How Do You Stop Hanging Pieces?

My Live Chess rating would be 200-400 points higher if I stopped hanging pawns and pieces. What's the trick, besides paying attention?

Seriously, this is my absolute greatest weakness in live chess right now, and yes, I do practice tactics daily. I'm stumped. Help!

I have the time control set to 10 minutes and will try 15 minutes in my next set of games. Will having more time to think help?

It's about how you think. Do not only pay attention to your own plans, but guess what the opponents moves will be.

You are unlikely to ever stop hanging pieces (I certainly haven't). Practice and time in the game will minimize the number of times it occurs, naturally.

Don't worry about it, just play the game.

Make predictions. I like that.

Please keep these tricks coming on how to stop hanging pieces. Thank you!

If it happened only now and then, I would not be concerned. It happens in almost every live ches session. You can see this quite easily by looking at any one of my 500 or so Live Chess games. I hang pieces about 95% of the time.

Arg! I'm late for work. I'll check back later. Thanks for the feedback. Enjoy playing chess and other things in life.

I think you haven't been playing chess so seriously for long, eh? you are still in the stage of rapid improvement, hanging pieces will decrease markedly when you've got (say) three years "in the game". It's a tough game to learn and I am often amazed by some people's expectations: "Dear Forum: I've been playing for 18 months and I'm not expert strength yet. What's wrong with me?"

You get the picture.

Always, always calculate a reaction from your opponent. You're thinking, Nd5, what a natural move, how bad could it be, right? Never, ever stop thinking at that point. Always come up with a move from your opponent. If you can, even calculate some lines. But always, always calculate something. Don't just visualize your own move on the board. Calculate. Always.

Oddly, hanging a piece tends to ensure you aren't in a position to hang it again. But perhaps that's not the solution you're looking for :).

I have noticed, for myself, that I tend to hang pieces in online play far, far more often than in OTB play. It's partly a focus issue (I -can- devote more focus to an online game when I wish, but I play live here to release stress rather than add to it), but there is an interface aspect that I know hurts my visualization. The real-life physical board isn't really 2D, though I would have trouble explaining why I think that is so.

It will certainly give you some more time before you move.

Here is an advice: Keep your hand away from the mouse so that you don't just move before thinking. So whenever you have made a move take the hand away from the mouse while looking at the position. For this purpose I guess that a time control of15 minutes is better than 10 minutes. You could even sit on your hand or just hold your hand with the other hand.

How NOT to improve at Chess forever: Play lots of Blitz against exclusively weak opponents. 

You've played 500 games against opponents your own strength -- you probably feel like you are stagnating and you probably are. You are playing them at 50-50 won loss. Yet you say you hang pieces 95% of the time. IOWs you are winning games even when you hang pieces because your opponents play sloppy too... nothing is going to change.

The way to stop hanging pieces in one move is to regularly play people who snaffle up your pieces relentlessly when you hang two and three move combinations and who gift you nothing. You'll learn to look for trouble, and you'll start beating the guys who gift you things 95% of the time instead of 50% of the time. The pitfall of getting bullied repeatedly by strong opponents is that you become excessively defensive, cautious, and passive... but why worry now about a problem you don't have.

I do something like this - I keep my hand on the mouse, but after my move I take the mouse pointer off the board. The only exception is when I'm in dire time trouble.

I've managed to decrease this factor radically in less than two months. It could happen to you, so don't believe the hype about so and so many years of practice.

I can hardly be said to have an aggressive playstyle (occasionally yes - when I feel I've got serious advantages, obviously) and I think this has something to do with that. Maybe.

Untill that point I try to focus on safe play and more importantly, healthy development and gaining space square by square, if possible with some positional build up. I like a complex game (within my level anyways ;)) and I'd go out of my way just to win a pawn. But never at the cost of safety, only when there's no real risk involved in snatching that little guy.

In other words; maybe this happens because of greed?

Obviously I should mention that I went and hung just about everything immediately after posting this... :P

Failing to see your opponent's hanging piece is at least as frustrating.

I've instituted a blunder check as my final mental step before a move. It's hard to implement because I find it hard to believe I would overlook something so obvious.

Regardless, I suspect I will have to bang my head on the wall periodically.

A simple concept:

Aikido Chess.

"Every move, unless it immediately ends delivering checkmate, has a weakness that can, and probably will, get exploited."

Look at your oponent's move.

• What's weakness did he create with that movement? Exploit it!
• What threat did he create with that movement? Defend it!
• What is your plan? Put it in motion!
• What is the next move required for your plan? Get ready to do it!
• What's the biggest weakness of that move? Prepare for it!
• Is there any way for him to exploit it? Prevent it!

Paying attention is probably a good start...

Playing slower games could help. I can't play properly at 15-min time control, though I'm rated above 2000 OTB and have learned the rules early.

I would recommend you play 25'+10" or 30'+5" time-controls.

not sure what this will help, but in my last game i was so focused on an underprotected pawn in my last game that i failed to notice my opponent was actaully setting up a mate and I lost a few moves later. 

i am not entirely certain what this means yet, except the obvious of "don't worry so much about a single piece that you ignore all else".  i am obviously not promoting hanging pieces or just letting them fall because they are under protected, but i spent 5 or more moves worried about a single pawn and lost track of the rest.  had i lost that pawn i would have likely lost the game later, but i still felt pretty stupid about it. 

One could probably argue that awareness is the answer in both cases. I think you're really on to something here in the sense that humans often have the - dare I say - wrong approach to these matters, tending to focus on what we don't do in stead of what we do. Oh the ways of the analytical mind :)

Get Somting to reset your self and mind like a lil bell or something like in your mind and think agein .... every move or go compleatly insane with chess madness lol just enjoy ...

Don't play fast like 1-2 min live chess games or else you can't think well because you might lose on time control. Think longer on your moves and play 5 min live chess games or longer.