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Explaining blunders :)

An attempt to create a forum thread where players would explain some of their blunders in honest fashion.

In this first game I tried to patiently improve my position. Mean while I got a bit annoyed by noise of a house-mate in the background, and I was also boiling water and thinking about that. The moment I wanted to take care of the water for tea making, I quickly made a move, and the moment right after I made the move I saw the Nf4+ royal fork, and got even more annoyed, but managed to concentrate better.
en.lichess.org/MROz9mHb/black#59

Earlier today a terrible blunder game, almost too embarrassing to show. I had spend a lot of time in the opening/middlegame trying to squeeze an advantage out of it, trying to find good moves, and that got me into a bit of time trouble. Then, thinking I still had a bit of advantage I saw the upcoming knight fork on d3, and panicked a bit, brain frozen, and then blundering material and the game.

en.lichess.org/E2lomSgQ/white#50
No one else was willing to share their weak moments ?
Then let me add some more.
What is more embarrassing than overlooking a classical Greek gift, not once but twice ???

en.lichess.org/TH1QBF3h/white#20

Reasons for this blunder ?
1) I was still half asleep.
2) I have played lots of games against this opponent, and with white it is always the same : 1.d4, and then Nc3, Bd2, 0-0-0, e3, f3, Qe2, Qf2 and after black's b5b4, knight to b1. It becomes a bit confusing when this opponent plays plain "normal" openings.
3) Some noise outside from playing children and their talking parents.
At #2 Your quality standards are very high to consider it embarassing. (pro level right there).

I recently missed a mate and lost an equal position in 2 moves.
es.lichess.org/8KeZWWnJ/white

Here it's obvious I should do some puzzles with an inverted board to train awareness of the opponent's forcing replies.
LOL. I don't feel so bad now for playing a terrible game then hanging my queen. Also hanging a rook in a clearly won endgame.
@Manuel2 #5
Doing tactics puzzle training is usually good.

Kd1 in the end looked very logical, it was the first move I thought of.

Regarding your game : It reminds me of a chess friend that I have seen many games of. If he can't find a good plan he simply starts to trade pieces. In your game you also started trading pieces often.
It is imho better to try to create a good plan, and with every trade you are about to make, it makes sense to ask yourself things like :
* Is this trade good for me or good for my opponent ?
* Am I trading an active piece for a passive piece ?
* What is the future of my piece, and the future of my opponent piece ?

I think I saw a book by Soltis which is only about trading, and in "Pump up your rating" there's a whole chapter about it (Featuring GM Ulf Andersson).
Also, there's a quote by a USSR GM (Kotov?) saying something like : "Did you notice that Bobby Fischer never had bad pieces ? He would trade them off".

HTH
Oh yeah! Kotov's books are very nice and you guys should buy a copy.
@achja

Thank you very much for the methodical advice.
I'll try to apply it in the next Classical games I play.

The quote fits the theme, summing up your points, a good reminder.
@Manuel2 #9
I've just looked up the quote :

"Do you realize Fischer almost never has any bad pieces? He exchanges them, and the bad pieces remain with his opponents"
-- Yuri Balashov

In your game you can more or less see that you traded too much and perhaps also made too many queen moves, as the remaining light piece on the queen side was not developed.
Cheers!

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