Now that I have your attention

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When BDK wrote about his latest blunder some time ago a few issues crossed my mind. Since he was focussing on a new approach to his game, that is to say, he intended to pick up his old approach again (CTT), I tried to draw his attention with a few jokes. The message that I had something to say obviously didn't come across.
Since I have no inclination to help people who don't want to be helped, I didn't simply say what I had to say. I never do. But since everybody has the right to be awoken when he signals it, I continued to poke him with hints. As I always do. To no avail, btw.

When BDk wrote an excellent post about lack of chess vision as the main cause of blunders, he covered 90% of the matter, so what I had to say started to look somewhat obsolete.
Due to the law of inertia I continued to poke though. What especially triggered me was his call up:

Fellow patzers: when it is your turn to move, do not waste your time thinking about pawn structure, whether to exchange your Bishop for his Knight, or similar strategic jambalaya before doing a basic safety check.

Well, as you can read in the comments of this post, my latest poke crossed the line of funnyness into the area of insult. Which can always happen with my way of demeanor, ofcourse. But I can never deny someone's right to be awoken when he seems to call me.

Ok, 'nuf said, so what's up?

It is a common thought that there is an imperative relationship between a low rating and blundering. There is not. Not imperative, I mean. Even when I had a low rating, I never have blundered much. There are lots of low rated players who don't.
The cause for blundering lies in [lack of] chess vision, as BDK pointed out brilliantly. But here I talk about the cause behind the cause. Why some people are blunder prone, while others aren't. The idea that blunders are inherent to a low rating prevents the research after these deeper causes.

It must have something to do with habits. Habits tend to become invisible when you think that everyone has the same problem. My attitude in life is one of safety first. Check and double check. No pun intended. These habits, which I can't help, prevents me obviously from blundering much.

During clubevenings and tournaments I noticed a habit which the greater part of the D-players have in common (but not all of them, as said). When the games start at 8 pm, most of the D-players are sitting at the bar at 9 pm. I never understand that. How can you loose a game and have still 1.5 hours left on the clock? That simply can't be.

It's my take that the habit we are talking about here is impatientness. Since the A-players use up all their time in general, the question arises why aren't they impatient? Have they overcome their habit or are impatient players spud out in a Darwinistic manner and just not able to reach the higher ranks due to their habit?

There seems to be a correlation between the length of the game, rating, impatientness and being blunderprone (Sorry, BP). Whether and how this is causal I leave to you. I just wanted to put these invisible habits under your attention.

Another point I want to make is that there is a great difference in level between the level of your blunder and the level of your average chess skill. As BDK pointed out that has to do with chess vision. If you look not at a certain part of the board or look with a biased mindset, you simply do not see what's there. This implies that measures that repair your blunderprone-ity will have no effect at your average chess skill. Since the difference in level of both is to big.

This leaves the question if the raise of your overall chess skills has a causal relation to the level of your blunders. In other words, do grandmasters make subtle blunders in stead of gros blunders? If so, their blunderprone-ity might have nothing to do with impatientness after all since they play longer games and are hence less impatient. Hence I might be talking nonsense.