coaches who can help gauge ability?

from what I've read on these forums, casual chess players can expect to get in the 1000 - 2000 range depending on their natural aptitude towards the game. i would consider myself an extremely casual player (i'm about 1450 rapid), i know how to count attackers/defenders, i generally understand forks/pins/discovered attacks, i don't blunder too often, i know what the pieces are worth, i can kind of visualize the board 1 or 2 moves ahead (but often miss things).

on the other hand, i don't know opening lines, i don't have a great grasp on positional play, i don't understand opposition, i don't have a lot of end game strategies, and i think the reason is that i don't have time to study or play more than 2-3 rapid games each week.

i'd like to make sure this is about as far as i get without devoting time to study. is this something a coach could help out with? i mostly want to see if there's any obvious strategies i don't know about, or if there's any 'easy' things i can do to continue improving before i inevitably plateau.

nobody said anything about getting to 2000+

fair enough. where do you think most people will plateau only playing an hour or two a week?

yeah but how high do you think they can go? curious cause you have a giant banner in your profile saying you can get people to 2000 quickly lol

okay, well thanks for the feedback. currently i'm managing about 30 points every couple of months, but i'm fully aware at some point this will end

lol i seem to have struck a chord. good luck being a chess coach!

do tactics. It is always good and never bad.

'a certain level' isnt 1400

you can definitely get farther than 1450 as a casual player, however your progress will be much slower than if you dedicate time to studying.

Also @EvilOverMind does not seem like a very knowledgable person when it comes to helping people improve, or at the very least not a very pleasant person to talk to. In general people around 1300/1400 level need to start learning positional play to improve the way you learn positional play can either be from trial and error through games or learning from model games which you can then try to replicate. Learning those model games make improvement a lot easier and faster, especially for kids. But, if you just want to play and enjoy chess there is nothing wrong with that and over time you will improve, albeit slowly.

Improving at chess is usually not easy. If you can afford few lessons, I would advise getting a coach. I can teach you how to think during the chess game. After that, your progress is inevitable.

If you can't afford any lessons, here is the excerpt from very good article on how to improve:

Play a lot, analyze your games, and primarily study tactics. Your knowledge of openings, endgame, middlegame, etc. will come from analyzing your games and going over grandmaster games. Only study one of those specific topics if it is clear you are specifically losing because of that topic.

Source: https://www.gautamnarula.com/how-to-get-good-at-chess-fast/

Good luck either way!

At least you seem honest about what you know and don't know.

I'll say the obvious that "real" improvement requires study and experience and if you aren't willing to invest that effort, then you are massively limiting your potential as a chess player. Maybe you are fine with this, I don't know.

As for what you said you know and don't know, it seems consistent with what I'd expect a 1400-ish rapid chess.com player to know. Well, except for opposition; did you mean you don't understand King Opposition? This is a "quick fix" which you should learn right away. Some players less than 1000 rating know this concept and it is a foundational concept of King and pawn endgames. I recommend you learn this (if probably just takes less than 30 minutes to really learn all the details of it if you really wanted to learn).

Other than that, maybe some day we could play some unrated live chess together and I could offer some tailored advice afterwards on anything I notice

cool, thank you for the advice! i am definitely in this "just want to play and enjoy chess" category - i'm one of those people with about 100 hobbies and chess is one of them. i learned it towards the end of the pandemic and have really enjoyed playing!

hey, thank you for the feedback and the link!

hi - thanks for the response. i understand the most basic part of opposition (i think) - stay in front of my opponent's king, keep a few squares between us, and make sure he's the one who has to move out of the way. i can't seem to make it work in practice, though. after watching a video on it, i found all these king-and-pawn end game positions where my king was randomly placed somewhere on the board, my opponent's king was way across on the other side, and i had a random pawn somewhere else.. and apparently there's only one 'good' square for my king to go, and it's usually in the opposite direction of the pawn, and i really had no idea how to figure things out. maybe i need to find a better resource. i left thinking it was a really complicated concept and something that would take a lot of study time!

after looking at the wikipedia page for opposition, i think it's 'distant opposition' that i definitely don't get. for example looking at this image:

it is not obvious to me at all who's winning or what to do. if this is an easy lesson, i'll try to pick it up!

Oh okay, so you understand direct King Opposition, but just are a little shakier on Distant Opposition; yeah okay, this is normal for a 1400-ish player then.

Distant Opposition is the same concept of regular Opposition, but just a little more advanced. I like to think of it this way:

direct King Opposition has one square between both Kings, right? The number 1 is an odd number. This is what allows you to hold Opposition. If the number of squares between the Kings is 3, or 5 (odd numbers), then you should still be able to gain the direct King Opposition. Similarly, you lose the Opposition when there are an even number of squares between the Kings; this is because then you are a tempo "off" so to speak.

The example above involved knowledge of this and key squares for getting the Opposition. Notice that all the pawns are fixed and neither King can infiltrate on the sides. The only legal way through for either King is infiltration on the d-file or the e-file. This position is a draw with best play with either side to move if the defending side is cognizant of Distant Opposition and Direct King Opposition.

There are 5 squares between the Kings and 5 is an odd number like 1, so this is Distant Opposition and the side to move would lose Opposition if they carelessly charged forward. For instance 1. Kd2 ...Kd6 2. Kd3?? ...Kd5! Black has direct Opposition because it was an odd number of squares between the Kings and white was "forced" into moving first. Now the white King would lose the game by zugswang.

1. Kd2 ...Kd6 doesn't immediately lose though because white doesn't have to step up to the third rank and lose the game. They can shuffle on the second rank and shadow the enemy King from infiltrating for an easy draw. Important to know that "Diagonal Opposition" doesn't change anything.

1. Kd2 ...Kd6 2. Kc3?? loses to 2...Ke5! and the d4 square is between both Kings, but it being diagonal doesn't change the fact that it is 1 square and 1 is an odd number, so they can hold Opposition if desired. After 2...Ke5! 3. Kd3 ...Kd5 would be Direct Opposition if black wanted a safe draw. However, in this case, 3. Kd3 ...Kf4 appears to be winning for black instead.

Hi! It is difficult to give an answer without knowing you or your games. But I agree that in any case, you need to allocate more time per week for developing activities to see faster results.

If you are interested in develping your chess skills, you could check out my post about the subject on my blog : https://www.chess.com/blog/maafernan/chess-skills-development

I´m a Chess.com Coach. For details on lessons, please send me a message.

Good luck!

Try this tip. How To Think Like A Chess Grandmaster: GM’s Thought Process Revealed!