Discoveries of a low rated beginner

I have played chess for several decades without ever getting above the beginner level ratings. Most people probably would have quit the game a long time ago. The players have changed especially on the last 15 years or so. The resources that are available online today are tremendous compared to the pre internet days. I used to stay in the 1100 range on other avenues including OTB. After coming on here after starting at the beginner level turned out to be too high for me I had finally Ortis out around 600. While it is a low rating I have discovered that a 600 rated player is not necessarily a bad player and has learned some of the basics of the game. I have discovered ways to study and after spending a month of serious study I have noticed an improvement in my game and it has taken about a month to finally get back over 700 and at present my tilts haven’t been as severe as they had been. Hopefully I can stay above 700 as I have hit it before only to fall back. In my studies it was humbling to watch how bad I was doing on very basic principles and I have been improving. I am starting to see more possibilities in the board in my games as I am starting to learn tactics. I am uncertain if I can say where most of my studies are as I don’t want to risk an unintended spam complaint. I will say that I am getting some good explanations of basic theory on tactics and positional play and I keep reviewing them over and over. I will talk about a book that I am reading and may get a variety of comments as it is a very old book. The book is chess fundamentals by Jose Casablanca. The book I am reading has the moves in English descriptive annotation but it gives good information on general principles of chess and I will be going to other books in time. My biggest lesson here is that to improve in chess it is going to take a lot of work. Cutting down on blunders is probably the biggest way to improve. Knowing that at my age I won’t get to top level play at this point I simply enjoy the game and enjoy the discoveries of learning in the game so I will continue to do study as I am noticing the affect that it has on my game I can and will see how far I can go. Even an improvement of 100 points in my ELO is considered significant.

👏

You deserve it for trying to learn chess pre-internet and typing all that

Yes my my typing is poor also😀. After learning some thing I just felt a need to share my experiences as I well understand the frustrations of learning the game at any level. I hope to have some more observations in the future

That’s good. Keep it up.

Hello

Your post perfectly captures the most important step in chess improvement, something I constantly emphasize with my students: the humbling but incredibly rewarding process of mastering the fundamentals. That joy you're feeling from seeing your hard work pay off is the best motivation there is.

I am trying to fight the feeling that #7 is chatgpt. Ahhhh!

insightful