Hi, if you have blitz behind rapid for 200 points that is not strange at all and it should not bother you. Normally we all have some preferences like better in blitz than bullet or verse. Endgames practicing can be very useful but you need to be aware of you weakness. It can be also in middlegame it does not have to be tactics only. Also to get 2000 it is useful to have understanding of openings that you play. So my advice for you is to see where are your weakness and working to improve them.
Questions for Coaches about methodology
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Jul 21, 2022
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#3
If I understand it right you are not looking for a coach, but trying to improve by yourself. Without knowing anything about your game (you don't have any games under your profile), here is my two cents:
1. Play through a lot of well annotated games on a real board (by lot I mean hundreds). Not just evergreen type of games, but ordinary GM games as well.
2. Make sure you analyse your games the right way. You write that analysing does not get you far, but this is hard to believe if you do it correctly. It is a long topic, but I mean stuff like checking the quality of your candidate moves, the correctness of the assessments you made during the game, your awareness of threats, etc.
3. As imivangalic said, try to discover your weaknesses. I don't know you, but it is a safe bet that middlegame play is one of them, as most people tend to neglect this area. Books like Hellsten's Mastering Chess Strategy can help.
4. Play a lot of OTB games with long time controls. According to Mark Dvoretsky, this is the best training possible.
Jul 21, 2022
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#4
I everyone always says play through annotated master games all the time but I still don’t understand how to do that or what that even means. Let’s say I find an annotated gm game do I just make the moves on a real board and try and figure out the next move. How would I do that without an engine to check if my move isn’t bad.
Jul 21, 2022
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#5
NMRhino wrote:
I everyone always says play through annotated master games all the time but I still don’t understand how to do that or what that even means. Let’s say I find an annotated gm game do I just make the moves on a real board and try and figure out the next move. How would I do that without an engine to check if my move isn’t bad.
Exactly, you make the moves on a real board and try to figure out the next move. If your move differs from the actual move in the game, you can safely assume that the GM's move is better, so you try to figure out why, preferably without an engine. (The mental effort you make here matters a lot, even if you are unsuccessful.) You should check whether your move is a tactical error - if not, then probably it is just less principled than the actual move. For example, you want to defend a hanging pawn with a non-developing move when you could safely ignore the threat and go on with your development; or you want to attack in a position where you are in behind in development, so you should try to catch up like crazy instead of dreaming about an attack. Stuff like that.
Of course, good annotations can help a lot with that. And if you don't understand a particular move, you can simply move on. There is plenty to learn from the parts you do understand.
Jul 21, 2022
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#6
Ok thanks, this is very helpful, but one more question, if I want to only see annotated games on the London system how would I find those.
Jul 21, 2022
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#7
NMRhino wrote:
Ok thanks, this is very helpful, but one more question, if I want to only see annotated games on the London system how would I find those.
If you have Chessbase, you can use the Position and Annotations filters in the search mask:
There are more options under the Annotations tab, like choosing games containing text.
#6
"I want to only see annotated games on the London system"
++ Use a data base. Search for ECO D02.
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1908642
Analysis of your own lost games is more important.
Aug 27, 2022
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#9
Hi! I think one way to improve is to try to discover the reasons of the lost games. Was it because a poor opening understanding , an strategic mistake, tactical failure, endgame poor play, or because the time just expired? If you find prevalence of one or two of these over the other then you should profit focusing on them first.
Good luck!
Want specifics over call? Feel free to book a trial lesson here. Relevant articles:
A Theoretical Framework for Adult Improvement by David Milliern
Better Late than Never by Paul Swaney
Hi,
I have a question for all the chess coaches, especially the ones that have quite some experience in the field of coaching players tha https://omegle.onl/t are not master material. Ideally you also did coach adult players (26+ years old) and experienced that they did improve by quite a bit. I know this scenario is rare since there are not too many adults over 25 that actually try to improve by hard.
My question is how to approach coaching in said area. I myself have 1730 blitz / 1780 rapid (peaked 1890) on lichess. My routine is different over time, but usually play longer games, try to analyze and do puzzles. I did have a coach a year back and we did a lot of end games (pawn, rook) and that helped a bit in calculation however that coach had no real agenda. There were no homework or tips what my area of improvement should be. I am looking for a more systematic approach where I get task that I can fulfill like homework that push me in the right direction.
But anyhow what is the methodology for training an adult learner that wants to improve in OTB classical and online rapid for the most part, because I feel just doing tactics and playing/analyzing games doesnt bring me too far.
What I also experienced is, that I improved quite a bit in bullet and blitz but I fell down from my 1890 lichess rapid peak to 1760 recently, which is really strange, since normally my blitz was always lagging 200 points behind rapid. Any advices from coaches what to do about that?