Help with puzzles

Sort:
ondrejzdrahal

Hi everyone, I wantd to hit 1800 rapid rating here but I changed my goal to 1600 in 2025.
Is there any 1600 player and would you please try this?

Go to lichess, do puzzles
1 200, 1500,1800 (my current rating),2100,2300 and try 5-10 minutes of each, if you don't have much time, mainly 1800 -2100. Please tell me how many you got right, how many incorrect and in what time - I want to know how good I need to be to reach 1600.

Elapoidea

Hello Ondrej, I just wanted to briefly discuss something about improving in chess that might help you a little. 
Your rating in a single number expressing some sort of average of all your skills. For example, you might play endgames "like a 2000" but only play your middlegames "like a 1000," so your rating might be somewhere around 1500. In general, I have found that your rating is most heavily influenced by the area that you are the weakest in. You could be amazing at everything except openings, but if every game you find yourself in weird positions or down material because you fail in the opening, you will be performing substantially lower than what your other skills would suggest.

As such, there isn't an exact goal you need to reach to get to a certain level. There are people who are 1600 who are phenomenal at tactics but struggle elsewhere. On the other hand, there are people who are better at everything else, and their tactics are what are holding them back. If you want to see improvement as quickly as possible, I recommend that you keep record of why (not just how!) you are losing or winning your games, and attempt to identify your weakest area, then focus on that.
Best of luck

ondrejzdrahal

Hi Elapoidea,
I have done some statistics (unfortunatelly last two months I didn't have time for chess) and came to the fact that:
1) I lose majority games in the middlegame (70-80%)
2) I have higher accuracy than most of 1600 players but somehow I'm only 1100 (your idea that if I'm bad at calculation my rating is low because I have one very bad weakness)
3) I play most of matches in draw (-0.5 to 0.5) or even I'm winning but then I didn't see something and one mistakes ruins my entire game although my opponent made 4 (but not that fatal/critical)
4) It's mainly misscalculation, I don't expect some moves and then it became clear they'll destroy for example my attack and I will lose material
I'm now working hard on puzzles (chessking puzzles for beginner up to 1400) and then I'll start with CTR 4.0 (1400 to 2200) and work sometimes with lichess and 5334 chess problems (puzzle book). Now I don't need to study endgame because I lose majority of my games in middlegame.
After week I will try match and analyse if it feels better and start collecting detailed statistics to identify my biggest weakness.