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You are in the middle-game. Your position looks superior than your opponent’s. All your pieces have been mobilised for attack. You have been calculating tirelessly after every move. Now, victory seems so close. You make the next move. Then it happens. You have hardly completed your move when you suddenly realized that it was the wrong move. Now all hell broke loose. Part of you feels like you are going to scream. Another part feels like you are going to run across the street and weep like a baby.

Why does a blunder happen? A blunder is basically a very bad move made unintentionally. There are many possible causes of blunders. The most common ones are:

1. Loss of focus due to tiredness and lethargy.
2. Lack of clear plans.
3. Inadequate knowledge of Strategy and/or Tactics.
4. Poor grasp of the position.
5. Underestimating opponent’s counterattacks.
6. Too obsessed with a single line of attack.
7. Being emotional because victory is already within sight.
8. Already in time trouble, so there is not enough time to analyse positions.

So how are you going to avoid or better still eliminate blunders from your chess. The following step-by-step procedure can hopefully help.

1. Be alert and vigilant at all time. Don’t assume any position as easy and re-examine it during your turn to move to see how much the position has changed.

2. When you see a good move sits on your hand,BEWARE!. This might spell Danger! You might jump to premature conclusion and commit that blunder.

3. Do more reading. Many books and periodicals have been published on chess. You can also watch chess training videos. When you have adequate knowledge of the game, you can plan better and you will know exactly what to do next. So your tendency to blunder will diminish.