What the Fork is a Blunder Check?

It only causes untold anxiety to glance across your position before your next move vaguely wondering if you're about to destroy it - and any hopes of being in a good mood for the next fortnight.

What does it even mean to do a blunder check?

Did you do one, a blunder check? You know, when you erm, just check for blunders? So did you do one?

No.

If chess was as easy as always remembering to do a blunder check then we would never blunder. But what does this frustratingly generic term actually mean?

What on earth are we meant to be checking for?

Do I individually check the safety of each of my pieces to see which of them are hanging? Do I have to remember to check every square each enemy knight can go to in case there are any potential forks? What about seemingly invisible long-range sniper bishops?

In my not-so-humble opinion, the concept of the blunder check is a terrible one because it is too non-specific. At the level I coach, I am trying to take beginner chess players to the post-beginner or intermediate level. The major difference between those two levels is a simple one.

It is mostly blundering less. And I honestly think I may have cracked this particular nut.

I’m not saying I know how to stop everyone from blundering, but what I have done is found and further developed a tool that consistently helps my students to greatly reduce the number of “one-move spectaculars” they make on average.

Which brings me round to the definition of the blunder. What is it anyway?

What is a blunder?

The blunders I am referring to are what I call “one-move spectaculars”.

The kind of blunder that makes you want to face-plant your chessboard.

Hanging a piece, not to a tactic, but simply because you moved it to a square from which it can be captured for free. Hanging a piece because you didn’t notice you just undefended or underdefended it. Hanging mate-in-one.

Here, I’m not even talking about hanging a fork or a two-move tactic, although I will say that the method I’m about to share with you is very effective for reducing those types of blunders as well.

I’m talking about reducing the simplest, but most awful of blunders. The type of move that keeps you awake for weeks after you make it.

Why are blunders so bad?

Honestly, these errors are the worst. They suck. Not just because they might lose us the game or flip a completely winning position on its head. But also because they stop us from getting to play real chess.

Some of the students who come to me have about as much general chess knowledge as I have.

They understand all the different types of pawn weaknesses and the strategies for attacking them. They know their basic endgames. They understand their openings, typical structures and the plans in each.

And yet despite all that, there is a rating disparity of 200 up to 1200 points between us.

The more experience I gain as a chess coach, the more I see that the volume of chess knowledge someone possesses is the least reliable marker of rating. The most reliable marker is skill. And a big part of improving your chess skills is simply blundering less.

If you can get those basic errors out of your system, then you will be rewarded by playing the occasional game where the outcome is the result of a hard-fought strategic battle rather than one moment of face-melting madness from either player. And that is a satisfying thing to achieve.

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How to Stop Blundering

Enough talk, what do I do? A fair question.

The problem with the generic blunder check is that it is not an action.

If someone tells you to quit an addiction that is really hard to do, because it is not an action. It’s the opposite, it’s a non-action. The same goes for the blunder or safety check, which basically says: "make sure you don't blunder".

Better advice would be to start doing press-ups. Sounds ridiculous right? But if every time you feel a craving you drop and do five push-ups, you're more likely to succeed than if all you have to do is... resist. Because that isn’t doing anything. It’s a non-action destined to be about as successful as “don’t think about a pink elephant”.

To use an equally terrible metaphor, it’s like asking a pilot if they have done a safety check.

The pilot then glances across the dashboard with all the buttons, gives a satisfied nod, peers out the window to see if there are any kangaroos on the runway and thinks: "yep, everything looks safe". Then the guy in the control tower is like “okay pilot, cleared for Ne5.” And then the plane explodes.

Instead, the guy in the control tower might be better off asking the pilot some slightly more specific things rather than "do things look safe?" or “Have you done a blunder check’’

Nailed it with that analogy. Moving on...

So I guide my students towards an actionable process. Instead of urging them to resist blunders, I make them do something. Two things actually.

Part 1: Ground Yourself

Thing one is to ground yourself in the opponent's move as soon as it is made. This means asking yourself:

1. What does the move do?
2. What does the move no longer do?

This method is based on a video by fellow Lichess blogger Jerry of the ChessNetwork. The video is called An Introduction to Chess Thinking and is part of an excellent playlist from which Adult Improvers, especially at the beginner level, can learn a lot.

What does the move do?

It’s a simple question.

If a knight moves, you list what it does.

You might say to yourself: the knight has jumped to e5 where it attacks my bishop on g6 and my knight on d7. If your knight on d7 happens to be undefended, then it is much more likely that you will see that and take appropriate action on the next turn either by capturing the enemy knight on e5 with your knight, moving your knight on d7 to safety or defending the d7 knight.

Often, we get so wrapped up thinking about what we are going to do when it is our opponent’s turn, that when they make their move we just sort of gloss over it and continue with the train of thought we had before they had moved. In this way, we often overlook simple things, like our queen being attacked, or a mate-in-one being threatened.

So from now on, immediately after every move your opponent makes, ask yourself: what does the move do?

It's the first thing you should do, before you even think about what you might play. Ground yourself. My opponent has captured my bishop. My opponent has advanced their pawn, it attacks my rook.

Building Habits

Great! But what if, in the heat of the battle, I forget to ask these two questions?

Getting yourself to ground yourself in the opponent's move is a habit.

Habits can be hard to form. The way I help my students to build this habit is two-fold.

Firstly, during their lessons, we will often play think-out-loud training games where my students narrate their thoughts in a stream-of-consciousness style.

I will make my move and, if the first thing my student says is anything other than a description of what my move does and no longer does, then I interrupt them by saying: “ground yourself”.

We repeat this until it becomes a habit.

Now I get that not everyone has a chess coach, or someone willing to do this with them. So the other thing I get my students to do is to practise this grounding outside of lessons with chess puzzles.

When you do puzzles on Lichess, the first thing you hear is the euphonious thunk of the opponent's last move. Before you even consider the solution to the puzzle, before you do anything, ask yourself: what does the move do, and what does the move no longer do?

Not only will this help you to build a blunder-preventing habit, but it will also help you solve the puzzle correctly. I believe this is one of the reasons I recently became a puzzle GM.

https://twitter.com/TheOnoZone/status/1629476640072794115

What does the move no longer do?

This brings me to the second question which the more astute readers may have noticed I have neglected to mention so far.

The second step in grounding yourself in the opponent's move is asking: what does the move no longer do?

For example, in answering this question, you might say the knight that has jumped to e5 from f3 no longer blocks the d1 to h4 diagonal. Thus, my pawn on h4 is now attacked by the queen on d1. But there’s a twist.

This second question is just as much about spotting your opponent’s blunders as it is about preventing your own.

Continuing our example, if we replace our pawn on h4 with a bishop, we might say the knight no longer blocks the d1 to h4 diagonal. Now my bishop attacks the enemy queen on d1. I guess I’ll take it. Simple.

So this is part one of the blunder-prevention/spotting method. Ground yourself in the opponent's move as soon as it is made by asking the magical questions: what does the move do, and what does it no longer do? Do it first before you look at or think about anything else.

As you get better at chess your answers to these questions will grow in complexity.

You might say the pawn comes to e4 where it attacks my bishop, but you might also acknowledge that it creates a hole on d4 - the perfect outpost for my knight. You might say it chronically weakens the dark squares etc.

We are still doing the same thing. We are still asking the same basic questions, only our answers go deeper.

From Conscious to Subconscious

Before we move on to part two of blunder prevention, I want to caveat a couple of things.

Firstly, this process of grounding yourself is not meant to be fully conscious forever.

When we are learning a new skill or building a new habit, we must first make the process deliberate and conscious so that over time it can become subconscious. It will just become something we do automatically.

You will scan your opponent's move, and become aware of all the things it does without actually asking yourself: what does the move do, what does the move no longer do?

The practice I do with my students and that they do independently in their games and during their puzzle training is an exercise in order to build the skill consciously so that it later becomes a subconscious part of their thought process.

Get Worse to Get Better

The second note I want to add is that pretty much without exception, you will play like shit for a while when building this conscious thought process.

Doing this two-question blunder prevention check is kind of like taking a part of a car engine out which wasn’t working properly. Yes, the car still ran, but it wasn’t working at maximum efficiency. So we took the part out and we repaired it.

The problem is that, now that this part of the engine has been temporarily removed, the engine doesn’t work very well at all. The engine functions much worse than it did with the slightly shitty part still in it.

But when the part we have removed is fully repaired and is replaced back into the engine, now a fully functioning part of our subconscious engine - the whole thing will run much smoother as a result of our repair.

One of my students who’s recently started implementing this method, wrote this blog post about her 'getting worse before getting better' experience.

So please don’t be discouraged if your rating plummets as you start implementing this method, or if you lose your next ten games in a row.

Hyperfocusing on this one part of your game means you will miss other things and you will run into horrific time trouble, too. But in the long term, if you can build this as a part of your subconscious thought process, you will drastically reduce these one-move blunders.

Long-term, preventing one-move blunders will be worth a lot of rating points, particularly in the <1600 rapid/classical rating bracket here on Lichess which is the rating level of my students.

Part 2: Check Yourself

It brings me a sadistic sort of pleasure to annoyingly interrupt my students' thought process by saying “Ground Yourself” when they fail to immediately acknowledge the things my last move does and no longer does at the start of their turn.

There is equal pleasure in saying “Check Yourself” at the end of their turn.

This one is more difficult, though I have some practical tips here to help you remember. Rather than scanning your position for stray kangaroos, or doing a generic blunder/safety check (whatever that means) - once you have decided what move you are about to play, ask yourself what YOUR move does and no longer does.

The second question is much more important when it is your move.

Simply list the pieces and squares you are about to undefend and underdefend when you make your move.

The reason I think most of my students have a harder time remembering to do this one is because there is no trigger. There is no ‘thunk’ sound signalling the opponent’s move to trigger you to ask the questions.

What’s more, there’s usually a rush of happy/nervous hormones at the exact moment when you’re just about to make your move - making you forget the questions you were supposed to ask yourself.

Trigger Yourself to Check Yourself

To work around this, it can be helpful to try to make an association of some kind to trigger your brain into remembering to check yourself.

Maybe it is touching the trackpad on your laptop if you play online. Maybe it is shifting in your seat as you reach forward to grab the piece you are about to move OTB. If you are one of my lucky students, your trigger might just be the internalised sound of my dulcet Scottish tones saying “Check Yourself” inside of your head before you make your next move.

Whatever it is, if you can form an association that gets you to hold back for just a few seconds, this will be enough time to list all the things the move you are about to play does, and no longer does.

And mark my words, you will find the average number of one-move spectaculars drop from your games.

Conclusion

So you now have two actual things to do.

1. Ask yourself at the end of every turn: what will my move do and what will my move no longer do?
2. And then, at that equally exhilarating and frightening moment when you hear the thunk of your opponent's last move: ground yourself.

Not by panicking and randomly looking for danger everywhere all at once, but by focusing only on asking these two simple but powerful questions: what does my opponent's move do? What does my opponent's move no longer do?

The final thing I want to say is that even when we do all of this perfectly, subconsciously and consistently - we still miss things.

It's part of the game. It happens.

Recently, I even managed to blunder mate-in-one in round one of this season's Lichess 45/45 league. Whilst these tools I have provided you will help, these habits must be built in combination with playing.

Part of not blundering is simply improving your board vision.

It is just becoming familiar with the 64 squares - and there is no substitute for experience here. No one can give you a quick workaround to stop blundering immediately and forever. So I guess you could say part three of blunder prevention is just that you'll blunder less as you play more.

So you should develop your thought process using these blunder prevention tools, but do so in combination with playing games.

These one-move spectaculars won’t ever go away completely - ask Ian Nepomniachi how his last world championship bout went. We'll always stay human and miss things because our brains are built to filter out the majority of the input we receive, even when we're concentrating on chess as hard as we can.

That being said, you can reduce your blunders over time if you commit to implementing this thought process and keep playing chess regularly.

If you'd like gentle, Scottish reminders to "ground yourself" and "check yourself", as well as lots of other tools and encouragement to reach your chess goals,

Book a free trial lesson with me here.

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Thanks for reading! Let me know in the comments what your best blunder prevention method is, and if you'll try the 2-part-method I've outlined in this article.

I was interviewed about this very topic on my friend Martin's SayChess Podcast which you can listen to here. I tried to help him get into the mind of the beginner player from my perspective as an Adult Improver coach and someone who was there myself grinding it out in the triple digits not that long ago.

Speaking of Martin, he and FM Nate Solon have just started The Chess Gym community. I run hangouts there every Sunday at 1800 UTC. You can join now for just $1.

I have another announcement: my new website www.TheOnoZone.com is now live!
All credits for this go to my wife who built it for me.

Here, you can learn more about my Adult Improver chess coaching and book a 60-minute trial lesson with me completely for free. You can also get your free Chess Study Plan template and subscribe to my newsletter to receive an email update every time I publish a new blog post.

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