The purpose of this series is to acquaint you with the common types of blunders that occur in the game of chess, and help you prevent them.

For each type of blunder, we will show you a simple idea. We will give you puzzles to solve to help you recognize the blunder. Then we will provide a game for you to play through to give you practice in recognizing this type of blunder under playing conditions. And finally, we will provide hints on how to reduce the number of these blunders, thereby improving your level of play.

Chess games are filled with blunders. Even master games contain blunders of varying degrees.

To blunder means, “to make a careless mistake.” One can make a careless mistake for any of a number of reasons. Let’s take a look at a few of the most common reasons.

Because there are so many reasons to blunder, let’s make things easier by placing them in the following categories:

1. Simple Blunder - Loss from a single immediate attack
2. Intermediate Blunder - Loss from a single deferred attack
3. Tactical Blunder - Loss from a double attack
4. Positional Pawn Blunder - Pawn and square weaknesses
5. Positional Piece Blunder - Weak vs. strong pieces
6. Strategical Blunder - Incorrect or poor plan

There are many more types of mistakes that one can make in the game of chess, such as psychological blunders and attitudinal blunders. But, blunders of these types are beyond the scope of this series and for the most part can eventually display themselves on the board in the types already listed above.

Let’s now look at the first blunder category – the Simple Blunder. Other issues in this series will continue the discussion and we will eventually work our way through the other types.

A simple blunder is a move that results in an immediate loss from your opponent’s single attack.

A simple blunder can be where you:

Type-1	Place a piece on a square where it can be taken for nothing.
Type-2	Place your piece on a square where it could be taken with a piece of lower value.
Type-3	Capture a piece of lower value without realizing it is protected.
Type-4	Leave a piece on a square that is now being attacked
Type-5	Leave a piece on a square where it can be taken by a piece of lower value