Blunder check with intro 
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome back to next level chess podcast. I am grandmaster Noël Studer and on this podcast I want to help you improve your chess. I'll talk about anything that might impact your chess improvement from mindset to playing against lower or higher rated opponents to the effective and efficient training to make sure that you're not wasting your valuable time when you train chess.

Before we get into today's episode, I just want to remind you that you can get much more chess improvement advice if you visit my homepage, which is nextlevelchess. blog and over there you can find 150 plus articles. You can subscribe to my free newsletter, you can check out my courses, And all of that will be also linked in the description of this podcast episode.

So if you want to learn more from me, make sure to check all of that stuff [00:01:00] out. Now let's get into today's topic. Let's talk about blunders and much more importantly, how to stop them. Right, we all blunder and it's super annoying. It's very painful when we do so when we play a great game And then just before we get that beautiful win against a stronger opponent Boom, we blunder a piece or a queen or even a checkmate and the game is over and This blunder always leaves a bad taste in our mouth because we feel like we should have been able to avoid that huge mistake, that blunder.

But how? In today's episode, I want to share a method I created with my sports psychologist, which I call the simple blunder check. And when you do that simple blunder check on every move, you can really reduce your blunders a lot. You can reduce them in. over the board classical games, but also you can use them for online games.

I mean, you can use the blunder check for [00:02:00] online games and reduce blunders in blades and rapid games. Before we get into what the blunder check is and how you can use it successfully in your own games. I want to take a moment to talk about the definition of blunders, because I think that's very important because there are a little bit, you know, different definitions swirling around the internet world.

So when you play on chess. com or leechess, the two biggest playing sites you will see that they have the double question mark for a blunder. And usually I think that is depending on an algorithm and it depends on how much points you're giving up compared to the. best engine evaluation. And in general, you can find moves that are really obvious that are you know, signal with this double question mark, but you can also find moves that are actually rather hard to spot and that I wouldn't classify as blunders.

So I wouldn't say [00:03:00] double question mark moves are blunders. And then when you go to chest or comment, you see own, like an article with the definition of blunder. You also find something I don't fully agree with. So I will read this out loud. This is a quote from chess. com and then explain why I believe I give a little different definition of blunder.

So, Chess. com says, In chess, a blunder happens when a player makes a move that negatively affects their position in a significant way. In many cases, a blunder can cause a player to lose material or be checkmated. But it can also lead to a strategically lost position. So basically I think what this definition does is to explain the double question mark on chess.

com. Right? It's like, it's impacting your position in a negative way. The engine will spike, it will drop, and you end up losing material or money. [00:04:00] having a strategically lost position. But what this definition doesn't take into account is how difficult that move, that mistake you just made was. And I think it's super important that we take that into account because in my opinion a blunder, it has such a negative connotation to it, such a, you know, I should have been able to avoid.

That move connotation to it. And I think that's why it's very important to give a little addition to the definition. And this addition would be that it's a big mistake. And this mistake should have been avoided by the specific player under normal circumstances. That means that a blunder for me as a grandmaster is something different than a blunder for a.

beginner player. So beginner player can't say I blundered mate in seven here [00:05:00] because a mate in seven is not something that they would see under normal circumstances. After all, they are a beginning player, but I can say that, right? I can say I blundered a checkmate in five or seven, or I blundered a nice tactic that lost a queen five moves down the line.

Whereas a beginning player would say I blundered my queen in one move. Right? You can hope to expect that they can see that if they move their queen somewhere where it can be captured under normal circumstances, they should be able to see that. So, in my own words, my definition of a blunder is, quote, In chess, a blunder is a big mistake that would not happen to the specific player under normal circumstances.

And now this leads to the question of, well, why do blunders happen then? Right? Why do we have these big mistakes that we often make and then immediately realize, oops, [00:06:00] I just blundered, right? I left my queen hanging, or there is just a very obvious tactical idea for my opponent, which is somehow only see once I made my move.

which is too late. So once we understand why they happen, we can then move to the blunder check and you will then realize, Oh, that's why the blunder check works so well. With the definition that I gave, it's really. About a lack of focusing on the right things So while a simple big mistake in chess can have many different reasons It can be that you don't have the strategical understanding You don't calculate enough you you know, you didn't check for opponents candidate moves all of these things It makes it way more difficult.

So we don't talk about avoiding big mistakes. We just Talk about avoiding big mistakes Blunders. So something you make, and then it's obvious to you that it was a mistake. [00:07:00] And the reason for these blunders in my personal experience, my experience with students, my experience from my own blunders is that for some reason we don't focus on the right thing, or our brain is not functioning properly when we make mistakes.

So you might get distracted, you might be lazy to calculate properly, or just simply you just play by your hand. And that's when it happens that when you make a move and if you would ask yourself, Hey, what is my opponent threatening? Immediately you would understand that your move that you're about to play is bad.

But if you don't ask the right questions, you will lose. blunder. One main problem is also that we humans love to think about our own plans. So we think, Oh, we have an attack there. When our opponent has a double pawn, let's attack those double pawns. And [00:08:00] we just completely forget. to take into account what our opponent did, right?

So, let's say your opponent makes a move. We just only think about our own stuff. So our focus is not on the right thing. We then make a move. And only then do we realize, well, they just attacked our queen. So queen is gone. So it's very, very important. And I actually had A game that I played when I was an IM already and it was a classical game.

So you have like one and a half hours for the whole game, right? You even get increments. So it's a tremendous amount of time to think deeply about the position where my opponent basically threatens checkmate in one move, right? So moves the knight up, checkmate Protects the h7 square and it's kind of obvious to anyone looking that the queen is also looking there and i'm just you know, calmly Attacking my opponent's rook and I don't realize like my opponent takes his queen and [00:09:00] i'm thinking Why is he taking the queen and he grabs the pawn on h7 and i'm like, oh That's checkmate.

And once I see the move played, I obviously realized like, oh my god, I just blundered checkmate in round one, right? That's something I have to absolutely see. But somehow my focus wasn't there. I didn't really see where this knight was going, what the idea was for my opponent. So I lacked the focus of thinking about what is happening on the board, and I blundered.

a checkmate. So the question here is how could I have avoided this checkmate? And in my experience what helped me most is to ask a very, very simple question, which is the blunder check. This question helps us bring or focus in the right direction before we execute a move. Okay. So the solution to making blunders is before you make a [00:10:00] move, bring your focus on the right thing, which is what is my opponents.

idea, or what will my opponent do if I play said move? Because then our brain immediately realizes what easy thing we might have missed. So in that example with the knight moving and the queen attacking the h7 pawn, And that would result in a checkmate. If I asked myself, what is the knight doing there on g5 before moving my own move, I would have realized the knight is helping the queen threaten checkmate.

And there my mistake goes. I would have made another move. So, I went to my sports psychologist with this problem, and we started thinking about different ways of like, how can we ask ourselves this question? Because Well, it's not that easy during a chess game with all the adrenaline pumping, we are nervous, you know, [00:11:00] all of these things happening during the game.

How can I really remind myself to always ask the same questions before making a move? So I want to think about my move, but then I want to have a blunder check. So ask myself, what is my opponent threatening? Or in other words, what is my opponent doing? If I play. the move that I'm thinking about. And he starts asking me questions about the rules in chess, about, you know, everything that you're writing down in over the board chess.

And at some point he comes up with an amazing routine, which I've used. And many people that I recommended it to are using it right now when they play over the board chess. Now, first I'll go to over the board chess, and then we can talk about how you can use the same idea in blitz and trap build and online chess.

So here is the blunder check routine. Once your opponent makes a move, you're writing it down. That's very normal. Then the [00:12:00] second step is you think about your own move. So you start to calculate ideas, which moves do you want to play? And then step three usually is people just play their move, right? You just execute your move, but that's a problem.

So instead of executing the move, you mentally decide on a move. So you're saying, I want to play let's say queen to C6. Okay. So in your mind, it's clear you play queen to C6, but you don't play it yet. Very important. Now, as a, you know, reminder to think about the threat of your opponent. You write down the time of your opponent on the score sheet.

So this is allowed. That's very important. This is allowed according to FIDE rules. You are allowed to write down the time and the moves on the score sheet. So you write down the time of your opponent when they made their move. And this is your trigger to think what is my opponent's idea or what [00:13:00] happens if I play.

In this instance, queen to c6. Now, you don't have to recalculate for three minutes everything. You really just want to spot the super easy stuff, right? We are trying to avoid the blunders. So the stuff that you're playing a move, your opponent takes your queen, and you're like, oops, that was not good. So you're taking three seconds, whatever you need, to just shortly check your opponent's ideas, and And if your move blunders anything, and then if you confirm that, you can play your move.

This is the blunder check. I will repeat that. Step number one, write down the opponent's move. Step number two, think about your move. Step number three decide mentally for a move, but don't move. Step number four, write down the time of your opponent, which is a trigger to ask yourself the blunder check question.

What happens if I play my move and step number five, you checked for [00:14:00] blunders. Now you can play your move. Now, I briefly mentioned this before. It's very, very important that you don't use any other method, especially on score sheets. When you play classical over the board game to remind yourself of this, because that would be against the rules.

So you can't like write on your score sheet, blunder check, or you can't write your move. anything else than moves and the time, right? So you really need to use the writing down the time as a trigger for yourself to think about the blunder check. That's very, very important because I don't want to recommend or to, you know, bring anyone in a situation where they do something that is not allowed.

And actually some years ago, what everybody would do is they write down their move before they play. So you would decide for queen c6, you would write down queen c6 and then only play it later. And that's also illegal. [00:15:00] So you're not supposed to write down your own move before you execute it. Very, very important.

Don't do something that is not allowed to happen. As per the rules of chess and now for those of you that don't play over the board chess or don't Often play over the board chess, or maybe you play rapid over the board chess Let's think about ways that you can use the same idea to stop blunders in your blitz games in your rapid games So the most important thing is that there is some space in between deciding mentally on what you want to play and executing the move And ideally you want to have some space Trigger that you do on every single move really the repetition helps you a lot that can trigger the thought of What if I play my move do I blunder something and then you can answer with no and then you play it So for example, if you play online a handy thing to do is that you're without clicking on your piece [00:16:00] You're clicking on the square that you want to move to so let's say you want to play again queen c6 You're just clicking on c6.

So mentally You try to imagine the Queen being there, and then you shortly look for your opponent's Does your opponent have anything, you know, can they capture a piece, can they checkmate you? Okay, no threats that you missed. Now you can actually grab the Queen and put her on C6. So, that is one idea.

If you play a Rapid or Blitz game, over the board actually one idea that I sometimes used with kids young students Is to force them to sit on their hands during the game So you make them sit on their hands or you sit on your own hands Which means that when you decide to play a move you still have the time for your hand to actually go grab the piece and you use that time to shortly do the So that's another trigger.

So the most important thing is that you find a habit for [00:17:00] yourself. Do you do on every move and that you can legally do without, you know, cheating. And that you can do it when you play online, when you play over the border. So you might have different habits, but the idea is the same. Before you execute your own move, you shortly tell yourself, did I miss anything big?

Or you can reframe the question, what if I play my move? Or you can reframe the question again, have I blundered anything if I play this move? So it needs to be in your own words that makes sense to you. And then you can avoid a lot of blunders. So, how to avoid blunders in a nutshell, as a summary of this whole thing.

Blunders are big mistakes that could be avoided under normal circumstances, okay? So, our goal or objective is to create the normal circumstances by asking a simple question. [00:18:00] a question that helps us look out for opponents ideas and check if anything in our position is hanging or if we actually move the piece somewhere if that piece would be hanging.

So we really want to just check very simple stuff. And with that reminder, You can save a lot of points. I had actually many games still as a grandmaster Where I was thinking for 15 minutes. I was about to make a move I had the habit wrote down the time and I was like, oh my god Like on move one or two in my calculation.

I missed something extremely obvious So it's like a course correction to bring our focus to the right thing And to avoid, you know, blundering away or well earned, hard earned points, especially when we play very well. It's super annoying when we play against stronger opponents. So I highly recommend you use that again, use it in every [00:19:00] single game you play.

And then let me know. What worked how it worked how many points you saved you will be surprised and I will be very happy when I hear from you so never hesitate to reach out or comment and That's it for this one. That's the blunder check if you want to listen to more stuff You can listen to more episodes if you want to read from myself.

You can go to next level chess blog articles There you find over 150 chess improvement articles. You can also sign up for my free newsletter. You can also check out my courses. All of that stuff is always linked in the description to the podcast and hope to see you next time.