650 elo, how do I improve?

A few things chess is not 90 percent talent and 10 percent work. The very mindset of that could be one reason holding a person back, try and have a growth mindset instead saying “I can improve if i want to” and that will already start to help you. Next I would recommend playing blitz to build pattern recognition and I would also recommend that you set your puzzle difficulty to extra hard but instead of trying to solve the puzzle fast try and think for however long it takes to find the right solution. I’d say the most important factor is just the mindset, if you lose a few games remember that you learn from your mistakes and by losing you are actually improving this is a huge factor in commitment if you are committed you will improve.

Also I would recommend having a few key openings and not studying rare checkmates until at least 1200

I give in-depth answers, but none of it is copy-pasta, so I’ll address your points in bullet points for clarity:

• First point is that 600-700 is actually average range for a chess player. Yeah! It’s surprising, but watch my video where I discuss the global average chess rating: https://youtu.be/8FWEn2yIiFE?si=frq1XhCqoJR-8uoZ From an ability standpoint, 600 or 700 is definitely in a “beginner” range, but that doesn’t mean these players miss everything and hang pieces left and right. At least not without pressure, but I’ll come back to that part later. You also mention studying your openings, but this is probably the least important stage of chess for most chess players. I actually studying openings more than most probably do, but even I don’t believe it should be a focus, unless it is more specific to you and your games.

• Tactics puzzles are helpful and I recommend to keep solving them, but tactics practice gets diminishing returns the higher rated you become. That’s an entire topic I could go in-depth with, but it’s probably better I avoid this for sake of this being a long enough message, I’m sure. What’s important for you now is to keep solving some puzzles, but don’t blindly accept that it will solve everything because chess is also about positional concepts and pawn structure and endgames and other things which tactics alone won’t help with.

• Endgames were a big part of my chess improvement when I was first starting out. The queen checkmate and rook checkmate are both essentials for a beginner, but there’s NO WAY Bishop + Knight checkmate is a beginner checkmate. I know this checkmate really well, but there’s titled players who have occasionally failed this checkmate in games. It’s important to know how to win an endgame with one pawn: https://youtu.be/orCBaFAyqSs?si=nn2AX3wBJ5n9iwL7 and maybe some intermediate checkmates like Queen versus a Knight or Queen versus a Bishop: https://youtu.be/E4NhQt5nRpk?si=Z0i1oDBJDiHBegbJ There’s others, but I don’t want to overwhelm you. I’m simply putting these resources with my thoughts for others as well as you kind of like a reference for you to return to.

• “Blundering” and understanding pawn structure is what you said your two biggest weaknesses are. That’s actually more helpful information than it sounds because many people can’t improve and have no idea what their weaknesses are. At least you have an idea. The “blundering” is probably a combination of feeling rushed from the time control and just lacking overall playing experience. I’m not too worried about blundering because you’ll gradually minimize this with more playing and analysis of your own games. Pawn structure is also a much more advanced topic, so most people don’t have much of a grasp here either. I’m not saying that this means to ignore pawn structure and view it as “too advanced” but it does mean that there might also be more subtle errors that happen in your games you don’t know about. We can play unrated live chess sometime if you want tailored advice about what things I notice you could improve on.

• Analyzing your own games is actually a difficult skill in itself. You can watch some of my own analysis in my “Free Coaching Playlist” but some games are more advanced analysis than others. I also have a stand-alone video about how to analyze your own games; at least to give you a guideline of what to do: https://youtu.be/3SMHMIRRIu0?si=_gkNuznJYVt3PIJT

• “Not that I really have any understanding of elo. (And side note: I'm not good at math. But in my head, Being 650 out of a maximum of like 3300?” Most people don’t understand elo, or how chess ratings are calculated… it’s actually really advanced math and that’s why computers typically calculate it for us. There is no “maximum” elo. Well, kinda yes and no. There’s also practical problems with reaching high ratings that are conceptually possible, but not really feasible for other reasons. The 1500 rating already puts you better than about 90% of all chess players and 1900 or 2000 is roughly the 99 percentile. I estimate the 99.9 percentile about high 2000s rating but probably not much more than 2100. As mentioned, the global average is 600s, but elo is actually confusing and that’s why chess.com created “CAPS” but this has it’s own flaws in misinterpretation: https://youtu.be/fXOnBJ4KX1U?si=yCfKNSEORqO6V6OF

• Addressing your “in short” summary, you are probably way better than you give yourself credit for already. It’s true that chess improvement can be tricky for different reasons sometime, but I’m sure you’ll become more confident in your improvement once you feel better analyzing your own chess games and seeing a repeatable method for improving and learning on your own. Plus, my offer for unrated chess and tailored advice still stands. That goes for anyone else reading my post too :)

I think you'll find that I didn't say that learning openings are bad. Also, most media will tell you not to pointlessly memorize opening moves. Most people in general will tell you to focus on understanding the moves rather than memorizing them. No matter what anyone says, just think about it logically. If you don't understand why, YOU are making moves then what point does it serve? What if the entire point of the opening was predicated on certain middle game plans but you have no idea because you simply memorized the moves? You can often just end up worse off than if you made it up on the fly because then at least you would know what you are aiming to do or have an idea in your mind of what you're trying to aim to do.

"Just keep doing puzzles? When do I stop doing them? What puzzle rating do I aim for? Then how do you train in analysis? That's one of the core issues in my post."
You'd be better served doing a set of puzzles. Say, like a book that covers the various motifs. This way, you build pattern recognition because you do the same set of puzzles until they get so easy you can solve them all in a short time (based on your initial time spent solving and depending on the size of the set). The tactical trainer here is more of a tool to check where you are tactically, not to actually improve, at least not if you're utilizing it by just clicking next puzzle. I don't use it much myself, but I do know you can set parameters to limit yourself to a specific set of puzzles so if you insist on using it, I suggest you familiarize yourself with those tools.

You shouldnt touch chess books on openings yet. I have a book in which I highlight my chess journey, training notebooks and what worked for me. Learning openings deeply should come later.

I have advised the following rules to my 13yo stepson who achieved a peak at 2223 rapid (but unfortunately got bored of playing chess recently):

As someone has mentioned before, Openings do not matter for beginners. Just follow basic opening principles (such as develop your pieces, don't move a piece twice, get castled before move 10). However, if you enjoy learning openings, then by all means, do it. Select the lines that you like to play, internalize them on Chessreps, then keep using them in your games (until you get bored of that line and want to choose another one, but for the start one line in every situation should be good enough). I don't know "Kaufman's New Repertoire for Black and White", but any repertoire will do. Vienna Game/Gambit and French are solid openings. What does the book suggest for the player's rating to learn that repertoire?

Since there are opposing opinions on the importance of the opening, you can find out yourself how much they account for your losses. In most cases you will experience tactical blunders in the middlegame (mostly a hanging piece, or a drawback mistake, i.e. you move a piece that was protecting another piece that can be captured by your opponent after you moved the protecting piece).

The same goes for endgames. If you happen to lose a lot of games in the endgame phase, it is time to learn endgame. Of course, the super basic endgames, KQ vs K, and KRR vs K and KR vs K are essential. Beyond that, use the rule of thumb above.

When analyzing your games, just check for your first blunder/mistake (to work on your openings) and the worst blunder/mistake (to work on your tactics). Make sure you understand what went wrong, and to not repeat the same mistake in the future. Don't analyze too much, it will just overwhelm you and you will forget most of it anyway.

Play long games (15+10) and skip bullet/blitz. Since you are a beginner, you need more time to assess the situation (always ask yourself "what does that move do?", especially check for drawback mistakes). Allow yourself to assess and calculate thoroughly. If you keep moving by intuition, but never improved your intuition by properly assessing and calculating, you will not improve (and that's the reason why most chess players will not improve)

One more thing that worked for my stepson: he was keen on finding "brilliant moves", these are usually forcing moves that ignore threats by the opponent.

Skip Gotham Chess, it's 99% entertainment. If you need to watch chess videos, better learning experience for beginners can be achieved with e.g. ChessVibes (by NM Nelson Lopez), or ChesswithAkeem (by CM Akeem Brown), who do an excellent job explaining their moves and plans in a game.

i am also 650 elo in blitz

Study → Practice → Fix → Repeat

This is the framework I use with students I coach.

I think you should not try Duolingo

thanks i will try your hint

I recommend you to master two important openings: London System and King's Indian Defense( when you play against 1.e4 , it's actually Pirc Defense.) In 650 elo, you actually need openings that is helpful in 90% circumstances. Besides learning openings themselves, you should also learn how to attack with them in middle game. Without a plan , you'll be wasting your moves and time.

A quick update: I started chess clueless, only learning that openings are different ways to move the pieces. I picked the openings that scared me, and stuck with them. I then learned the core ideas of those openings and some theory of different main line variations. Ie: Vienna/French. I was originally told to learn the openings, which have deff helped me beat my friends irl. Out of like 4-5 games I did manage a win out of a 1200 my friend, which tells me that it's maybe possible to get some consistency for some improvement. It's contradicting but, I don't care about the number if either the elo goes up, or if my accuracy goes up, because apparently I'm missing every game, that would then tell me I'm improving/not stuck. If I understood why every move was strong, made good moves all the time and still lost, I'd probably feel better than that one win, where everything fell into place, but the computer was still yelling at me.

The comments have been very polarizing. I have been told to study links, I've also been told openings do not matter, I've been told that they do. What I've learned is that at my level, the mainlines are quickly refuted via quick/early trades. So some of the "Openings do not matter" advice actually maybe true / a huge waste of time. It's a lot of info to store, that isn't getting any use. I've been told media is Entertainment only, I've been told YouTube has good chess mentors worth watching. This is frustrating, I don't know who is trolling, and who is not.

Someone advised me to watch the Building Chess Habits: By chessbrah. I've spent a few hours watching him climb elo through basic development, but I've also noticed about half of my opponents play much much stronger than anyone in those videos. I've tried ignoring openings and playing games like that, I actually feel so much worse and way more prone to making mistakes because it tells me to play differently. So maybe YouTube (is) all entertainment.

I also have a lot of messages from people trying to get me to pay for coaching. I was told that I'm not at a stage where paid coaching is necessary unless I specifically want structure. And I deff believe it. I'm still playing terribly, falling for super basic traps when not using openings. At this level, I should be able to improve without being poor in the process.

I'm losing elo trying this "Chess basics" strategy, Maybe I'll get some easier matches at least / more of these no-opening games out of my system before starting some slower paced 15|10 games. Perhaps it'll help me as knowing the core idea of the Vienna/checkmating patterns/coordinates isn't helping/still falters at 600 elo lol. Like why do I need to instantly know f3 is white? Idk. I just need to figure out what info is good, and what issues need to be addressed.

I’m going to start giving free coaching soon so pls consider joining this club: https://www.chess.com/club/road-to-improvement-1/join

We will try to help you get to 1500!

Play more games and review them.

Play more games, you joined almost 6 years ago and only have 646 games. I just started playing chess a couple of months ago and I have over 2200.

Improving in chess needs its own time and dedication, reading chess books will improve a lot, ia m 1000 in rapid and 1500 in licess because of reading books

True, I made an account forever ago. I played some bots, watched some Gothamchess opening videos, and I even did well at a higher blitz level, starting out. I then inevitably lost the starting elo. I've played here and there, but I certainly didn't ever improve. I've recently tried giving chess another shot after learning a friend plays into it a bit more daily. More games was deff originally proposed to me by my friend. However in your case, I don't think more games are helping you. So I'm not quite sure what the takeaway is here. :/

Hi, After reading your entire post I have some insights as a 1600 otb rated person. People around your rating obviously blunder a looot! So doing puzzles is important. I recommend doing lichess puzzles because chess.com puzzles tend to repeat over and over again. Secondly, don't focus too much on the openings as long as you know basic principles and plans in each opening your fine. Focus your time on basic pawn endgames. They are more common to occur in you level. After playing chess games, first don't use the engine, set the position up on a real board and play out the moves to see what you think you messed up. Try to come up with good moves after. THEN, you can check the engine(I don't recommend game review). What really helps is buying a few calculation books for your level to, to expand your knowledge. Hope these help

@Eagle20222 Super solid advice, Thank you. I know Lichess puzzles are deff different, I like how they do their "training" too. Chess.com is a little congested, I struggle just to navigate it sometimes. Idk what's wrong with me lol.