The View from 1000: A Beginner's Blunders

The View from 1000

... is Cloudy

I’ve always loved strategy games, and so I’ve especially always loved the idea of chess. When younger, I learned to move the pieces. And for a month or two at the beginning of my graduate school days, I let Maurice Ashley Teaches Chess teach me a bit more about chess. But graduate school quickly revealed that she wouldn't leave me much time to devote to learning the game, so that endeavor went quickly by the wayside. Two years ago, at the age of 48, I finally dove in. Or at least thought I did. Really, I was just reading some books, playing Daily (E-correspondence) games on Chess.com, and doing some tactics puzzles. Last May, I finally got the time and urge to play live, over-the-board games and, on the suggestion of two friends, joined our local Charlotte Chess Center and Scholastic Academy. Since then, the feeling has mostly been the good type of frustration ("Argg! I know better than that! Why am I still doing that?!"), but it's also been a revelation. I love the game more than I thought I would. I now wish I had taken the plunge a long time ago!

My learning plan has been to play mostly slow games (at least one slow game per week relying mainly on general opening and positional principles), review at least one slow game per week, do a lot of basic tactics puzzles, and read other "talkie" books that for whatever reason seemed interesting or necessary. My only two objectives have been to play 100 slow games and to take away from each what seems its two or three most important lessons. These two or three lessons for each game will be the focus of most of my posts. But I had also planned to do a more global review of my games once I had played roughly 35 games, which is the point I'm at now. (I'll do another more global review once I reach 70 games.) So this is my first global review. Those who are at higher levels--and even most who are not--may find it painful to read. :)

The themes of my first thirty-eight games are: blunders and foggy vision.

I don't find it surprising that most my games so far have been decided by obvious blunders--putting pieces en prise, leaving pieces un- or woefully under-protected, making counting or move-order mistakes, and so on. However, I do find it surprising just how many games have been, or ought to have been, decided by such blunders: thirty-two games (!). Most of those blunders have been mine, and, frustratingly, they do not seem to be going away. Just last week, I committed this painful one:

So it hasn't been easy for me to eliminate, or even to substantially reduce, such blunders. Doing so is not a matter of spending more time doing tactics training; since last May, I've spent over three hundred hours (!) on Chess.com and ChessTempo doing tactics training, and, really, you don't need much tactics training at all to see that a move like the previous 24.Kg3?? is a painful blunder. Rather, it's been difficult for me to eliminate these blunders, I think, because there is more than one underlying cause: lack of knowledge, carelessness of various kinds, unnecessary complication, mental fatigue, and various combinations of these. But I do think that all of these have been exacerbated by not forcing myself to clearly visualize my opponent's next moves.

Lack of knowledge

The types of blunders that don't bother me so much are those that just come from a lack of knowledge. For example, here I lost a theoretically drawn Q v. Q+P endgame simply because I just didn't know the endgame and I'm not yet good enough to figure it out at the board, especially with my clock winding down.


And here is another, which is not so much a blunder as a failure to take advantage of an opportunity to develop quickly.


Again, I don't consider this oversight a blunder, but just an example of the kind of mistake that, right now, doesn't bother me too much, as long as I'm able to take advantage of this position the next time it arises, as I did with move order, or sequencing, mistakes. Here is move order blunder I made my very first OTB board game last May:


I'm happy to say that I haven't made this type of move order mistake since then. In fact, I recently recognized and took advantage of such a mistake by my opponent.



Carelessness

The blunders that really bother me are those I make because I'm careless or, sometimes, even reckless. But even these have come in different varieties. One variety of careless mistake comes, if you can believe it, when I'm overconfident (of all things!).


So this type of carelessness really bothers me, especially when I have no business being overconfident against anyone. Another type of carelessness that bothers me is when I just "take a move off." Sometimes this happens when a game has been mentally difficult for me and I get to a place where I just unconsciously want some mental relief.


Wanting this type of mental relief was also in part the cause of the blunder in the first game above, when even my K was in danger. I also seem to take a move off when I am in the midst of some particular challenge and I'm so relieved to "see" a way out that I just make the move almost instantly. Here's are two recent, particularly excruciating examples.


and



Unnecessary Complication

So sometimes I blunder out of sheer carelessness when I "take a move off." Other times, I blunder by making things unnecessarily complicated.



Mental Fatigue

I've mentioned mental fatigue above, but in those cases, the desire for or sheer mental relief causes me to play too quickly. But sometimes, mental fatigue just causes me to see things too unclearly, even when I take my time, and even when a game develops in a way that I was planning or hoping for. For example:


Here is a game in which my mental imagery went cloudy even when my opponent played a move that I was hoping he'd play!



Combinations of these
Finally, you'll easily imagine how bad a blunder can get when more than one of these factors is at work. Here is my most infuriating blunder, and a recent one, which actually cost me third place in a tournament.



What to do about it?

So there are several different underlying causes for the blunders. Still, and without pretending that there is one easy fix, I think the one improvement I can most leverage right now is clarity--to develop the habit of refraining from making any move until I put into words and clearly visualize a specific follow-up move or line by my opponent.

It has actually been surprising to realize how rarely I do this in a game or, even, during study or practice (such as when I'm solving tactics or positions puzzles). Almost always my thinking is quite vague: "After I move here, Black will play either here or here"--and, then, I'll just make a move and leave it at that. Or: "Black needs to trade Qs on c8. Is it safe? Yes."--without even looking again to see if the move actually is safe. Or: "Okay I can finally move here!"--without ever asking about my opponent’s follow-up move at all, let alone any specific move. And my thinking is the same during tactics drills, while reading annotated master games, or when solving problems in a study book. I’m usually thinking--"I can move here, here, or here. This looks good."--And be done with it. (In hindsight, the three main culprits for this flaw have been: (a) trying to solve so many tactics puzzles within a particular time limit rather than solving primarily for accuracy--moving before I "see" the solution, (b) an over-reliance on the analysis board when I first started playing so many Daily (e-correspondence) Games, and (c) not using a physical board when reviewing master games or solving position puzzles and the like. On top of the vague thinking, all of these have also caused me to have a very hard time “seeing," "visualzing," or "imagining" the board. Even just the board itself, let alone how the board looks with pieces on it. And forget about how the board will look after one or two moves.

So the single-most important improvement I think I can make over my next thirty-five games is to develop the ability and habit to put into words and clearly visualize a specific follow-up move or line by my opponent before I make my move. During a game, I can adopt the seemingly juvenile but probably helpful strategy of sitting on my hands or putting my hands behind my back before I make a move and leave them there until I've articulated and visualized a specific move my opponent would likely make. I can do the same when solving tactics puzzles and study exercises. And following Yusupov’s advice, make sure I always review annotated master games, puzzles, and study exercises using a physical board, trying to solve in my head before moving the pieces, and writing down and “seeing” a specific main line and its important variations.

Of course, if you have other helpful suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

There are other areas at which I need to improve. For example, I don’t yet have a fine sense of danger. In some games, I’m overly paranoid when in no immediate danger, while in others I carry on casually as if an opponent’s pawn on the sixth rank is a mere minor annoyance. I also have a tendency to leave material un- or under-protected. And I also tend to get quite nervous when my clock begins to get anywhere near ten minutes. So of course I'll keep trying to pay attention to these things. But the main theme for the next thirty-five games is: linguistic and mental clarity.