Chess Blindness and How to Avoid it

Even grandmasters make mistakes. Sometimes they even miss opportunities that beginners could spot. This is an example of what we call chess blindness.

Calculating the best move is the central challenge in chess. You must understand the position and predict various eventualities. Sometimes, you can spend an hour considering a single position. Chess blindness is different. It occurs when you miss something obvious, like a hanging piece, checkmate, or simple tactic. It makes you miss moves you would usually see.

Every player has experienced this, and there are examples of chess blindness at every level. Top players have missed obvious moves and even made illegal moves during tournaments. Figuring out how to minimize chess blindness is a key part of improving your game, especially at the beginner level. 

Causes of Chess Blindness

Chess blindness seems to strike indiscriminately. Afterward, it is not always clear what went wrong. How could you have missed such an obvious threat or opportunity?

There are a few key explanations. Learning why chess blindness happens can help you catch those obvious errors.

Tunnel Vision

Part of the excitement and joy of playing a chess game is coming up with an idea and executing it on the board. Too often, we over-commit to our ideas and fail to see obvious threats. 

Chess blindness can occur when you have decided which moves you want to make and are prepared for a certain number of threats, but fail to see the point of an unexpected move by your opponent. This is often referred to as tunnel vision.

Fatigue 

Chess is a game of psychological pressure. Maintaining focus and staying alert, especially in classical chess, is one of the central challenges of the game. Visual and mental fatigue can contribute to a lack of positional awareness and tunnel blindness.

Whether playing online or in tournament conditions, tiredness can easily lead to astonishing misses from even the best players.

Rushing / Time Pressure

The frequency of blunders and easy misses also increases under time pressure. When you’re low on the clock you have less time to look at the board and less time to calculate. That said, we even do this when we have plenty of time.

Beginners, in particular will often make quick moves after considering a position superficially. Chess is a complex game, and even seemingly obvious positions can mislead you.

Lack of Chess Knowledge

Chess blindness often occurs at the beginner level because players do not recognize patterns that an intermediate or advanced player would see instantly. 

Not spotting tactical motifs like forks, skewers, pins, or discover attacks, or knowing positional concepts like pawn structure, open files, and outposts, can easily lead to avoidable errors.

Psychological Pressure

Chess can be a frustrating game. Often, a player will make a bad move and panic, leading to several more bad moves. This is a kind of chess blindness, by letting your frustration take over you stop evaluating the position you normally would.

These avoidable slips happen in every sport and game where strong mental focus is required and chess is no exception.

Strategies for Avoiding Chess Blindness

The good news about chess blindness is that there are plenty of game tips, training techniques, and exercises that can help you avoid it. From dealing with match pressure to developing a training routine, let's look at ways to limit the obvious mistakes.

Board Awareness

A key skill that chess players need to develop is board awareness. By assessing the merits and weaknesses of each position, you can avoid tunnel vision and make sure not to miss obvious moves. 

This is a skill that takes time to learn. Playing games with longer time controls and analyzing each position with a series of questions or checks is a good way to practice. Similarly, analyzing your games and seeing where you went wrong. Soon you will be able to notice risky moves and scan for opportunities quickly. 

Related: Chess Records: A Guide to Reading Games and Tournaments

Tactical Training and Positional Knowledge

Learning to spot tactical patterns can help you quickly identify threats or opportunities. For example, a weak king will often provide the opportunity for pins, forks, and discovered attacks. In an endgame, where you are a knight vs a rook, your best chance of winning is to fork the rook and the king. Understanding positional principals like the basics of pawn structure and piece safety is also key to recognizing good or bad moves.

Training with puzzles can help you recognize tactics more effectively. By being able to scan the board for these patterns, you can minimize instances of chess blindness in your games.

Related: Positional Vs Tactical Chess: Which is Best For You

Practicing Lower Time Control

Dealing with low time pressure is a big part of playing chess at the amateur and tournament levels. Chess blindness moves are more likely to appear when you are low on time. To deal with this, practice calculating and board awareness in games with lower time controls. Blitz and even Bullet games can help you to make clever, conscious moves even when you’re low on time. 

Mental and Physical Exercise

Dealing with fatigue and psychological stress during chess games is a key part of minimizing chess blindness. Whether you are a tournament player and have to deal with match pressure, or like to play online marathons, managing tiredness matters for most chess players.

There are many different ways to limit fatigue and stay focused in long games and matches:

• Make the most of breaks when you can
• Get physical exercise and eat well, especially before tournaments
• Aim to get plenty of sleep and take breaks from screens
• Eliminate distractions and aim to only play chess when you focus completely on the game

Avoid Autopilot

If you play chess regularly, there will be positions that you become very familiar with, especially in the opening. Often, this means playing on autopilot: making familiar moves that seem right or have worked in the past. The problem with this kind of autopilot play is that you are not actually considering your moves. This makes it much easier to make a bad one without thinking.

To avoid blundering, stay focused on the game and keep considering each position independently. Learn your opening and endgame theory but keep looking for the best move in every position. 

Becoming a Conscious Chess Player

As amateur chess players, we all make a lot of mistakes. Spotting tactics, avoiding blunders, and evaluating positions all take time and plenty of mental effort.

The good news about chess blindness is that it is often easier to avoid. By approaching each chess match, game, or move with focus you can cut out many of those frustrating obvious misses and errors.

The lesson to be learned from chess blindness is that chess is an extremely psychological game. Alongside your chess knowledge and calculating skills, you need to be able to stay conscious, focused, and calm to keep making good moves and win chess games.