A modest plan for getting better. Thoughts?

Here's a plan I've sort of been using as I'm dipping my toe back into the water.  I'd welcome comments.  (And, if I'm lucky enough to hit on a decent plan, I hope others can learn)

• First, as I'm a logical learn-first-things-first kind of person, I figured the best thing to learn first was opening theory.  So I purchased Emms' book on Chess openings.  I'm learning a lot
• I also purchased FCO as a reference -- I'm having fun reading about lots of openings, and when people ask questions in the forums here, I compare answers given to what's in the book
• I started playing Rapid, and found them to be "blunder fests", and I started to question whether I was learning anything.  Furthermore, at my level, folks played such weird stuff against me, that any opening preparation was pointless.  (Example: I tried a Sicilian in black, and the first moves were 1. e4 c5 2. e5   This move threw me off so much that I spent too much time figuring out if this leads to an amateur trap, or was simply a bad move -- and you can't spend time on the second move of a game when playing Rapid.  PS: it's just a bad move)
• I decided to focus on a single opening for white, while employing the theory I learned from Emms book.  (Later I will focus on a single defense for black for each e4 and d4).  I picked 1. d4
  • (Tangent: I played a long time ago, and played 1 e4 exclusively -- so all this d4 stuff is completely new to me, like fresh ink on paper)
• So, I turned to playing bots.  No time pressure.  I can use up to three take-backs (which, at this point I want, but because I want to learn, not because I care about beating a bot)
• After the game -- I run it through the analyzer and also compare it to FCO.  I see where I played a standard opening, and at what point I veered off into a substandard move.  I'm actually pretty proud of myself that in my games I've played a "correct opening move" (same move that the GM's would play) for at least 3 moves each time, and often making a sub-par move on the fourth move.  Even better, I find that, in the analyzer, I'm actually "ahead" after 8-10 moves.
• I still need to learn more tactics, strategy, piece placement, and so forth -- but, I'm patient.  I just want to feel comfortable with my opening game.
• Some of the lessons here on chess.com are really good.

So -- that's pretty much it.  Play bots, go over the game, figure out where my mistakes were, try to let them sink in, and play again.

(I'm a bit geeky -- I decided to annotate my own first bot game -- it was against "Laura (1100)" - some extra comments inserted automatically by "the engine".  BTW, I also see why "Laura" is "only 1100", as she missed some good moves, and makes her own blunder at the end, which led me to stop annotating).  

(Another tangent: I just noticed that Laura made a sub par move in response to my subpar move, and made a blunder in response to my blunder....)

Well, first of all, memorizing openings will not get you far at that level. As you've noticed, people at that rating don't really play main lines. What you should learn is basic opening principles.

Here is probably everything you need to know for now about opening:

https://www.chess.com/blog/nklristic/surviving-the-opening-first-steps-to-chess-improvement


Playing bots will not help you improve, it is not an effective way. Why? Bots don't play as humans. Some low level bot will play fine and then out of the blue it will leave its queen or a piece hanging. People rarely act that way. Humans blunder for a reason, for instance if they don't feel comfortable in a position and they just make a bad move. 


Third, I see that you were playing 10 minute per side games against humans. That is too fast for improvement, as you've already stated. Longer games are required. Good news is that you don't have to play multiple games per day. It is much better to play one longer game - 30 minutes per side or 1 hour per side than multiple faster and low quality games. 


If you have the time, here is the guide you can use for improvement, many beginner questions are answered there:

https://www.chess.com/blog/nklristic/the-beginners-tale-first-steps-to-chess-improvement

Anyway, good luck with your chess improvement.

I'm finding a lot of improvement playing live 20 minute games. However, I spend more time analyzing the game (especially my blunders) than I spent on actual play. I also spend a LOT of time on puzzles. I ignore the timer and don't worry about how quickly I find the solution. Instead I focus on finding the solution, even if a "30 second" puzzle takes me five minutes to solve.

Aside from that my most important discovery is a psychological one: In real life if you find yourself suddenly in serious danger your first instinct is to act fast. Any delay in acting could mean life or death when your car is stuck on the railroad tracks and a train is coming! But in chess, when you find yourself suddenly in serious danger you must force yourself to ignore instinct. Faced with a dire threat you must slow down. Way down. Don't let your opponent sucker you into being in a hurry.

I agree with nklristic on a lot of things. First of all opening theory will get you nowhere just like he said. Your opponents will make moves you don’t know on say move 2, 3, 4, etc, and you are on your own again and accomplished nothing. It doesn’t help at a 1200 level and it helps more at say a 2000 level when your opponents are a lot better and will play better moves. Learn the opening ideas instead as you have a general plan what to do after your opponent makes a move you don’t know. 

I also agree with him on playing bots. Bots make lots of inhuman moves like Kg8?? after Ng5?? in the game you played vs “Laura”. I don’t think even a 100 would play that. Any human would take the free knight. I believe that playing against people would be better for your chess development.

I like the 10 minute time control personally but if you want a longer one I recommend 15 minutes with 10 second increment. It’s a longer time control, but it’s not as long as a 30 minute game, and with the increment, it avoids time scrambles at the end. 

Basically just learn opening principles (controlling the center, not moving the queen too early, etc) and learn the opening ideas that your openings have. Also you should do more tactics as that will help you A LOT more than learning “theory” at your level. You’ll probably more often have a tactic that wins a game than get more than 5 moves of theory.

That’s all for me. Good luck!

Yeah. Dont spend too much time on openings. Maybe learn the first few moves of the main lines of one or two. Enough to get you started, then play opening principles to complete development. The reason is simple, most beginner's dont lose due to poor opening knowledge, they lose because they dont see that their opponent is attacking a piece - they ignore their opponents plans. As you say, it's a blunder fest. Study the things that cause you to lose games, these are your weaknesses. There is no point studying something that is not a problem. Doing tactical puzzles is often helpful for beginners. It develops calculation and visualisation skills - fundamental skills that you need in order to progress.

These are all great comments -- thanks! I'm not sure I agree with all of it. So, responding to some of it:

Fiziwig: wow, you make a great point about the well known psychological phenomenon of the "flight or fight" response that is hardwired into all of us, and how it would be triggered during a game. The amygdala part of our brain simply works faster than reasoned thought.

nklristic: as I do have some past experience (somewhere between novice and intermediate) I think I do know the opening principles that are in your article (which is well done, and newbies should read it). The question is how to apply it. So if you look at my game -- strictly from the basic prinicples in your article -- I don't see I would ever see a difference between white 4 Nf3 and 4 e4 until I played 4 Nf3, used the machine to analyze the game, and now I understand why 4 e4 is better. As I mentioned in my OP, I think I'm halfway decent with opening principles and ready to move to a slightly higher level of actually learning (as opposed to memorizing) some openings.

Lolser9: "Bots make lots of inhuman moves like Kg8?? after Ng5?? in the game you played vs “Laura”. I don’t think even a 100 would play that."

Agreed. But that was move 15, which is why I, when I reviewed it for my own study, I didn't go past that move. Laura was pretty decent -- certainly approximately my level -- for the first 14 moves.

And in response to all: my games with bots have absolutely helped me understand one specific opening (1 d4 Nf6), which is a pretty common start. Yes, when the games get to midgame and further, the bots make dumb moves, but I'm concerned with that yet.

But should I be?

Lolser9 made an intriguing comment: "Also you should do more tactics as that will help you A LOT more than learning “theory” at your level. You’ll probably more often have a tactic that wins a game than get more than 5 moves of theory."

MarkGrub makes a similar comment: "Don't spend too much time on openings. Maybe learn the first few moves of the main lines of one or two. Enough to get you started, then play opening principles to complete development. The reason is simple, most beginner's don't lose due to poor opening knowledge"

So, when I read that, it occurred to me: most of the hours in my life that I've spent learning chess has been about openings. I figured when I mastered them, then I can do tactics and strategies, and when I'm good at that I'll learn more about endgames.

But suddenly, after these comments, it occurs to me: I ought to all the aspects. If I think I'm half-way decent at opening theory, then I should try to get half-way decent at tactics, etc., too. This seems so darn obvious now, but it took this thread to open my eyes to this.

That's why I posted -- and that's what a supportive community does! Thanks!

OK, Lolser9, and anybody else: recommendations for learning tactics?

One option are the lessons here! I just watched a lesson or two on "choosing the best move", and, wow, I learned a lot.

Thanks, all!  Keep the comments coming!

As a newbie and <1000 I find that I lose games due to my own blunders. That's why I decided to put the elimination of blunders as my top priority, above openings and above strategy. Until I stop making blunders I will never improve. Until I conquer that problem nothing else matters.

To your sicilian e5 problem: generally opening preperation is very helpful, if opponents play funny stuff, (especially at a bit lower levels), it is almost always bad moves. Besides the variations, u have to learn, how to punish bad moves. In the example: e5 is bad beacuse it pushes a lonely pawn into ur territory which u can attack later, after u developed normally i hope this helped

Yeah -- by Rapid games are blunder-fests.  When I can carve out an hour I will try a 30-minute game.  OTOH, this is why I like bots a little bit: no time pressure at all, and even a "take-back" option.  (However, at some point the bot will start making stupid moves -- from that point on it's a waste).

But -- yeah -- good point that also applies to me: with the competition I'm playing against (<1250) I rarely lose an opening . . . after 8-10 moves or so I'm about even, it's later mistakes that kill me.

Which means -- as those above have told me -- move my focus towards other parts of my game right now.

So, here are the first 9 moves of that game:

After the initial shock of seeing 2...d5, and making sure there wasn't an amateur trap -- I did play regular opening principles and had a bit of an advantage all throughout the opening.

However, using the analyzer, there were three times in the first 10 moves when it said that the "best" move for me was Qc7, and I missed it all three times (The rule of "don't bring the Q out early" is ingrained in me).  And that's the kind of stuff that I need to learn.  (Or, one of a list of things I need to learn!)

First of all, I think it's good that you a plan that you intend to follow. But I also think you need a better plan. 

Regarding your focus on openings, improving tactics is more important.  If you want to improve by knowing more openings, you massively underestimate how many variations are being played. Reading between the lines, it feels like you try to avoid making mistakes and you are determined to improve 1 move at at a time. Like, if you blunder on move 4, you start reading up so you don't do that again. Next time you play book moves until you make a mistake on move 7 and you go back to the drawing board.  This becomes mathematically impossible as a learning strategy really fast.

Pick few easy openings to survive the opening and get a playable position, as Levy would say. (also follow Gotham Chess on twitch or YouTube, i think he is the best there is for your level, because he is amazing at translating positions to practical guidelines)

And prioritize tactics more. Play puzzles (also the chess.com lessons). At your level (and higher), you need to learn to read positions. Below 1400 is all tactics and pattern recognition. That's why you shouldn't play bots. They don't provide real positions. You need to train yourself in spotting opportunities and finding weaknesses in your opponents position. Engine bots don't have weaknesses, they just play random blunders from time to time and gift you a piece or something.

Give a man a blunder and you will give him a win for a day, teach a man how to play tactics and you give him wins for a lifetime.

The problem is that you will never master openings (not sure all masters do). And even if you could use an opening book while playing, once the opponent plays a new move (which will be fast at your level), you'll be on your own. 

So basically I agree with everyone.  Ignore openings for now and study tactics. 

The difference between 4.Nf3 and d4 is so small and will not change the outcome of the game. Hanging a knight will.

Dude.  You're reading my mind better than I am.  Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing without ever articulating it as such.  And really terrific advice.  Thanks.  Yes, I will turn to tactics and reading positions.

Give a man a blunder and you will give him a win for a day, teach a man how to play tactics and you give him wins for a lifetime

You've earned a second "Dude"!  That's awesome.

And a shout-out to Jenium.  You are on the same page as Dude, um, err, Duckfest.

I've learned a lot from this thread.  Thanks so much all!

You're welcome. Enjoy the process...

Hi!  To improve, you must think several moves ahead.  If that is too hard, then try to think one move ahead.  Getting familiar with basic tactics will help you because if you recognize the pattern, then you know the winning line in the game!  Yay!  

I have written two chess books to help beginners improve. https://www.amazon.com/Lauren-Goodkind/e/B0716DZY95/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1    .  I hope that this helps. 

On another note, computers play a lot differently than humans.  If I was you, I would play humans and from time to time, play computers.  

For studying tactics you can use books or a website such as chess.com (or both of course). A good begineers book is Chess Tactics for Students by Bain. Start by doing puzzles based on theme/motif, so pins, forks, skewers etc. Then when you are comfortable with the different themes, do random puzzles. There are two approaches, do easy puzzles that are only 1 or 2 moves, this helps develop fast pattern recognition, do harder puzzles which are 3 or 4 moves this develops your ability to calculate different candidate moves and may take several minutes. Little and often is better, so 5 every day is better than 50 once a weekend. Always work out the moves in your head before moving the pieces - this skill will strengthen. Ignore the clock, the speed will come. Give it time (months), expect a delay before you see puzzle improvement transfer into better play. Use a system such as checks, captures, threats (cct). Good luck.

Thanks Laura, for the tips.  (And congrats that your Amazon ratings are excellent)

Mark -- so, I took a look at a lesson or two on tactics, and what I found, so far, was: "here's a position, can you see how xyz...?"  These were good.  However, being asked a question like that is easier than recognizing it in a game (without the "xyz" guidance).  And -- this is key -- recognizing it in a game is easier that attempting to set it up to begin with!  Any thoughts on that?

And thanks for the puzzle recommendations.

Recognising it in a game is about pattern recognition. Once you've seen a pattern enough times, you have no problem spotting them on the board. Eventually you'll see them before they appear on the board. Get a tactics book and solve 25 skewers, pins, removing defender, etc then repeat. The lessons are just telling you that these things exist, repeatedly solving many tactics puzzles of the same motif in different positions trains the brain to spot them.

Thanks.  And how are Seirwan's books?

That seems like a nice plan.

Although I wouldn't reccomend spending too much time on openings. Also, take some time out of your day to do some puzzles too!