Chess Blind-spots

A blind-spot refers to an area of your vision that is impaired while driving a car. When you change lanes you are supposed to look over your shoulder to make sure there aren’t any cars in your “blind-spot.”

Well, there are blind-spots in chess as well. Whenever a move is made that you didn’t see coming, it was in your blind-spot. Especially if it was a move that could have easily been seen, for example a move that was just one move away. They call these blunders.

You don’t have to make these blunders. And if you learn what types of blunders you make-or if you examine the blunder after the game-you might discover something about your chess blind-spots.

A chess player I know decided to keep a log of all his games and after examining them all in order he noticed that he tended to make a blunder on the 30th move every game. This made him more aware of one of his chess blind-spots. In a recent game of mine I found myself completely surprised by a simple check that should have been easy to see. At first I was mad at myself and thought I had lost all discipline. Then after looking at the game later I realized that I was playing a very unfamiliar opening and since I am used to playing my opening moves by rote, I failed to look carefully at every move. I decided that in the future if I am in an unfamiliar opening I need to examine every possible move before deciding on a move. This includes every possible move of my opponents. I should be especially attentive to piece captures and checks.

Being in an unfamiliar opening is essentially one of my blind-spots, since I am used to making developing moves more out of habit in that phase of the game. What are some of your chess blind-spots? See if you can begin to determine a pattern by looking at your games.