How to Eliminate Blunders from your game

Lets face the facts - you may be quite a strong player, know tactics, middle-game strategies, reasonably good endgames and quite some opening lines or forests. And yet you tend to commit these blunders time and again - and not just in fast games - but also in slow timed games. In fact, all the way up to 2200 Elo, over 90% of the games are decided or can be decided by relatively simple blunders. 

I am also prone to blunders and am kicking myself for missing the application of the simple stuff when knowing so much about the game and its intricacies. It has got more to do with mental discipline and training your brain systematically than any lack of knowledge or conscious application of it. Most of times, you miss the simple blunder either because you just don't even consider that move (either for yourself or for your opponent) or are so much engrossed in the local plan and area of the chessboard that you refuse to grant those few crucial seconds to just check out safety.

I found the articles of Blunder-proofing at Exeter Chess Club, UK to be quite useful. Blunders can be due to 3 types of misses:

1. You miss the threat of your opponent after his move and fail to respond to it effectively, allowing him a free run on his move
2. You miss an opportunity for you when its your turn to move and thus lose out on a game-decider
3. You miss the threatening replies your opponent can make after you make your move - basically you only consider some replies and not all

The threats or opportunities in these types of blunders are mostly simple tactics which may be at most 1-2 or 3-moves deep. Any deeper and I will not really consider it a blunder unless your are 2200+ Elo already.

So, I have created the below program for my students and for myself. I have made it a simple ladder so that it is extremely easy to follow and make a habit for your mind and the brain:

This entire exercise has to be done with slow games (45 minutes or 60 minutes) where you write down not just the score of the game but also on each move, what are the threats that you see, or opportunities that you see. Create a notebook for this and it is important to write down with pen on paper and not on mobile or laptop.

First Stage  - Just focus on 1 move threats and never miss any of these in  3 ways as explained above

1. Opponent's Threats - Play 10 games -  After every move of the opponent, write down all the 1-move checks and captures that the opponent can make (his threats) before you decide 
2. Your Opportunities - Play 15 games - Here, not only do you write down your opponent's threats after his move, but you also write down all the 1-move checks and captures opportunities for you, before you decide on your move
3. Opponent's Replies - Play 15 games - Here, not only you write down opponent's threats and your opportunities, but after you decide your move, before playing it, write down all the 1-move threatening replies in terms of checks or captures that your opponent can make after you make the move

Second Stage  - Now that you have got into the habit of systematically thinking out all the threats at 1-move depth, Now focus on 2-move threats and follow the same rigor. It is important to follow these exactly step by step and not attempt to do all things at once. There are several reasons for this which you will realize as you play.

1. Opponent's Threats - Play 15 games -  After every move of the opponent, write down all the 1-2 move checks and captures that the opponent can make (his threats) before you decide 
2. Your Opportunities - Play 15 games - Here, not only do you write down your opponent's threats after his move, but you also write down all the 1-2 move checks and captures opportunities for you, before you decide on your move
3. Opponent's Replies - Play 10 games - Here, not only you write down opponent's threats and your opportunities, but after you decide your move, before playing it, write down all the 1-2 move threatening replies in terms of checks or captures that your opponent can make after you make the move

Third Stage - If you reach here after systematically playing 60 slow games, you must already have improved a lot in reducing the blunders and it must be visible in your game analysis. Congratulations! But you can continue one more step and reap the full benefits. 

Here, you train your mind to not just stop at 2 moves but look at the forcing lines till the end (forcing lines are where there can be major events like captures, checks and mating nets for a cornered king or a possible loose piece visible or a pawn is about to promote etc) 

Play 20 slow games where you note down all the threats and opportunities till the end of the forcing lines.