Ask Coach/The Community!

Hey Improvers! I’m NM Dane Mattson, Coach Dane. This forum is dedicated to chess improvement questions you have, either about general improvement or about specific questions you have about positions or games. I’ll be monitoring this forum along with NM Jeremy Kane and others, and we’ll do our best to help out! We also highly encourage the community to share their perspectives and thoughts - I’m sure in many cases, the community will have even better insight than we do

whar is the best weapon against the Sicilian Defense?

Hi there, firstly thank you so so much for doing this. My question is what is your advice for middle games? I feel like it's one of the hardest areas to improve upon in chess, especially with a ride ranging opening selection like I have.

Alongside this, how would would you recommend playing against the Scandinavian? Hope to hear from you soon!!

The only way to stop blundering is to stop playing. But there are a few ways of mitigating the number of blunders you make. The easiest way to immediately blunder less is to play longer time controls where you can think through every move. It is only natural to blunder in blitz.

The next most important thing is to make sure your thought process is correct. Unless you are in your opening preparation, it is not a good idea to move without first calculating all plausible responses by your opponent. If you simply make a move and hope you can meet whatever threat your opponent plays next turn, you are playing Hope Chess. Whenever two players' pieces are clashing, it's often a critical position where you have to calculate lines rather than playing moves that "look good" based on general principles.

In terms of practice, do puzzles. Easy puzzles. A lot of them. You want to get very good at spotting free pieces and simple tactics.

You're rated 700. At your level openings and strategy almost don't matter at all. The most important way to improve is to become better at taking all your opponent's pieces and not letting him take your pieces. You could be strategically illiterate, but if you're good at taking pieces you'll win every time.

Regarding strategy, the only thing I'd recommend at your level is that you use all your pieces. Your pieces are useless unless they do things, so try to position your pieces where they do the most things (control the most important squares). You can do this by moving them or using your pawns to open up lines; also consider trading your bad pieces for your opponent's good ones. And if all your pieces are better than your opponent's pieces, attack wherever your army is strongest.

I'm a 500-600 rapid rated player. My main problem is middlegame, I get stuck or blank in middlegame. How can I improve my middlegame?

Hi, I used to play Bullet very usually some time ago, but then I wanted to raise my rapid rating which would then lead to confusions, Then I stopped playing many bullet and my rating reached 1702 and is 1687 now, What should I do to improve my game

I recommend this course by IM Pawel Weichhold. It used to be free, and you may still be able to do that by going to his Chess.com profile and clicking on the link to it there. That's what I did. If that doesn't, I will tell you what he teaches you. It's very simple actually.

To get from 1500-1700 FIDE, how much time a day should one spend on studying/playing/analysing? Do you know of any specific drills which really help improve?

Excuse me Mr. Dane, please recommend me the types of puzzles which are to be practiced for mastering middlegames

Hi im a 2000-2100 Fide rated player , Do i have to play or understand and know theory in 2 starting moves always like e4 and d4 and is it good to play various openings in my level

I am fide rated 1400 rapid and classical 1500. I have a few questions:

1. Should I learn various openings

2. Are 30 medium level puzzles enough

3. I dont really know how to force a win through a position which is plain and closed. how to improve

4. any other tips to improve game

Im wayy lower rated than you so maybe someone else can answer this better but i think you should try to learn and play different openings now. Players of this level usually are serious and may try to figure out your prepration and try to exploit it. They may also play a variety of openings so it is better that you study openings deeply and try to play different openings and maybe try to be able to switch between differnt 1st moves.

Again this is from my POV and experience i had with higher rated players. Maybe coach or some other players can answer this quetsion better.

pay attention to your pieces and opponents pieces. if all your pieces are out you can attack or create threats. at your level it is enough if all u can do is figure out which pieces are hanging and can be captured

I don't know what's wrong with my play. I am a 600-700 rated player, however I am able to compete with 1000-1200 rated players and I can hold my own against a 1300-1400. But I still get stuck in this rating range due to my opening repertoire being very advanced. What are the openings that I should learn at this level? And how do I improve my middle game as I think that's where most of my mistakes come from. Currently against D4 I have learnt to play the Dutch, against E4 I play the Caro Kann. As white I mainly play Queen's Gambit and I try to aim for a Catalan type position (which I don't get at this level) and I've picked up the King's Indian Attack.

I am looking for book recommendations to train calculation and how to identify candidate moves. I am a 1250 rapid player and 1000 USCF OTB.

Thanks,

Eric

This can't be true, almost by definition.

You just identified the problem - you make most of your mistakes in the middlegame. So why are you focusing mostly on the openings? Openings almost don't matter at all at your level. Just play something simple and not too theoretical, and focus on taking your opponent's pieces and not letting your opponent take your pieces. Until you get really good at obtaining material advantages, almost nothing else matters... And you're 600-700 so you're probably not good at obtaining material advantages.

I'm gonna just be honest here and say you don't need a book to train calculation at your level. You can pretty much just improve your general calculation by playing long OTB classical games and making sure you use most of your time each game. For tactical calculation, do puzzles on chess.com. NM Dan Heisman often picks out random middlegame positions from random players in order to train real-life "scenarios".

For finding candidate moves, usually you can follow the KMAPS principle. That is: King safety, material, activity, pawn structure, space. This is in rough order of importance, so consider them in that order. Find all the moves that can address at least one of these positional elements and start eliminating candidate moves until you find the best option.
I don't read many books myself so I can't really recommend much there, but don't feel the need to use books as your learning method unless you genuinely enjoy reading them.

First of all concentrate, Even a GM who is not concentrating, starts blundering. Try to see what would be the immediate move of your opponent and gradually increase your calculation . Check if the square you moved your price to is safe, is the opponent threatening checkmate, can I create an attack somewhere else , etc.You can never stop blundering , it can only be minimised. Hope this helped.

I quickly gained elo from 900-1200 however I am struggling to increase now and my improvements have come to a halt despot of consistent practice. I am going for my first fide tournament next month. Any tips how I can increase elo or play well in my fide tournament?