How To Gain Elo
Hello everyone and welcome to Ryan's Awesome Blogs! Elo, huh... The number that tells you your current strength in chess. Although is chess can be addicting, it can also be very frustrating, since sometimes no matter how hard we grind, we are still stuck in the same rating over and over again or you might tilt. Sure, you might get a really good peak, but 90% of the time, it drops. But today we will be solving this problem easily with these simple tips!
- Discover your style
- Watch chess videos
- Chess tactics/calculation
- Learn your weakness, and;
- Have an good opening, middle-game and end-game knowledge.
By following these tips, you will see a tremendous growth in your rating points. Now let's talk about it with more detail.
Playing chess with your style
This is the key to improvement: learn your style. There are 3 main styles of play in chess: Positional, aggressive, and defensive. Positional style is when you incorporate your ideas in various types of positions, like locked/open positions. Aggressive, like the text itself states, is when you tend to attack your opponent by castling in the opposite direction followed with moves like a4 or h4. Defensive, is when you have a solid position that your opponent can't break through, like the London System, which in a perfect world, looks like this.
So first of all, find your playing style and determine to see which category it fits. Once you do that, the steps I provided below will probably be easy sailing for you.
Watch chess videos
When you are trying to improve, playing and grinding and playing and grinding isn't enough, while hundreds of players do that. You have to learn new things from time to time, and that is when websites like Youtube, or Chess.com Lessons come in handy. Let's take a look at one of the position that looks like this (Came from a lesson made by WGM Keti Tsatsalashvili)
Do you know how to solve it? Yes. It is Bxh7+!! This is the standard Greek Gift Sacrifice, and some of you might have never known it until you did a chess lesson, or perhaps you learned it online else-where in some courses and videos. Well that's definitely the case for me!
Chess tactics/calculation
Chess is 98% tactics and calculation, and 2% memorialization. What doesn't this mean? It means you shouldn't just memorize tactics or openings, instead you should know what is the purpose of the opening and every move you make. The same goes for tactics. When you are doing puzzle battle or puzzle rush, make sure to analyze the puzzles you got wrong. Well if you got none of them wrong... Good for you! Anyway, speaking back to the point, calculation is where people are having the most trouble. Here are some basic tips that will help you.
- Identify checks, captures and attacks at all times
- Practice visualization by playing blindfold chess
- Practice tactics
Here is a puzzle that will help you get a better idea of what I mean.
Hint:
Look for available checks to trap the queen!
Learning your weakness
Improving is what make the number besides your profile grow bigger and bigger. But thousands of people are struggling to find ways to improve despite doing puzzles, getting a good opening, and even memorizing endgames. One crucial component that they missed is get a good understanding of their weaknesses and how to fix them. How do you find you weakness, you may ask? Well, this can be achieved in a variety of ways; and the simplest and safest way is playing against chess.com bots. Now you don't want to play against a 2500 elo bot when you are a 400, that wouldn't work.
I hope the meme above demonstrates my point. So you will need to find a bot close to your rating, so I would say go against 400-600 bots and practice against them. If you find them too easy, feel free to move on SLOWLY to more and more challenging bots. And in the process, take notes on in what type of positions you mostly blunder the most. Once you got that down, problem solved! You found your weakness! Now all that's left is to fix it, and you can use the tips I provided above for it 
Good knowledge of Chess overall
So in order to play chess and improve at it, we have already discussed almost everything. But there are 1 little detail, or perhaps huge, and that is understand the basics of everything. Understand the "why" wouldn't always solve the problem, meaning you can't use this trick for everything. Here is an example. In King and Pawn endgames, and you only have a king. That means you have to stop the pawn from promoting. But how will you do it? That is when your general knowledge comes in handy.
Now here are a simple rule to remember in this situation: the promotion square! If the black king can get in the square, then that means the pawn can be stopped, meaning it will be a draw if its black's move. BUT if its white's move, then its a W. Crazy how 1 move determines the fate of the game, huh? Well that sums up this section. Make sure to get a good idea of "how to play chess" at your level.
Conclusion
That's it for this blog! I hope you enjoyed it and it would be a huge support to me if you can give me a follow, or perhaps a comment. Suggestions are open, and yeah that's it. Please support me by joining King Of 64, I would appreciate it a lot. Hope you have a good day!
