My Journey Chapter 1: 200-300
After much too much delay, I am finally releasing the first chapter of My Journey! For those who aren't familiar with the series, My Journey is where I choose around 5 games from my past in a specific rating block (for example, today we'll go over 200-300) and use them to help you understand how you yourself can surpass this rating category yourself! Onward!
Table of Contents
If you’re new to chess, this game is a great example of what can go wrong. Before we begin, I guess the best thing to say is the old adage: “Do as I say, not as I do.” Because oh boy, this was bad.
Well that went absolutely terrible as forecasted.
One thing I want to point out specifically for this game is the ending. My opponent won, but they just gave away some pieces and missed opportunities in the endgame.
Truthfully, it didn’t matter in that situation, but this does not mean you can “go to sleep” in a winning endgame! Even with few pieces on the board, there are still tricks and trap to be made! Never, ever let your guard down.
Here is a much better game, where I am able to capitalize on my opponents mistakes. Quickly, I’d like to make a note: do not just set threats that are easy to parry. At this level, it does work often and you will get rewarded short-term, but in the long run it is better to calmly develop and improve your position, then pouncing when your opponent missteps!
Another lesson: don’t draw by repetition if you’re winning. Granted, I was really low on time here and I could have been flagged, but just play quickly- even if you fall to a fork or hang material, you’ll still have a chance to win. Play freely!
Time for some good wins (correction: wins that make you feel good 😉). After playing for a while, you’ll start to pick up on very basic tactical patterns and hopefully improve your recognition of “Is their piece hanging?” and “Does this move hang anything?”. Once you have those down, 300 and much higher will be waiting at your doorstep.
Now that you’ve seen several basic of where things go right & wrong, I’ll let the chess (and annotations!) speak for itself. This match is from an online tournament against a 900+ elo opponent.
Hanging Pieces (HPP!)
Whether you hang a piece or your opponent does, everybody is hanging pieces all of the time. If you want to get better, you have to stop hanging your own pieces, and chop on your opponents. This sounds easy enough, but for a beginner, it can be very challenging.
Simple Tactics
At 200 elo, I think there are only 3 kinds of tactics that are valuable to know- forks, pins, and skewers. These can be used very frequently at low ratings, and are often overlooked by your opponent. The goal here is to always exploit one when you can, and make sure not to allow your opponent to use one on you. Again, sounds simple, but it’s not.
The bishop skewers the rooks (blue); the knight forks the rooks (red); the rook pins the bishop (green)
Honestly, that’s about it. If there’d be one more, just make sure not to hang mate in one. And always scan for mate yourself. But now we have to address these issues and fix them!
Puzzles!
Everybody’s favorite! Puzzles are great for training to capture hanging pieces, use special tactics like forks and skewers, and see mate-in-one patterns! Puzzles are the awesome tool that you can use even at my level and at the master level! If you don’t have premium and would like more puzzles, I would recommend aimchess or chesstempo, they’re both great resources! I would only warn you because the puzzles can get a little more advanced then here on chesscom.
Solo Chess
I’m probably the only person in the whole world recommending that you play solo chess, but hear me out. It’s solely based on captures and thinking ahead, improving your board recognition and basic calculation skills, helping you build a solid foundation! For somebody at my level, this might not be as helpful, but I used it back then and it’s a real game changer! Not to mention you can play it as much as you want!
Playing Games!
That’s right! Playing games is the best way to improve! It’s the only way for you to see and start to understand your own mistakes and common mistake opponents make. And it’s super fun! I will say, playing is the number 1 game-changer below 1000 elo. Believe me, it works wonders!
That’s it for today, I hope you really enjoyed this and (for my 200s reading this), got a lot out of it. Make sure to at least test out all of those resources, and don’t forget to play, play, play! Good luck out there, see you at 300!
