This Website Sucks For Beginners

I've been playing for a bit and following all the opening principles, reading the guides, doing lessons and puzzles, and even analyzing my games when I get a chance to use a free analysis. Even still I couldn't break 500. It really doesn't help when so much of the community then turns around and says "well if you're under 1000 you're clearly blundering all the time." Like that doesn't help me at all.

I also have pretty even and well done games with people of higher scores and also tend to get knocked down by people of lower score as well. It's like I literally can't progress. And when I ask for help all I get is the same responses with a link to some blog or the opening principles or the "Analyze every game and see where you missed." 

For One thing, I can't afford the analysis after every game. I don't have the money to pay for premium and I'm playing to enjoy myself and not be reminded of my financial situation. Second off It'd be nice to actually have somebody to at least guide me or try to give me some advice for where i'm falling and not just be brushed off as a "blunderfest" just because my rank is so low. And when you do get advice it always boils down to "stop Blundering" and "think 2 moves ahead of your opponent".

Like how? If I knew how to stop blundering, I wouldn't be asking you how to stop blundering. And I wish I had the psychic power to know what my opponent is going to do 2 moves ahead. I guess that's just something Chess players can do that I haven't picked up yet or something. 

And the worst response is "Keep playing, you'll learn from playing." That's what I've been trying to do but the more I play, the more I lose. I find I'll go on, have a good couple games, then start dropping in quality and getting my butt kicked shortly after out of nowhere. The only thing I've learned from this is that people like to taunt you into resigning when you start losing, and nobody is actually willing to help you unless you pay them or subscribe to their youtube channel.

Here is your last loss vs a player of similar level.

 

3.Be2? OK this develops (passively) and is not utterly terrible, but d4 is standard here trying to fight for the centre. e2 is not the best square for the Bishop (there is no need to worry about Bg4 pin by black here).

5.Bb5? You move the same piece again in the opening, this goes against opening principles. Why? It wastes time when you could be getting your other pieces involved.

11.a4 and 12.c4 you spend a couple of moves completely locking the position up. Again, this is not terrible, just a bit unnecessary. You still have not developed your queenside pieces. 

15.Nfd2 and 16.Nf3 you move the same piece back and forth, presumably because you're unsure what to be doing. This is a consequence of completely locking the position up and leaving yourself with limited space and options for your pieces.

22.Bxf6 you have done a decent job of rearranging your pieces and your opponent has given away a couple of pawns. Here there is no need to immediately capture this Knight. The pin is annoying for black so let him try to solve this issue instead of solving it for him. Usually better to maintain 'tension' in a position than release it, similar to earlier when you played a4 and c4.

Your opponent then sacrifices a piece incorrectly and you additionally win his rook on move 30. Now up by 2 pieces you should be able to win if you can develop your extra pieces and get them into the game (your poor Ra1 and Nb1 which you haven't touched).

34.Qxc4? There is Nf3+ forking the king and Queen.

35.Ra3? You seem to have become fixated on exchanging Queens for a few moves and leave this rook hanging to the Bf8. The best way to increase your advantage and win when up material like this is to go after the King eg.Nf3+. If you can exchange then great, but you try to hard to force it here and it doesn't work.

44.d5? Giving the pawn away for no particular reason.

You the lose your a pawn which is a big problem.

56.Ne1? loses the Knight. Kh2 was necessary.

And you are forced to resign a game which you were in a great position to win.

Your opening play was questionable, especially the Be2 and Bb5+ stuff. Develop all your pieces as fast as you can to their most active squares - Think of it like a race to get everything into the game before your opponent. You should not be in a situation where 2 pieces are untouched after 30 moves.

Don't release the tension in a position unless it's necessary - it makes things simpler for your opponent.

You hung pieces on a couple of occasions (Ra3 and Ne1+). You must cut this out and only you can control the act of placing pieces where they can be captured by being more careful.

You can be more careful by taking your time. This was a 1hr game where you made 60 moves in 15 minutes, taking 10 or 20 seconds on each move maximum. You won't see everything if you do this eg. the pieces you hung, Nf3+ winning his queen (and the game). Use your time to think carefully. 

Your opponent here was rated 150 points higher than you but you were winning easily because he made worse mistakes than you. If you take great care over each and every move you can win many games vs players who don't do this and who make mistakes which you can punish. A 1000 rating is achievable by playing with care and attention.

Improving is in your hands but it takes time and patience. Good luck 👍

Also 12.c4 was not good , apart from blocking in your bishop, by playing 12.Bd5 you could’ve won the exchange, by pinning the black Queen against the rook on a8

It is not that folks are trying to be mean or rude, it is just that a lot of guys on these forums have been playing chess for so many years now that they don't really remember what it is like to be a beginner anymore.

Spend a few hours (say 5 to 10 hours) doing puzzles. Your tactical ability will improve a lot and you will play better in your games. 

Do lots of puzzles.That's the only way you start recognizing patterns.

I don't even play games, just started with the lessons and then went on to the puzzles.  I would suggest trying that.  It's a great way to learn.  My puzzle rating was under 1000 for quite a while, and now is around 2500. 

You don't have to analyze a game on the site only. There are free tools that you can install on your desktop (and probably mobile, but I don't use that) that can help you analyze as well if you do not have a membership. I use pgn Chessbook, but you have ChessX, Scid, and probably a lot more of them. 

As for blundering, they are correct, I've seen one of your games where you had a mate in 1 and a lot of time on the clock, and instead you lost a game in a few moves afterwards against 1 100 rated opponent.

Try to take your time before every move, I see that you like longer games like myself. Taking your time and making sure that your move doesn't lose something outright will make you better surely.

#1

"I can't afford the analysis after every game." ++ One lost game per day plus its full analysis is enough. Key is that you learn from your mistakes so as to not repeat them and so as to exploit similar mistakes by your opponents.

"how to stop blundering" ++ The trick is to split your thinking process into two parts. First you consider candidate moves, evaluate, decide on the best move. Then you picture it played and you check it is no blunder. Then you play it.

"And I wish I had the psychic power to know what my opponent is going to do 2 moves ahead." ++ It is only necessary to think 1 move deeper than your opponent. The trick to do that is to use more time than your opponent. I recommend playing 15|10 time control. You start at 40 seconds/move and you finish at 10 seconds/move on increment.

"the more I play, the more I lose." ++ Key is to learn from your losses. If you do not learn from your losses, then you repeat the same mistakes over and again and you get nowhere.

“Then you pictute it played and you check it is no blunder. Then you play it.”

Simply telling a beginner this is not helping. Give them a way to do this. You can’t relate to them, clearly.

To stop blundering, some things that work for me are:
1) Sitting on my hands and forcing myself to think before each move
2) Writing down that I want to think carefully before each move
3)Asking myself questions such as “What will my opponent do next? Do they have a response to my move that I can’t deal with”

“It is only necessary to think 1 move deeper than your opponent”

That does not help anyone. Pattern recognition comes from things like puzzles training and constant practice.

I literally only responded here to point out that nothing you say will help anyone.

As for the OP, I would like to dm you a list of positional concepts that will assist your progress.

To "blunder check" you calculate forcing moves. Forcing moves are checks, captures, and threats (threats like attacking an undefended piece, or attacking a piece of high value with a piece of lower value).

Imagine your intended move as if it's been made, then look for all of your opponent's checks, captures, and threats. This sounds hard, but what makes it easier is the position only changes 1 move at a time, and in the starting position there are no threats, captures, or checks... so if you do this every move, then on your next turn you'll already be aware of many of the forcing moves.

And then after your opponent moves, look for all of your forcing moves to see whether or not you can punish their move.

This takes a lot of practice and effort, but it gets easier with time.

OP:  Telling me to stop blundering is not useful. If I knew how to do it then I wouldn't need to ask

tygxc:  Well what you do is... check if your move is a blunder.

lol

Typical tygxc strikes again. I agree with NervesofButter about the speed chess. Don’t realistically expect to improve if you barely even think about your moves.

No offense to the OP, because obviously chess is hard and new players have information overload.

But it is a bit annoying to me (looking at the game in this quote) when people are told to follow the opening principles, but then play 40 moves without finishing development.

Unless you're spending moves on winning material, then in almost all of your games you should have no bishops or knights on your back rank by move 15. You should be castled, and have a pawn in one of the 4 center squares.

"But I saw GM xyz where it was move 15 and development wasn't finished"

Yeah, for every guideline in chess there is an exception, and the best players regularly bend rules... but you have to start with the basics. Most beginners are finishing development in a timely manner in exactly ZERO of their games... by forcing yourself to do it by move 15 (which is not very difficult) you'll consistently be getting much better middlegames.

Common mistakes are initiating captures (you can recapture, but don't initiate a capture unless it wins something) pointless pawn moves (particularly the 'h' and 'a' pawns) and in general trying to attack (don't try to pressure your opponent, just try to get your pieces off the back rank and castle, most of your moves should be on your half of the board).

As previously said here, play long games, 5 mins minimum. Ideally 20. Less than 5 mins is for players who can play 5 to 10 opening book moves. I learnt a lot about opening book moves by playing Hundreds of daily games with the opening explorer, eventually drilling the sequences into my head. 

     Chess is a difficult game to master. You've been playing here a couple of weeks. You can analyze your games yourself, without computers, and that will help you learn how to think about the game. The more you play, the more you fall into your opponents' traps, the more you learn. There are many chess books geared toward beginners--look at the "For Beginners" forums and you can uncover some old threads asking for good books. Russ Bell usually has a lot of good suggestions.

Regarding blundering,

When I was first learning I would pick a square I wanted to move to then look at every opposing piece to see if it attacked that square. Then I would look at the opposing pieces again to see if any could attack that square in one move. Yes, it's time consuming. Learning is always time consuming. Eventually, that plodding look at every opposing piece becomes a quick scan as you become more experienced.

 I find that it helps to watch games that other higher rated players play .You can see how they develop their pieces and always have pieces that are protecting their other pieces , no unprotected "Hanging Pieces" . Meaning pieces that can be taken freely by your opponent.

Also don't exchange pieces when you are down , only when you are up and have more pieces than your opponent has. Also watch out for smothered checkmates . Make sure the King always has a place to move to avoid checkmate.

What they are saying is that your tactical skills need to be improved.  You do that by practicing tactics.  Specifically, pick a theme (say, pins) and practice those tactics starting with the most easy ones (i.e. very few pieces on the board) and increasing in difficulty.  You can do this in the unrated puzzle trainer here (not sure if it is limited to a specific number for non-paying members) or use other sites like LiChess, ChessTempo (both of which are free), or get some simple books (i.e. "Chess Tactics for Students" by Bain) or courses on Chessable (there are a ton of beginner level tactics courses there - some are even free).

Basically, people below 1000 tend to fall into 1-, 2-, and 3-move tactics quite often.  Once you start seeing those (both avoiding them and taking advantage of them when they are on the board), you quickly blow through the 1000 level.

 

At the sub-1000 level, games will seem almost random.  The reason is that the tactical skills of those players is such that it really boils down to who makes the last blunder.  You can analyze your games yourself for free (and you should if you are looking to improve) before ever using an engine.  Too many people run the Game Analysis, take what the computer told them, and never think about it for themselves.  It is hard to improve that way.

 

You do not need a psychic power.  When it is your turn, simply ask yourself, "If I were my opponent and it were my turn, what would I want to do right now?"  This helps you identify his threats.  Then you can look for ways to deal with those threats (or determine if they even need to be dealt with).  As you get better at recognizing tactical patterns, you get to the point where this becomes automatic (i.e. if you watch guys like Hikaru on stream, you'll see they identify many threats immediately).

John Bartholomew has a couple series on his YouTube channel:  "Chess Fundamentals" and "Climbing the Rating Ladder".  Those would be a good place to start as he explains things very clearly and demonstrates them on the board.  You'll also see why (and how) making those silly pawn moves in the opening can blow up in your face (and how to take advantage of it when your opponent does it).

In short, I would recommend you watch those 2 video series (both are free and are about 6 hours of good instructional material), and then pick up a couple of the free beginner tactics books on Chessable.  That will allow you to get some improvement without spending a single cent.