How do you improve board vision in chess?

Board vision is noticing what every piece on the board can do right now: what it attacks, what it defends, and where it can go next. Most missed tactics and most blunders are a vision problem before they are a calculation problem. The piece was visible; it just was not checked.

Use the same short scan before each move until it is automatic. Do it for your opponent first, then for yourself.

1. Checks: every check your opponent could give next move, then every check you can give.
2. Captures: every capture for both sides, including captures of pieces that look defended.
3. Threats: what your opponent's last move attacks, and what it now threatens to attack next.
4. Your candidate move: after it, which of your pieces is undefended, and which lines did it open?

In fast games, shorten it to the last move's threats and your move's blind spot. How to stop blundering covers the blunder check in more detail, and chess time management covers saving clock time for it.

Hanging pieces

Lichess's Puzzle Themes include "Hanging piece", described as a tactic with an opponent piece undefended or insufficiently defended and free to capture. Do short sets of it, and in your own games count the defenders of each piece before you move.

Long-range pieces

Bishops, rooks, and queens attack from across the board, so they are easy to miss. Lichess themes such as Pin, Skewer, Discovered attack, and X-Ray attack all train lines through other pieces. When a file or diagonal opens, ask which long-range piece now sees down it.

Knight squares

Knights jump, so their attacks do not follow lines. Before you put a piece or the king on a square, check whether an enemy knight can reach it or fork from it next move. Lichess's Fork theme, a piece attacking two or more opposing pieces at once, is full of knight forks.

Lichess Coordinate training shows a square name and you click the square. Chess.com Vision trains coordinates and move speed. A few minutes of either makes square names, and so notation and calculation, faster.

Then practice holding a position in your head: read a short line from a game, play it out without moving the pieces, and check where each piece ended up. Start with two or three moves and add more when it is easy.

Review your games without an engine first, then mark each miss by type: hanging piece, long-range piece, knight, or a missed check. The type that keeps coming back is the one to drill. The review method is in how to analyze your own chess games, and ranking those misses is in how to find your chess weaknesses.