Beginners Who Want To Improve

Hello Beginners,,

I'm sure you've heard the advice that if you want to get better, play longer timed games. At the bare minimum, play 15+15 but you should aim for longer games.

Now before, when I would hear this, I would often think that is too long to spend on a game and it would give me a headache to play it.

However, recently I have discovered a way to play longer games without this happening. It's really quite simple and I'm sure many people already do this:

Set up a physical chess board and do all the moves on that.
What I do is I'll have my laptop on one side with the volume at max. I'll go into Zen Mode elsewhere. I'll set up the board on the table in front of my couch. Then I'll just start a 15+15 game.

Whenever my opponent moves, I'll hear it since the volume is at max. I'll see what move is played and mirror it on the board in front of me. Then I'll have a proper think about what I want to do and when I have made up my mind, I'll do it on the laptop and mirror it on the board in front of me. auto clicker

The results speak for themselves I think.

Over the past year, I have been fluctuating between 1500-1600 on rapid with a peak at 1700. And I've been hovering around 1500 on blitz recently though I was 1300-1400 for quite some time.

I've played 7 classical games (15+15) over the past 4 days elsewhere and my rating shot up from 1588? to 1914?. with my last opponent being rated 1947. I'm very proud about this because my target was to hit 2000 rating by the end of the year and right now I'm so close and January is not even over yet!

Playing with a physical board is much better in my honest opinion. It's easier to see hanging pieces, it's easier to see tactics, it's easier to see which squares or pieces are weak etc.

And honestly? I've had way more fun playing these games since I honestly feel like it is a better representation of my skill. I think I might actually play even longer time controls now since I felt like my last game I was running low on time near the end game.

TLgrin.pngR: Set up a physical board. Play longer time controls online while mirroring all the moves on the physical board. See the results for yourself.

I've been meaning to try something like this since I've been having some trouble moving from playing online to otb chess. Glad to hear it shows results.