Practices and Techniques for Avoiding Blunders

---

First of all, take your time and don't rush!

Haste makes waste!
I hope everyone understands this point.

Avoid instinctive moves

How many times have you made an instinctive (automatic) move and gave up soon after?

There are no moves in chess that you don’t need to think about!

If your instinctive move problem is serious, I recommend one method that is commonly used for training young players. When playing chess, sit on your hands and devote at least 30 seconds to each move, even if it seems completely obvious. This way you will learn to always think about your next steps before you move. And it will save you a lot of games.

Try to understand ideas of your opponent

To avoid blunders, try to ask yourself why did your opponent make this particular move? If you are not playing with an absolute beginner, then all your opponent's moves have a goal, some idea. Your goal as a chess player is to understand it. If you do this, you can reduce the number of threats and avoid the many traps set up by your opponent.

Check your move twice

The most effective way to reduce the number of blunders in a game is to recheck moves. A trivial recommendation, but surprisingly many players don't do it!
They think they are checking moves twice, but they don’t do it EVERY time after each move.

I recommend one way:
Try playing near a real chessboard. And first, make a move on it.

Work with the solution of tactical tasks

Many "blunders" are due to insufficient tactical training of the chess player. This means that the player is unaware of certain tactical motives or simply does not notice them. To get rid of this problem, I recommend solving tactical problems every day. Make tactical tasks a part of your training program, and you will notice that the number of mistakes will drop dramatically.

Stay focused for the rest of the game

You might be surprised to learn that a chess player is more prone to error when he has a winning game. At this point, he begins to feel comfortable, relaxes, and eventually loses concentration. When this happens, he makes a big mistake and loses quickly.
Stay focused until all the game. Yes, your opponent has just lost his queen, but the game is not over yet! You can only relax when you checkmate or your opponent surrenders.

---

Thanks for reading. I hope you found it interesting and useful :)