Rapid 1800!
After about three months of fight, I finally got my rapid rating from 1700 to 1800 (and about 98.2% in the world!)! I started learning about one and a half years ago, and during this period got my rating from about 1000 to now 1800 (see the figure below). So here I share perspectives on how to improve you chess ratings with examples from my own games.
My complete rapid statistics
First of all, I would like to thank Chess.com for the enormous help it provided. I am a "totally" amateur in some sense: no official ratings, never play any tournaments or join any clubs. So without Chess.com, I would have much difficulties finding any appropriate opponents at all! Not to mention the computer analysis it provided which helps me to learn my blunders and greatly improve my chess skills.
First let me present the game that got me to 1800 (with analysis):
And here are some perspectives on how to improve your chess skills:
1. Believe your intuitions!
When you play rapid, you may not have the time to calculate all possible variations, so intuitions are very important in this case. Take for example this game (in which I made the 13th and 15th moves solely by intuitions):
Your intuitions may not always be right, as I will show next, but remember your opponent can't always make perfect moves, either. So never afraid to use your intuitions!
In this game, I also use my intuitions to start a decisive attack against my opponent's king. Although there occurred a problem in the 16th move, I won the game anyway:
Both my opponent and I made lots of blunders in the next game in which the position is quite complex, but I still won it:
2. Endgames
Most players pay few attentions to endgames, which means if you have a pretty good understanding of endgames, you may turn a dead draws and even losing positions into a win. Conversely, if you knows nothing about endgames, you might lose a winning position. If both you and your opponent knows nothing about endgames, then the game would be a truly disaster!
Let's begin with a classical example:
And now you understand why you should study endgames.
Here is another good example in which I saved a losing game:
In the next game it was a knight-bishop vs king endgame, but my opponent didn't know how to do the checkmate! (although I will bet that he knew this endgame wasn't a draw...) So I escape with a draw:
In the next game, I got myself in some time troubles and made several mistakes and drew a winning position:
Here is another game in which I have some time troubles and missed a win:
While understanding endgames is important, the next point is even more important!
3. Watch out!
Even players above 1700 can sometimes make the stupidest mistakes, so watch out for every move you make!
Here are some classical examples from my own games:
4. Do not resign!
The final point I want to make here is do not resign. Who knows what will happen:
Another example is the game vs Pinb in Section 2 in which I was losing but he hung his queen!
Conclusions
Of course, these four points won't make your ratings jump immediately to 1800, there are many more subtle points which can only be discovered by yourself, but they will definitely improve your chess ratings and make you more confident in your games!
See you next time when my rating reaches 1900!
Thanks for your readings!