I've found books on defensive tactics helpful to develop my "healthy paranoia." For 1500-2000, Heisman's Looking for Trouble and Is Your Move Safe? are great. In the former, you have to identify hidden threats and find moves to neutralize them; in the latter, you must evaluate multiple candidate moves in a given position and determine which of them the opponent can refute with a strong reply. I also do regular tactics exercises upside down when using electronic diagrams, working from the premove position, i.e., asking  "if I did this premove, what could he do to me?" For advanced exercises, there are Dvoretsky's Recognizing Your Opponent's Resources and Aagard's Practical Chess Defense.

But we still don't know from the OP what the time control is and whether we're talking about leaving a piece en prise outright, allowing a queen fork,  missing something like a backward diagonal move that's simple but hard to see, or calculating one line deeply without even looking for the opponent's early alternatives. And if the time control isn't slow---well, forget it, because you have to play slow chess in order to learn this skill.

I haven't read it but his work was consistently very high quality: Dvoretsky (2015) Recognizing Your Opponent's Resources, Russell Enterprises, also available on Chessable.

ehpotsirhc wrote on 04/03/20 at 00:28:39:


If we're talking about 'real' chess here, with a tournament rate of play, rather than on-line blitz, then unless you're too short of time:

ALWAYS take time to deliberately look for the opponent's BEST reply to your intended move.

In other words you try to put yourself in the opponent's shoes for a short while and try to 'disprove' the soundness of your intended move.

Anyone who doesn't routinely do this is guilty of playing what Heisman calls 'hope chess'.

It's a glaring weakness of mine, so I too would be receptive to any particular recommendations, beyond studying the masters of slow poison such as Petrosian, Karpov and Andersson.

I have this issue as well. It's primarily a problem of lack of prophylactic thinking (the 'healthy paranoia' referenced above; there's a lot of literature on that, and I would start there.

All players have the same issue, just not to the same degree. There are two parts to your issue.

1. "especially when I have a nice advantage"

This is due to relaxation. To overcome this, you need to cultivate a healthy paranoia. For this I recommend endgame studies. The specific reason is that unlike other puzzles, studies are guaranteed to have defensive resources that must be overcome. Your opponent is the study composer, and the first good idea that comes to your mind does not work, for a fiendish reason that the composer has prepared for you. (Maybe the second good idea also does not work.) Two books I like for the practical player are Ban Tactics of Endgames and Averbakh Chess Tactics for the Advanced Player; of course there are others. Endgame studies are about the exception, and are good for developing intuition for resources.

2. "completely overlooking strong replies my opponents can play"

It can't always be relaxation, or it would only happen when you have the advantage. Do you find that you often see the strong reply immediately after making your move on the board? If so, then it's a failure of visualization. To specifically strengthen visualization, I recommend blindfold chess. It's pretty easy to work into your current practice. If you play against an engine, look for the setting which will hide the pieces. If you are going over master games (which you should), then you can try to play through the game without a chessboard. In both cases, the important skill is to actually see the position on the board. If you can accurately calculate variations, even short ones, from the current position, then you are on your way.

And suppose you have good visualization but still have this problem? In that case it's not that you can't visualize, it's that you fail to do it. Here something like Blumenfeld's Rule can help. It was in Kotov's classic Think Like a Grandmaster. That book is worth reading if you have not done so. Kindle edition is a bargain at $2.99 on amazon https://www.amazon.com/Think-like-grandmaster-chess-book-ebook/dp/B00QT4G56E.

Hello,
I have this very bad habit of completely overlooking strong replies my opponents can play (especially when I have a nice advantage). Any tips on how to overcome this issue? I'm planning on going through Aagard's calculation book (GM Preparation - Calculation) in order to practice calculating more accurately and making sure I consider all relevant possibilities. Any advice welcome. Thank you.