How to Avoid Patzerish Mistakes?

If you don't have time for anything else, look at every possible check and capture. Both yours and your opponent's

Unless you are a computer, looking at every possible move is not feasible (and even then, going a couple moves deep quickly gets you into a massive number of variations). Instead, focus on what you opponent's last move allows him to do (what threats does he have) and then see what you can do to meet those threats. That could mean prevent it, or possibly make a bigger threat of your own.

PlaybDaily games. Affter finishing about 50 games, you will find out you make less blunders in quick time control. Believe me 😎

Just play a lot of games. You will learn from experience.

The best saying to avoid such errors in calculation is, "Think HALF a move longer!".

Experience also plays a very important role.

After you analyze your move, think about how ur opponent ,how he's gonna refute it. If you dont find a refutation, then your move is perfect!!

Imagine that a piece has a lantern that illuminates the squares it can move into as if there were no other pieces in the board, much like x–rays. Now apply the same to the rest of pieces, both yours and your opponent's.

Pay attention to the most illuminated areas, both in your position and in your opponent's, paying more attention to the squares were the beams of light intersect. Seek for hanging or lightly defended material inside those areas, both yours and your opponent's.

By now you should start with an evaluation if the "illuminated" material is sufficiently defended, if you can increase the beams against the opponent's, decrease his, defend better, etc., etc. This all is an evaluation of Piece Activity: An evaluation of what's happening, about to happen, or can happen.

Trained OTB players do this pretty fast, some seconds to a minute in most cases, depending on how familiar they're with the pawn structures. Amateurs hardly do this at all, because someone told them chess is intuition (instead of analysis), so they keep hanging material and remain amateurs.

At any rate, Piece Activity is the most important characteristic in a position, and it can only be deduced by analysis. Intuition and knowledge do help in some cases but they're too unreliable. Lasker said something like: "If you see a good move, seek for a better one", implying how much faith he had in his and others' intuition, and how important it is to analize a position... that is, if you want to improve in chess.

Hello Chess.com,

I've played some live 10 minute games on here and on lichess recently. I've been trying to look at every single move that they could possibly make, but obviously that takes too long. So I try to look at the most likely moves, but then they make another move and win material. How do you higher rated players manage to distinguish between incoming threats and "other" moves? 

Thanks,

- William

I think it's blunders that don't have anything to do with my plan that mostly get me... I get so wrapped up in my plan that I don't pay attention to what they could do to me.

To see if your intended move is safe, you're required to examine all forcing moves your opponent can play as a response. The types of forcing moves are checks, captures, and immediate threats (like attacking an undefended piece). After doing this, it shouldn't be possible for your opponent to "make another move and win material."

Sometimes lower rated players play a move that's only good if the opponent responds in a certain way, so after looking at forcing moves, it's also useful to pretend the opponent ignores your move. This is just to check if you like the move on its own e.g. increasing activity of a rook by moving it to an open file.

So, I think that you are driving ( calculating) too fast and missing the exit (your opponent's simple threat.).

I think it's blunders that don't have anything to do with my plan that mostly get me... I get so wrapped up in my plan that I don't pay attention to what they could do to me.

Yes, that's right.

As a beginner (or near beginner) after the opponent moves it takes a lot of time and energy to figure out the first two things:

1) Can I immediately win (checkmate or a lot of material)?
If no then
2) Is my opponent threatening to immediately win (mate or material)?

If that's also no, then you have to find a move you'd like to play. After you get better at chess, and more experienced, this process is fast and easy, but in the beginning it takes a lot of mental energy so it makes sense that you can simply be too fatigued to:

3) Imagine your candidate move as if it's been made, and find all the opponent's checks, captures, and threats to see if your candidate move is safe.

So I think you realize exactly what your problem is.

The good news is this also becomes easy and automatic after a lot of practice.

Well I'd say it's impossible to avoid patzerish mistakes.