A blunder audit of twenty club games
Over the Easter weekend I went through my last twenty club games with the engine and a notebook, looking only for the moment in each game where the evaluation moved by more than two pawns in one move. Not strategy, not opening, just the single blunders. I wanted to know what kind of mistake I actually make, as opposed to what kind I think I make.
Twenty games, 23 blunders of that size by me, and 19 by my opponents. The breakdown of mine:
- Nine were missed tactics for my opponent that involved a knight. Forks, mostly, and twice a knight check that also hit an undefended piece. Knights are my blind spot and I had no idea.
- Five were pieces left undefended after I moved a defender away to do something else. The classic one-move oversight.
- Four were time trouble, all in the last five minutes of the first time control, all in positions where I was at least equal.
- Three were endgame technique: a wrong king move in a pawn ending and two rook ending errors I have written about elsewhere.
- Two were back rank problems after I had moved my last defender off the first rank.
The knight finding is the one that matters. Nine out of 23 is nearly 40 per cent, and they were not difficult tactics; they were two-move knight manoeuvres that I would spot instantly in a puzzle. In a game, with the clock running and a plan in my head, I was not looking at where my opponent’s knights could go. So for the next month I am adding one thing to my thinking process before every move: where can each of his knights land in two moves, and does any of those squares hit two of my pieces at once.
The time trouble games are the other obvious fix, and a boring one: I spend too long on moves 10 to 20 that do not deserve it. Three of the four time trouble blunders came after I had spent over eight minutes on a single middlegame move earlier. A rule of four minutes maximum per move before move 25, unless there is a forcing sequence to calculate, would have left me with enough clock in all four.
The other categories are smaller and I will come back to them. For now: knights, and the clock.