Just looked at some of your games, and it seems you are inconsistent with your openings as Black. Try to stick to only one opening of each variation (e4, d4, that stuff), as you are playing openings you are not familiar with and as a result are making mistakes that your opponents know how to capitalize on due to their familiarity with their opening. Hope this helps : )
lichess.org has a really good openings tool that you can use to analyze and learn an opening that fits in with your playstyle
If you want to get better at any level, you have to stop making blunders. Also make sure you know basic endgames and openings. (learn the endgames first, I learned openings when I was around 1600) also, try playing games with higher time controls to avoid time pressure, such as 15+10 or 30 minute games. If you're going to play 10 minutes and you notice that you often become low on time, try playing faster. Maybe try blitz or bullet to force yourself to play faster.
You seem to understand them the same way I do, but I wouldn't attribute your losses to a lack of playing ability. Rather, shall we look at your number of games? You played 4, 7, and 21 on separate days, 21 is a HUGE number to play and for your brain to handle. Instead, I would have recommended playing 1-4 and reviewing each of them, even if you're just identifying the blunders. Secondly, have you worked on openings recently? According to your insights, you leave the book in about 3.5 moves, which is super early for a player of your caliber. That could potentially boost your performance. Finally, blunders are a tough thing to work on, I mean, I win half my games and lose half my games to an outright blunder, and I'm 2000! I would just reccomend consistency and not making moves instantly without evaluating their move.
Hopefully these help, I don't think you identified anything wrong in your insights, but also don't let the statistics bog you down, just enjoy chess for what it is and keep practicing!
Thank you! I've generally steered towards Q gambit, trying to learn the London system. And Sicilian or Q Indian if d4. Any better suggestions? Those have some pretty complex lines, but I'm not sure if that's good or not. If they'd just ban the Semi-Slav I'd be in good shape.
I wouldn't say to play the Sicilian at your level if you don't have a grasp on it. Indian sounds fine tho imo. Try to avoid openings with complex lines as if you don't understand / know those lines, then you are basically just moving pieces in areas for a purpose you don't understand.
My general plan is when I play a game, analyze it, then only look at first error in opening and last error in endgame and fix those before playing again.
In addition, if I really misplay an endgame from start to finish I study exactly that type [currently Q vs 2R]
and
if I miss a thematic tactic in an opening I play a lot as black I record it in my tactics book and quiz on it intermittently.
I'm not saying it's what you should do - I'm guessing you want ideas to pick from & those are what I do.
Bill
I wouldn't say to play the Sicilian at your level if you don't have a grasp on it. Indian sounds fine tho imo. Try to avoid openings with complex lines as if you don't understand / know those lines, then you are basically just moving pieces in areas for a purpose you don't understand.
That was an ah-hah moment - I'm struggling with strategic play because I don't understand what the opening calls for. I thought I understood the Sicilian but my record says otherwise. Any openings you recommend in particular?
You seem to understand them the same way I do, but I wouldn't attribute your losses to a lack of playing ability. Rather, shall we look at your number of games? You played 4, 7, and 21 on separate days, 21 is a HUGE number to play and for your brain to handle. Instead, I would have recommended playing 1-4 and reviewing each of them, even if you're just identifying the blunders. Secondly, have you worked on openings recently? According to your insights, you leave the book in about 3.5 moves, which is super early for a player of your caliber. That could potentially boost your performance. Finally, blunders are a tough thing to work on, I mean, I win half my games and lose half my games to an outright blunder, and I'm 2000! I would just reccomend consistency and not making moves instantly without evaluating their move.
Hopefully these help, I don't think you identified anything wrong in your insights, but also don't let the statistics bog you down, just enjoy chess for what it is and keep practicing!
Thanks! A few games every day is better doing the whole week's worth in one day? I've been doing showers wrong this whole time!
I try to review them all. It helps with openings but I don't get much out of them. Oh, hung that N, glad he didn't see it...don't do that again. Like you said, practicing not to blunder isn't easy. I'm not even sure how to practice that.
My personal experience on "getting stuck at x rating" is to watch some of GM Smirnov's stuff on youtube. He has several videos on that exact topic. Don't bother buying anything, just watch the free stuff. Then you make a plan to improve that includes doing lessons (vidoes, etc), puzzles, playing, and analysis - consistently. And one final note, playing bullet or blitz will likely not help with this - it's just too fast to properly analyze positions and make the best move. Stick to 10-min or 5-min if you must. Your bullet/blitz will improve as a result of proper process, but the reverse is sadly not true - that is, just playing a lot of bullet/blitz games will not really get your rating much higher once you reach a plateau. But also realize that I'm not a GM or IM or even NM and I'm also working through the same process, so take my comments with a grain of salt. Good luck to you!
I would definitely not reccomend Sicilian, the structures and theory are hard to understand with a ton of sidelines that will be played until 2200. The london is good, I thought the Botvinnik English was fun to play and hard to equalize against as black. For black I played the caro-kann until 1800, super simple and the same lines are played every time. Against d4 I reccomend the KID or the QID structure, not the Nimzo though.
I wouldn't say to play the Sicilian at your level if you don't have a grasp on it. Indian sounds fine tho imo. Try to avoid openings with complex lines as if you don't understand / know those lines, then you are basically just moving pieces in areas for a purpose you don't understand.
That was an ah-hah moment - I'm struggling with strategic play because I don't understand what the opening calls for. I thought I understood the Sicilian but my record says otherwise. Any openings you recommend in particular?
I personally play the French, but the Caro and Indian are known for being both solid openings. Also, if you do look for openings, look for ones that aren't very complex and are very versatile. Hope this helps : ) (use lichess, it has a good openings tool)
I don't know if anyone else has had to deal with this, every now and then, I am winning sometimes I will get bumped off the internet. Has anyone else had to deal with this?
As someone who has had several sporadic improvements in the year I've seriously played chess, from 1100 to 1800 rapid, I can tell you a few things: 1. Play openings that you are VERY comfortable with. For me, this is the french defense as black and the birds/nimzo larsen as white. The french is one that I very much recommend, because you can basically play it against anything. (1. e4 e6, normal french, 1. d4 e6 to transpose into the Queen's Indian defense, 1. c4 e6 to play a main line of the english, etc.) 2. Play LONGER time controls. If you are too worried about losing on time to make SURE you are not hanging a piece, try a 15+10 game or something along those lines. This step alone gave me about a 3-4 hundred rating increase in rapid, as the knowledge and pattern recognition transfers as you play enough. 3. Rather than focusing on tactics, consume positional/middlegame content. If you are stuck by not finding tactics in game or in puzzles, your best try is to limit the amount of tactics your opponent has in a position and maximizing the amount of tactics that you have. I recommend the Remote Chess academy youtube channel with GM Igor Smirnov.
My general plan is when I play a game, analyze it, then only look at first error in opening and last error in endgame and fix those before playing again.
In addition, if I really misplay an endgame from start to finish I study exactly that type [currently Q vs 2R]
and
if I miss a thematic tactic in an opening I play a lot as black I record it in my tactics book and quiz on it intermittently.
I'm not saying it's what you should do - I'm guessing you want ideas to pick from & those are what I do.
Bill
I hadn't thought of keeping that sort of log, but I like the idea. You're narrowing your study to mistakes you've made in game. Seems like a good way to make sure your lessons will be useful.
The tactics book is a great idea. Shouldn't be hard to keep a spreadsheet with the PGN at specific moves.
Thanks. You're right, I'm looking for ideas. I need a more methodical approach; your ideas seem like they'll be easy and effective.
My personal experience on "getting stuck at x rating" is to watch some of GM Smirnov's stuff on youtube. He has several videos on that exact topic. Don't bother buying anything, just watch the free stuff. Then you make a plan to improve that includes doing lessons (vidoes, etc), puzzles, playing, and analysis - consistently. And one final note, playing bullet or blitz will likely not help with this - it's just too fast to properly analyze positions and make the best move. Stick to 10-min or 5-min if you must. Your bullet/blitz will improve as a result of proper process, but the reverse is sadly not true - that is, just playing a lot of bullet/blitz games will not really get your rating much higher once you reach a plateau. But also realize that I'm not a GM or IM or even NM and I'm also working through the same process, so take my comments with a grain of salt. Good luck to you!
Thanks, I'll check him out. Not sure I've heard of him...any specific videos? I play rapid 10 minutes and daily puzzles almost exclusively. I like 15, but it's harder to find matches. Might be worth the wait.
As someone who has had several sporadic improvements in the year I've seriously played chess, from 1100 to 1800 rapid, I can tell you a few things: 1. Play openings that you are VERY comfortable with. For me, this is the french defense as black and the birds/nimzo larsen as white. The french is one that I very much recommend, because you can basically play it against anything. (1. e4 e6, normal french, 1. d4 e6 to transpose into the Queen's Indian defense, 1. c4 e6 to play a main line of the english, etc.) 2. Play LONGER time controls. If you are too worried about losing on time to make SURE you are not hanging a piece, try a 15+10 game or something along those lines. This step alone gave me about a 3-4 hundred rating increase in rapid, as the knowledge and pattern recognition transfers as you play enough. 3. Rather than focusing on tactics, consume positional/middlegame content. If you are stuck by not finding tactics in game or in puzzles, your best try is to limit the amount of tactics your opponent has in a position and maximizing the amount of tactics that you have. I recommend the Remote Chess academy youtube channel with GM Igor Smirnov.
Thanks, I'll check out those openings. You're the second to recommend GM Smirnov here, so I'll do that this evening. I've had trouble finding 15 minute games...the + time control games seem to take forever, but maybe that's a good thing. I think I'm weaker at strategic positional play than tactics, but that's hard to tell based on stats and graphs.
Congrats on going from 1100 to 1800, that's some serious progress. Thanks for the tips.
Thanks, I'll check him out. Not sure I've heard of him...any specific videos? I play rapid 10 minutes and daily puzzles almost exclusively. I like 15, but it's harder to find matches. Might be worth the wait."
Tips to reach 2000 ELO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzBrh-4H3K0
30 minutes study plan to reach 2000 ELO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxfBW41YD14
The reason I really like GM Smirnov is because he goes into details on his own struggles and breakthroughs. He was "stuck" as well and then went from <1700 to >2000 in one year by "getting in the right mindset". He's not like the typical "buy my stuff and I will make you great" but rather "anyone can get there, but you need to work".
I'm getting crushed by the sheer number of graphs. How do y'all use the tool/s? Looking at my last 7 days (Nov 2023 23-29), 35 games, this is what I gather:
Too many blunders. I left too many pieces hanging on both sides. Apparently I don't know how to move my K. My endgame accuracy was low, but somehow I won most games that make it that far. I missed a few checkmates; I was out of time, but still...missed #1? (I took a course on mates a few weeks ago.)
What else are you guys seeing? I'm blundering pieces, but how do I improve without losing on time? Feel like I've been stuck around 1400 for 14 years, but I'm struggling to figure out what needs work (besides everything) and how to work on it.
Thanks!