What's Your New Years Chess Resolution?

Hi everyone!

Everybody has something they want to do this year. Whether it be learn new openings, improve your rating just a little more, or be able to untilt, it's all accomplishable.

There are a lot of new things YOU can try this year!

First, here is the New Year's Opening, invented on a past New Year's Day.

The opening is not official, but still something I would like to show. Another thing that you can do to improve your ratings is...

Think faster

Don't stall too much in your games... playing more Bullet Chess will allow to train yourself to think faster, and be confident in Premoving, a feature that allows you to move your next move in 0.1 seconds. Bullet chess is a fun activity, which is what I take it as. When your mind is put to the test in fast games, such as 1min or hyper 30sec, you are forced to make moves faster or hang all your pieces. When you apply the strategy to rapid games, you can come up with logical moves faster. This trick I learned from an FM coach propelled me from 1100 to 1300 USCF in a couple of weeks.

ANALYZE YOUR GAMES!

Even if you don't have a premium membership here on chess.com, make sure you go over every move you played and see where your game went well or wrong. You can also go to websites that can analyze a game for you.

Take this recent game I played that I analyzed myself.

One last thing a LOT of people want to do...

UNTILT!

It's not very hard to untilt, there are some simple tricks to break the losing streak.

1. Calm down and play a different time control

Say I'm tilting in rapid. Playing a game of blitz or bullet will clean the mind out of all your worries about the other time control. Doing this will also get rid of the boredom of how repetitive the one time control may be.

2. Take a 1-hour break

Simple. Doing something else you enjoy will take your mind off chess for a little bit, and when you come back you will have a fresh mind, ready to play more chess.

3. Play during the morning!

When you play chess, or any other stressful competitive game, playing during the morning can be helpful because your mind is completely fresh and calm. Later in the day, it's harder to focus. Another thing related to this is playing alone, with no distractions.

4. Don't be emotional

When you are emotional about tilt, it's all your mind wants to think about, and then you become obsessed with untilting, which will never happen if you do it this way. Sure, maybe you want to go tell your friends, and they may offer some help, but what good will it do for you? Just stay calm, and push through.

LEARN NEW OPENINGS

A new opening means a new strategy. Unrated games or variants can be a good way to test new strategies. For a long time now, I have played the Queen's Gambit and Indian Game. A simple way to check out new strategies is to watch top games, which I do a lot, and just simply search Chess.com's Opening Database. If you like an opening, try it in a game and see how it goes! Here is an opening tier list (by my personal skill) that I created...

That is what I think of my skill. If you want to make a tier list of your own, go here https://tiermaker.com/create/ranking-chess-openings-516070

I hope this has been useful to you. If you want to improve your rating even more, solve more tactics, take all your weekly lessons, and if you are really serious about chess, get a Premium chess.com membership. Or, you can also get a chess coach, like I did

So what is your New Year's Chess Resolution?

Thanks for reading!