Support, Venting, and Safe Space Forum

@rohan_asif,

Hang in there. Sorry to hear your strugglin'.

Thank you!

Should I feel good or bad if I win a game where I made some mental mistakes? For reference I just finished playing a rapid game where I hung mate in one and my opponent thankfully missed it, I then proceeded to make another blunder. I don’t know if they were stunned by the move but after this I won by abandonment. I don’t think I should be happy with this win? But should I just overlook it and learn from the silliness of these games.

Those wins often won’t lead to a lot of feeling of success but for me they help with the overall learning process in regards to missing the moves and key takeaways to work on. So in a way that’s a positive that can help with improvement often better than a win. Hope that helps

I thought this might be a good place to post my first blogpost about Chess Improvers, because it's a bit of a vent about one of the first things improvers run into, when they participate in tournaments, and start playing Rapids and Blitz games online. We've been testing out our shaky openings on the bots, then suddenly, Fried Liver hits you in the face out of nowhere! I hope Chess Improvers get a laugh out of this one. It certainly cured some of my Improver Trials and Tribulations writing it.

https://www.chess.com/blog/DonEmber/the-trials-and-tribulations-of-a-chess-improver

@Flan Hey, Flan, is there any chance you would message me just to talk about chess strategies or games you like? I see you are quite a high rating compared to me, and very articulate, and passionate about chess, even though you're getting to hate it. I do understand how you feel, frustration-wise, although I'm on the other end (really low elo) of the slider, that measures chess performance. I am really wanting to talk about chess ideas, since it's such a rich game, and I bet you have loads of info on positional and tactical play, that talking to someone about might re-ignite your love of the game, for its own sake, and take the focus off ratings for both of us, for a while! Just an idea, but message me if you want, and we can swop chess stories!

I'm a 635 Rapid and falling. I took a break from online games for a month when I was bouncing back and forth of 700. I've spent that time really focusing on studying. I did dozens of chess puzzles a day, endgame mate drills daily, and reading about positional concepts. My first 4 rapid games since all that work, I completely embarrassed myself with game ending blunders and early mistakes that just make the entire game un-enjoyable. I don’t know where to go from here. Am I doing something wrong? I feel like the only thing I’m learning is how to hate this game.

@Wanz001 having a quick look at your account you probably just haven't played enough games to have calibrated your level of chess playing skill and are training concepts that you don't have the game experience to understand when to apply.

All that training that you've done will come in useful but just playing some games will get you some more familiarity with situations and common mistakes. This will help you get into situations where you can apply the studying you have done.

At this point I'd encourage you to just play alot of games with the idea that if you win its good and if you lose you can find something new to learn. As this point its about knowledge build up rather than rating and its best to look for methods to build your knowledge pool rather than chase rating until you reach a few hundred games.

@Cartoon46 Thanks for the advice. I really appreciate you taking the time to check my stats and help me out. I had hoped that my rating leveled off when I started winning games and I’m easily beating bots rated 850, but it looks like that rating is further off than I thought. I guess I’ll have to lower my expectations and prepare my fragile ego for another score of losses. This is definitely not a game for the weak willed. Much respect to those of you that stuck with it, and much gratitude to those of you that take the time to support us newbs on these forums.

@Wanz001 good luck with your next games, its always good to put ego to the side in chess, since win and loss streaks will happen even if you never tilt in the slightest.

A good way to think is that if you sit down to play 5 games and you play at a 50% winrate consistently then around 3% of the time you'll win all 5 and 3% of the time you'll lose all 5. So having any sort of 5 game run isn't going to be that rare, especially when you think that its only really a 4 game run after any result!

The best thing to consider is how you played the game, if you lost you can be still be happy if you applied some new ideas into your game or came up with a good plan.

Failing that there's always some lessons to be learnt, even in a clean win you can note some good ideas that you can apply to the current level you are playing at.

Once you have alot of games played you'll start to notice patterns where you might feel like you are doing worse than your opponents in some areas (for me it's very much time management and certain types of late middlegame/early endgame) this can help you find where best to put your energy.

I wouldn't worry too much about which bots you can and can't beat in terms of rating since these are a little inflated compared to your usual opponents in live games, but you will certainly find yourself getting past better ones over time as you improve.

Hello everyone! Thought I'd post here because I have to vent somewhere. Feeling very frustrated after losing the first game I play after a "long" break (last time I played was on 19th of February, so not really that long of a break). Anyway, thought I'd play one game this evening, as I did some studying earlier (1st, mistake, should've just realised that I'm not 100% focus).
Well as I started the game things just went south very quickly. My mental strength just shattered as my opponent kept making threats. Game ended in a "should've been the first move to catch" blunder (2nd, mistake). Super annoyed of myself. Should've just rested today and played tomorrow. 
Here is the game in question, commented my thought process at the time. Cheers.