Our 64 most memorable blunders

We like sharing our chess brilliancies and best wins.

Some games make you feel on top of the world.

In this post, I want to focus on the other side. When you play chess, especially OTB, you inevitably have horrible blunders that haunt you for years.

I used to feel angry and ashamed at myself for these blunders. They can be incredibly painful, but if you want to focus on the goal of learning something each day (my improvement philosophy of choice), you need to learn how to take them in your stride as a lesson and not dwell on it, just as you shouldn’t dwell on a brilliancy for too long.

So I think the chess world would be more fun and interesting if we could feel comfortable sharing our worst moments, gently laughing at our own human folly.
Photo by Caleb Woods on Unsplash

I’ve made a Lichess study where, after seeing my blunders below, I hope some of you will be happy to add your worst blunder to it to create a community collection others can be entertained by and perhaps even learn from!

Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen.
—Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Blunders are often due to one or more of these factors:

• losing your focus for one moment,
• losing your marbles in time trouble,
• lacking in tactical ability or awareness or
• being too nervous due to the competitive importance of the game.

Let me show you two of my memorable blunders (out of many more).

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Blunder #1

This game was from the World Open in Philadelphia in 2011.

Me (2315) - GM Kidambi Sundararajan (2467)

Black’s just played 37...bxa6. The rook on a4 has to keep e4 defended so 38.Bxa6, right? Black can still push for a win but with all the pawns on one side, White has decent chances to hold.

But...I played 38.Rxa6.
I can still remember my opponent’s expression as he completely froze, stared at my move, then looked up at me slowly (as pure a look of astonishment as you’ll get).
After 38...hxg4 39.hxg4 Bxe4 40.Kf1 Bf3 41.g5 Rg2 42.g6 Rxg6 I resigned.

The endgame with doubled g-pawns is winning for Black, and otherwise I’m just two pawns down.

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Blunder #2

This was in Round 8 from the Australian Championships in 2010.

Winning this game would have guaranteed my first IM norm after 10 years of competing in classical tournaments.

Me (2275) - IM George Xie (2448)
Black’s just taken my knight on f5, and two pawns up, I had an easy win with the natural 35.Bxf5 - pinning the knight and threatening the deadly Qh3.
35...Qh4 gets the queen trapped after 36.Bg5 Qh5 37.Bg4 so it’s pretty much game over.

However, seeing some ghosts, I opted for the strange 35.exf5. Still winning, but not as clearcut. The real howler happened after 35...Nh4:
I was probably hoping there’d be something better than 36.Rxg8 Qxg8 37.Qxe5 Kxh6, as I couldn’t see a knockout blow.

Low on time, I panicked and played 36.Bg5.
White would be winning, if not for 36...Nxg2 attacking my queen! I’m a whole rook down, and resigned after 37.Qxe5 Qxg5 38.Rg1 Qe3 39.Qe6 Qxg1+.

A group of friends was waiting for me outside the hall to go to dinner, and knowing how my game finished, had the most sympathetic looks you could imagine, like they were looking at a helpless puppy in distress.

I was devastated at the time (and it took me another 2 years to score my first norm), but funnily enough, what I most vividly remember from these two games is, more than the sinking feeling of realising I’d blundered, the expression on my opponent’s face (first game) and my friends’ faces afterwards (second game).

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Share yours

So if you’ll oblige me, share your most memorable blunder and I’ll add it to this Lichess study:
https://lichess.org/study/LtKZ8wl6

You can provide the PGN of the game via:

• a comment, or
• linking to a chapter URL.

Notes on the moves and background of the game are welcome!

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Reflect often on the speed with which all things in being, or coming into being, are carried past and swept away. Existence is like a river in ceaseless flow, its actions a constant succession of change, its causes innumerable in their variety: scarcely anything stands still, even what is most immediate. Reflect too on the yawning gulf of past and future time, in which all things vanish. So in all this it must be folly for anyone to be puffed with ambition, racked in struggle, or indignant at his lot - as if this was anything lasting or likely to trouble him for too long.
—Meditations, Marcus Aurelius