Differences between 200-400-600-800?

It's not like every 1400 reads thousands of books on endgames and positional understanding. The question is what he did instead to get better. And the answer is relatively obvious: He played the game. I just doubt that you learn much from only playing other than tactical understanding and board vision. Because no 1400 has ever bothered with books etc. The best thing he may do to improve his game is to watch a few YouTube videos, of which he understands maybe a quarter. But that is not likely either.

It doesn't take a few months to get to 1500 here...it's more around  18 to 24 months for most and around 1000 games.

A 1500 here is far from a beginner it's at the 95% percentile...

A beginner is U 1200.

When i was 1300 here i would beat 8 out of 10 anyone under 1200...and get a draw and lose one...almost everyone here under 1250 will blunder in the first 30 moves..you just have to play solid and wait....for anyone around 1300.

At +1400 they are a lot tougher....

Actually, there was an experiment done about how far tactical ability goes.

A computer was programmed to simply use a mini-max algorithm along with alpha-beta pruning (with depth 12), in order to be unable to blunder anything under a mate in 12.

However, the computer was not given an opening book.

This is important because, despite the computer's ability to see 12-move tactics, it had no idea how to develop into the center or anything like that. In fact, it quite literally played (as black), 1.e4 Nc6, 2.d4 d6, 3. c4 Nce7, and the humans were able to win every game from 800 USCF and up (there was one exception, but I don't remember what it was).

I would link the study, but I can't find it, but you can try it yourself! Try and beat a depth 10 engine with zero opening knowledge, and you'll be surprised at how badly the computer plays for the first 10 moves.

You can be learning some things faster and some things slower. That's normal. I was always faster at learning math but slower at learning and mastering motoric notions (such as learning how to do forhand, backhand in tennis, or dribble well in basketball, or when somebody asks me to perform something physically etc. I am dumb for that yet I have always been among the best math students in my class and I always had A at math without much effort). When I was in highschool I knew people who were very slow at math yet they would just read a psychology lesson a couple of times and be able to tell you everything in the lesson. Being slow in one thing doesn't mean you are slow for other things. 

Eliminate all 1 move blunders (making 1 every 10 or so games is fine) and you will be rated 800+

A 1500 player can't be considered a beginner. You cannot reach 1500 without learning all the fundamentals of the game. 1500 players don't have expert knowledge on openings, endgames etc and still make blunders like all players but they're still a good few levels above actual beginners.

I consider skewer to be a 2 move blunder because it takes your opponent 2 moves to punish it. 1 move blunders are blunders which lose material (or get checkmated) in 1 move. 1600s make a lot less 1-2 move blunders than 800s. You remember every time you blunder something dumb, but you don't pay attention to how many games you play without any 2 move blunders and you play even more games without any 1 move blunders. People rated below 800-1000 can't play a single 30 move game without 1 move blunders. You play majority of your games without 1 and 2 move blunders but you remember the other 10-40 percent of your games where you do make a 1 or 2 move blunder. Players around 500 blunder their queen at least once every 10 games, if not once in 5 games. You blunder your queen way less often.

yeah, I meant 1 move blunder every 10 games as in you give a piece in 1 move every 10 games. You straight up hang a piece and your opponent captures it in 1 move. At least that's what I consider to be a 1 move blunder. If you blunder removing the defender tactic, for instance, your bishop is defended by your knight but they capture your knight and in the next move they capture your bishop for free I consider that a 2 move blunder, because it took your opponent 2 moves to take material.

This is clearly interesting, but people are not machines and the opening rules are easily learned and even more easily applied. It's just difficult to capitalize on this edge without a great deal of tactical understanding. The opening rules are not a real problem for very most beginners. If an engine does not develop pieces, then a game cannot develop, but that is quite obvious. Once you get to the middlegame, however, a person with tremendous tactical understanding will always prevail, especially if the position is intentionally complicated, which tactical players very often do. Many engines often don't even see tactical moves at a lower depth. So again, interesting point, but actually irrelevant to the debate.

Exactly my point. Beginners simply don't see the board well enough to realise when they are hanging a piece. Board vision always comes before tactical understanding. Therefore, the first thing to teach a beginner is visualisation. But once the basic concepts are there, it's necessairy to develop tactical understanding. And I think that is far more important than anything else. Positional understanding is only there to either win in the endgame or to open up tactical possibilities. But if you don't seize the one those tactical opportunities, you will never be able to win these games either, even if you are a good player in other respects. Especially in the chaotic games between beginners and intermediate players, there will always be tactical possibilities, because one player will simply have a good position at some point, precisely because both players probably understand nothing about positional understanding.

If you learn the game properly, you reach 1400 very quickly. Especially in the beginner section, however, relatively little time is devoted to chess, because it is mostly seen as a small hobby. Beginners also either do not analyze their games at all or only with an engine. So you don't have to be surprised if you don't get better. The most important thing for beginners and people who have a rating of about 1000 to 1500  is to constantly remember where each piece is, i.e. visualisation/board vision. Once you do that, calculating is also tremendously easier.

For me, it is almost impossible for the last year of learning chess to exceed the level of 1000. When I get closer to it, I drop to 800.

Because you play way too fast!

You must play each move like if it was the most important move of your life every time!

If you have the basic knowledge and experience just this change of habit should get you to 1000 in the next few months....

And with a bit more experience and knowledge to 1300 here.

But one bad move and it's often (not always of course) over here above 850....

This is an interesting topic. I observed the same: Higher rated players group 400s and 800s together while the low rated players themselves experience huge differences between 400 and 600. Part of it probably has to do with rating distance. If you are an 1800 rated player, you will crush a 700 rated player just as easily as a 400 rated player. I have the same feeling the other way around, players rated 2000 or rated 2400 are the same to me. They are indistinguishable to me.
The second factor that comes to mind is that there is some truth to the idea that a 400 is approximately the same skill level as a 600. Both players play a blunder or a mistake every other move, which leads to a much higher variance. And most of the players at that level haven’t even played enough games for a reliable sample size. My guess is, due to a higher number of games played, that a 1600 rated player will beat a 1300 rated player much more consistently and reliably than a 700 rated player will beat a 400 rated player.

My suggestion is that the core problem is the phrasing of ‘blunder less’. It's a bit reductionist, or at the very least incomplete. When I classify players I make a distinction between their level of understanding and their ability to perform (or to play at full focus/attention). 

Level of understanding
Simply put, some moves require a higher level of understanding than other moves. And every player has a ceiling, the highest they can perform given full attention and focus. If my understanding is at a 1800 rating level, I will not find moves that require a 1900 level understanding. This is of course more of a conceptual idea than a measurable qualification system, but you get the idea.

Ability to perform
The second dimension is a player’s ability to perform, by which I simply mean, how consistently they play the best moves they should be able to find (at their level). This is a measure of the distribution of how well one plays. 

Two players can be rated 600, one being a 600 that won't find moves above that level but plays at the top of their abilities and the other with a better understanding (understanding at a 1000 rating level), playing more unnecessary blunders due to lack of focus.  They are the same rating level but with a different profile.

In my games I can encounter players that don’t understand the game almost as well as I do, but are more consistent. I should be able to outplay them as long as I don’t mess it up. I also face opponents that can play better moves than I can, but they lack consistency. In that case, I can win by playing solid for as long as I need to until they mess up. 

Back to your statement about 400s and 600s being the same level. A good understanding of principles or openings doesn’t really matter if you still hang pieces occasionally. I do believe that the difference between a 600 and a 400 has a lot to do with their ability to perform to the best of their abilities, which leads to the oversimplification they should ‘blunder less’. 

I see huge difference between 800s and 400s. Especially if we are talking about blitz ratings. 800s can play 30 move games without 1 move blunders, 600s can't do that. Watch two 600 rated players play 10 thirty move games and they will make a 1 move blunder in each and every single one of them. On the plus side, 600s will look like they are trying. If I look at 400 or sub 400 elo chess games I genuinly can't tell if they are playing bad on purpose or not. Their games look fake. When I watch 600s at least it is obvious that they are not faking games. I think ratings around 500-600 are pretty stable if the player has played at least 100 games of chess. My own rating have always been oscilating about 150 points and I am now rated 1900 rapid, 1800 blitz.

Also, I am 1800 blitz and I can give a full queen to a 400 and win every single game, they will never beat me, on the other hand, if I give a full queen to 800-900 blitz players I have a decent chance of losing that game. 

When I watch Naroditsky's speedrun 1000 rated players look similar to 2000 rated players. They both get blown of the board and they look like toddlers who have just learned how the pieces move. 

Hi guys. I wanted to jump In and post in this thread because I believe I have some valuable insight into Elo. I am currently around 800 rating, and began my climb from 300 a month ago. I want to point a few things out as I’ve played other games with elo ranking systems and have achieved high master and even grandmaster in sc2. In terms of what separates ratings, it’s important to note, access to effective engines and game reviews destroys all notions of what an 800 is to anybody who broke that rating more than maybe 8 years ago. For instance, my buddy who is just starting his grind, is losing consistently to 250-300 players and can mop the floor with the AI player rated 1000. The baseline of player increases as access to developmental tools increases. The average player is significantly better than pre readily available analysis. My climb so far, the biggest things I’ve noticed, are less hanging pieces, and less direct tactics. Generally, the lower I was, the more readable the attacks were. Never a discovered check or skewer, just basic things that can be deflected like scholars mate attempts

Having read through all the posts for this topic, thought I would throw my hat into the ring as very few comments from players who are at these levels 200 - 400 - 600 - 800 that the original poster is asking about.

My Rapid is around 470 at the moment while my daily is almost double that. I am playing mainly 30min games and still feel the time restraint, presume most of my blunders come from that pressure and conclude I am a slow thinker but enjoy the game in a one sitting approach.

I am a few weeks in from a 50 year gap, and only knew how the pieces moved and a few ways to finish off the games, so dropped below 300 rapid with my first few games, and decided to start at the beginning and have some kind of an opening to get me through and survive so I can make the games last longer, as well as some puzzle practice to make me more aware of possibilities.

Around 300 - 400 I have found it is about survival, pieces get thrown at you in poorly thought out one or two piece attacks that are fairly easy to read and defend, the opponent quickly blunders or just quits after this, so am learning that counter attacking is a powerful way to play through this level.

Playing against higher ratings, 600+ Rapid, I find that the openings are more calm and much more about getting the troops into position before the big fight to control the centre of the board, though still get some jabs at my defences with I piece probes and attacks that seem a little shallow or a fail to understand the reason for them. I loose most of these games by being outplayed during the middle phase, lacking tactics and not understanding what my opponent is up to until it is too late, though sometimes manage to defend and then counter attack when there are fewer pieces on the board and things seem a little simpler.

I have not played anyone over 700 rapid yet so can not comment on that level, but would get blown away in the middle game presuming it lasts that long I expect.

My observations are that everyone blunders, but that is not always the reason games are won or lost. There is a massive gap in knowledge between each of these levels that higher ranked players seem to have forgotten. Quality information is hard to come by that deals with these gaps without getting so technical that it goes right over your head. A simple to learn opening strategy that can cope with anything that gets thrown at it, and some tactical knowledge to have at least a bit of an idea of how to approach the mid game seem hard to come by. This is where I think most help is needed from players like myself. A lot of our mistakes are dismissed as blunders but they are lack of knowledge, we dont even know what we dont know at this level.