased away and that you'll soon want to be using for other purposes anyway. Whereas a pawn will feel like a million bux to serve this function

3. A related issue is protection over distances - when I throw a minor piece somewhere in the opponent's half and support it with a queen or bishop from afar, I tell myself this is probably going be a temporary (and dangerous) state because the connection between the two could also be broken by pieces that are put on the line between them. Long distance protection can also cause you to overlook that you shouldn't be moving the protector (point #1 check)

4. Pay attention to pieces that look like they're capable of protecting something but aren't really. A pinned piece (generally) can't protect other pieces. A piece often can't protect two threatened pieces at once (retaking the first one may lure the guard away from the second) - but this may already be getting too tactical

5. Or maybe you have more of a problem with discovered attacks - your opponent moves a piece, thereby opening a line for a different piece of his which as a side effect now attacks a piece of yours and you didn't notice it?

So which of these failure modes are usually involved in your blunders?

When I started out I was told to never leave a piece without a defender unless your opponent is forced into a sequence of moves. This helped me early on begin to avoid outright hung pieces and it also avoided a lot of combinational tactics to capture a piece of mine. As I have been growing my chess eyes I have been experimenting with bending or even breaking that rule when I think the position allows me to. Still I am keen on looking at undefended pieces, both mine and opponents all the time to see if any of them can be taken advantage of. I am still a weak chess player but maybe that could help you.

I try to make these essential checks before moving, but I don't make a point to do it in robotic form each move. I just kinda look over the board for a second without a defined idea of what I am trying to see.

Then why are you surprised that you keep hanging pieces? All you need to do is to play a little more carefully (which may take a bit of extra time at first, but becomes more natural, faster and easier with practice). Nobody is going to have a magical solution, so the problem will always remain with you and you'll keep making new threads on it until you put in some more effort.

"Looking over the board for a second without a defined idea" of what you're doing and still succeeding without any blunders sounds like a mode of operation for a master to whom the board has become second nature - that master started out slower too.

sounds more like "mode of operation for a computer" to me. :P

generally speaking, a master knows tons of ideas and can play at a reasonable level while playing fast because he already has some feel as to which ideas work and which don't.

Yeah, thought so too in retrospect, as we can see how even GMs hang pieces in bullet on this site

If you want to run sub-10-second results in 100m, train hard and take your roidz. If you want to stop blundering pieces, play a little more carefully.

Ok, you posted this ten or so years ago and now you're titled player.

The rest of us doofuses who were like "yup!  some players have vision to stop hanging pieces and some don't!"  - are still hanging pieces, a decade later.

What did you do to stop hanging pieces and git gud?   I've followed all of the advice here the best I can, and it doesn't do any good.   At some point I will forget to do it or a piece will become invisible, every game.   Instant lose.  

I just wanted to say kudos to you. I found this post and saw your progress. Well done! I'm just starting to take the game seriously and actually study. I've been noodling for too long and I'm ready to progress beyond beginner. Now to study your games. 

I started reading this and thought it was strange to read from a National Master, but then I saw how long ago it was written.