How to stop blundering in chess
You stop blundering by meeting the same mistake again after you have forgotten it. Concentrating harder does not work, because you were already trying to concentrate the first time.
The advice that works, and its limit
Before every move, look at checks, captures and threats, yours and theirs. This is good advice and it does work when you actually run it.
Its limit is that it is a rule you have to remember to apply, in exactly the positions where you are least likely to remember. You do not blunder when you are calm and thinking clearly. You blunder when the position is sharp, or the clock is low, or the move looks obvious.
A better rule will not fix that. What fixes it is recognizing the pattern fast enough that the rule becomes unnecessary.
Spacing beats repetition
A pattern sticks when you meet it, forget it, and meet it again. Meeting it five times in one sitting feels productive and fades within a week.
Blunderbase turns each of your flagged positions into a puzzle from your own game and schedules it at 1, 3, 7, 14 and 30 days. Get it right first time and the gap widens. Miss it and the position is back tomorrow. Only the first attempt counts toward the schedule, because a second look is a second look, not a second win.
The positions are yours. Not a set someone else assembled, and not a puzzle you were shown because a stranger got it wrong.
How to stop blundering in blitz
Blitz removes the option of calculating your way out. With ten seconds on the clock there is no time to check every square, so the only tool left is recognition, and recognition is either there already or it is not.
That makes blitz a poor place to fix blunders and a good place to find out which ones you have. Play the blitz, then review it slowly.
How to stop blundering your queen
The same method, but it helps to know which of the two queen blunders you make, because they need different work.
What this will not do
It will not promise you rating points. Rating moves for reasons that have nothing to do with your training, and any tool that guarantees a number is guessing. What Blunderbase does instead is check whether the mistake you worked on shows up less often in the games you play next, and say “not enough evidence yet” when the sample is too small to answer.
Review and scheduled practice are free.
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