Getting to 1000 (my journey)

I will start off by saying I understand 1000 is still "beginner" chess but  just want to share my tale for players in the 700, 800 and low/mid 900s. If I can do it anyone can. I took me two years (sad I know). I am not a chess "natural". 

1: I only play the 10 minute games. It was recommended I play even slower games but with family and job stuff, 10 minutes is a compromise. I don't do "speed chess" at all.

2: Play Puzzle Rush My goal is to get to 20 games before you get your third "strike". I don't usually get to 20 but its a goal.

3: Watch ChessBrah Youtube "Building Habits". Learn the openings. Nothing fancy. I wasted my first year thinking I was some sort of a future chess genuis and started playing Sicilian, KingsIndian, London, etc. Leave these things for later. Keep it super simple.

4: Play the bots. Start with a low rated bot and each time you beat one, go to the next higher bot. Once you get to a bot who always beats you, drop down a couple bots and repeat. This is where you can learn not to blunder pieces. That is the goal. Learning not to blunder is the main goal with bots. Start with low bots. (tip: trade every chance you get with the lower bots they will start flailing into the middle game)

5: Try and strive for an accuracy of at least 70%

6: Learn how to defend against the fried liver. 

7: Learn how to checkmate when you are down to a Queen and a King and they only have a King.

8: Learn how to checkmate when you are down to a Rook and a King and they only have a King. (I still choke when time is almost gone...)

9: Snatch undefended pieces, scan the board and try not to  miss these.

While 1000 isn't that great it is still cool to be in the 75% of players. 

In my opinion, if you have a basic non-complicated opening, don't blunder, snatch free pieces and have an accuracy of aprox >68% then you will get there. THEN the journey to learn real chess begins.

I am sure I will tilt soon and  will drop 50-80 points so I am not gonna play for a couple of days so I am not called out for being a fraud right after posting!

REQUEST: Can higher rated players please offer some tips/reading so I can get to 1100-1200? I know its "not all about the rating" but it is fun to have a goal and inch towards it. I would love to be at the 1200 level and it not take aother 2 years!!

Thanks,

Shawn

So, a lot of good points here and I'll touch on a few of them as well as give my input in regards to your request at the end. 

Point 1: Ten minute games are ok, but in games with more complex, positional play going on, being in a time crunch is not what I want. I play 30 minute games and have been doing so for a while. Being able to think in critical move situations has definitely helped me to climb up. I feel at lower levels it's better to play fewer high quality games than a bunch of really fast, inaccurate games. This is of course all subjective. But I will say after hitting 1000, I climbed to 1200 in a month or two and the 1200 - 1300 range has been brutal. 

Point 5: Accuracy usually wanes the longer a game goes on. Short, quick victories yield high accuracy percentage for the victor, but you could play a 60, 70 move game and an accuracy of 50, 60 percent and come out winning. I don't focus on accuracy as far as percentages too much during the game as I do on simply trying to play accurately and use the accuracy percentage as a quick reference to how much i have to look at during my analysis. 

Great post. As for your request, i would say stick to strong opening principles and work on tactics. These alone will get you to 1200. Play longer games. 15|10 if you can manage. The extra time and increment will do wonders for your game. The higher rated you become the more complicated the positions can become and you'll want time to think. If you have a preferred opening start looking at strong, sound gambits or attack ideas for that opening. Study EVERY loss! Take notes, write things down. I have 6 or 7 journals with the most common openings I have come across ( Petrog, Sicilian, Philidor, Caro-Kaan, etc) along with mainlines, sidelines and various ideas etc. I don't use the journal when I play for obvious reasons, but I've begun a practice of running the the mainlines and sidelines out of my journal in the opening explorer or analysis engine to try and drill them into my memory. It's a lot of work, but I'm certain it'll be worth it. 

I'm sure I could go on but I'm headed to work. Welcome back to 1000 and good luck on the climb. 🤜🤛

thanks for the tips!

Where do I find/learn to work on tactics? Any specific book or resource you recommend?

OK maybe you shouldn't listen to me. I just dropped 120 points. BigFoxy warned me not to do this but I did it anyway:. Hardcore TILT. Lost all the points in 1 marathon binge. I was so out of it I acctually was about to  win one game on time but snatched his last pawn with 4 seconds so it was a draw . In another I had two queens and he had nothing and I put him in stalemate.

Can't "force" a win in chess. This is humbing and I maybe need to take a break from this hard game.

I appreciate you sharing that Remqtch. It was crazy, I stayed up until 4:00am, got no sleep and gave my whole family attitude the next day as I was still bitter from tilting/defeat...

@shawn1964

The best way to recover is to analyze a couple of your losses, take notes, and take a little break for a day or two. After that get back at it and keep trying. Remember, you can beat any 1000 - 1200. They are still learning too. It's anyone's game any day. So just study a bit and don't let yourself get too down. And trust me, I know that's easier said than done, but it's not worth it it causes you to be short with your loved ones. Let them be your support and the thing that lifts you up in down times like this. Chess isn't going anywhere. You've got time to improve. And you will. Don't hold your bad days against yourself, look at every loss as an opportunity to learn something new. You got this! I believe in you, bud. 

If you have Skype or discord or anything, let me know. I'd love to help you analyze some of your games and share what I've learned on my journey. Shoot me a message, buddy. 

Good luck!!

You should learn most important principles of a chess game. That will give you a solid understanding of a chess game and you will know what to do in every position. Then, you should optimize your calculation so you don't miss tactics in your games. I can help you with all of this. Message me if you are interested.

Thanks Player99999. I may take you up on it (busy with other Chess stuff...)

Great post! It reminds me of when I started getting more serious. I'm an okay player I hover between 1700-2000 usually closer to 1800-1900.

If you really want to kickstart your game from where you are currently (nothing too crazy here), I think there's a good chance that you would benefit from studying some traps. Most traps aren't all that sound theoretically and some were developed by world champions. The point here is not to necessarily rely on traps for your formal repertoire but to take the time to discover the recipes that make each trap work. Initially, you'll be able to get some players to fall into the traps with relatively high frequency and sometimes you'll find that the line didn't go the way you expected. That's where the fast lessons lie. After playing with them a bit casually, you'll not only be able to create your own scenarios in slightly different setups, you'll see what you can do to avoid the same traps laid by your opponents.

(Sorry, I know this is long)

You mentioned the fried liver which is a classic and one I struggled with early on. For your level, here are 3 traps you need to know to move further.

1) The fishing pole trap

2) Legal's mate

3) I don't know what this one's called but this is how you can often win a queen in the Scandinavian as white pretty easy even sometimes against 1500+ occasionally.

1. e4 d5  2. exd5 Qxe5  3. Nc3 Qa5  4. Bd2 Nc6??? 5. Bb5 Bd7  6. Nd5! Qxb5?  7. Nc7+!!! Forking the king and the queen!

Moves 4 and 5 for black can change a little and it can still work. The keys are lining up your bishop with their queen, placing your bishop on b5 locking up the queen's options to escape and making it look like you're offering a free piece when you use the knight to create a discovered attack while you're actually setting it up for the fork!

Now 3 quick things.

1. Never resign. I've been entirely outmatched in games where my opponent wasn't paying enough attention and didn't give my king a space to go, hung pieces, let me promote to a queen when I shouldn't have been able to, and sometimes you can get lucky and checkmate them or get a 3 move repetition.

Most of the time you'll lose those scenarios but sometimes you can save yourself points. You're not playing the computer so make them earn the win every time.

2) Learn some endgame basics. For instance, if you have a pawn on the 7th rank vs a queen, files: a, c, f, and h  are draws while the b, d, e, and g files are losses.

It may sound hard but it's fairly intuitive once you see it but learn how to checkmate with two bishops vs a lone king.

Look up how to do king pawn endgames. It's super easy but it isn't naturally intuitive and your opponents should be the ones making those mistakes, not you.

Over time, try a whole bunch of endgame simulations if you want to improve quickly but for now that's a good kickstart.

3) Have fun and don't put too much pressure on yourself. I had another account prior to Facebook going down a year or two ago and I had played easily tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of games of chess. I still make mistakes every day in almost every game. Always try to improve but avoid becoming results oriented. You'll always win close to half of your games and lose half of your games. 

Sometimes I take a break for a month or two and my rating skyrockets. You'll be taking in a lot of information as time goes on and I guess (for me at least) giving yourself space from the game and coming back with fresh eyes can be a game changer.

Chess offers a lifetime of exploration and you'll never know everything. I think that's part of what inspires many of us to pursue it in the first place. 

It may not be for you, but I find learning the history of chess to be one of my favorite parts. It goes into all corners of the world filled with bold and ingenious characters. Morphy, Fischer, Lasker, Legal, Blackburne, etc. You may find it worthwhile to learn a bit about who they were but they all have phenomenal lessons still preserved simply waiting for us to "discover" them. If you want to get better in the long run, study the best

P.S. The Lasker Gambit (developed by world champion Emanuel Lasker) was the first trap/game I played in a tournament. It's ultimately unsound but it's a fun one to play around with at your level.

https://www.chessvideos.tv/endgame-training/endgame-simulations.php

This is the free endgame simulator I used. Sometimes it's a little buggy with the engine but if you refresh it, you'll be fine. It has way more than you might expect but it's still not complete.

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Dumbluck626: Thanks for the post an inspiration.

"3 traps.." I never even thought of this. I will look at them.

"Never resign..." I admit I do do this early on. You are right at this level I was able to pull off a stalemate a couple of times.

"Learn some endgame basics.." Yes this is the hardest part. When I go back and study a loss with few pieces it always seems I make a move which to me seems OK but it ends up being the turning point. Its almost a differnt game when there aren't many pieces left.

"Sometimes I take a break "Yeah I do need to stop for a while I just want to get better continusously, not up & down but that is the nature of the beast.

"It may not be for you, but I find learning the history of chess to be one of my favorite parts" I do enjoy reading history. The Morphy character seems especially interesting. I will look for some biographies. In truth I enjoy this more than reading abour tactics (Thank good for youtube).

Can't thank you enough for taking the time for passing on teh adive and info. 

playonlinesecretly1:

"Ten minutes is too fast for you."

I know in my heart you are right. Buts its hard with the way life is (family, job etc) .  If I can be a "decent beginner" I then might make the move to serious study (lonegr games, etc). Your rating is crazy high, congrats. You are talented.

PS: I didn't understand this: " I reviewed my mistakes up to the openings only."

Thanks for the advice and info...

As for the bots, I would change it to only play against bots that have 2500 elo or higher.
The weak bots serve to measure more or less what type of players you can beat, of different levels and styles (not specifically for training). Strong bots are for convincingly punishing your mistakes and giving you a better idea of what you should improve on. For serious training it is better to only play with bots of a certain strength, if you want something not so strong try with bots of at least 2300 elo.
Obviously they will play much better than you, but the idea is that they crush your weaknesses and improve your defensive capabilities, also that you learn what attacks you try can fail since a 2500 bot will defend better than for example a 1500 bot.

Another thing that I would change if I were you, is instead of playing puzzle rush is to train calculus with mate problems in two and read a good tactics book that helps you better understand tactical patterns, another about mate patterns (or look for a course on mate tactics and patterns). I think that reading books is preferable to taking courses, reading stimulates the mind and attention span much better than watching a video, but if the course is very good, you will take advantage of it correctly by pausing it to analyze carefully when you have to.

As for playing simple openings, I would also add studying opening concepts and from time to time watching classic games, it doesn't matter if they are openings that you don't play, what will matter is to grasp the concepts of those games that will help you to apply them to your game.
Just because it's a different opening doesn't mean all your ideas are unique to that opening.

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@DejaDeJugarBlit: Great tip playing against really high players. I never thought og that and I will do that. You are right I play the 1000 bits and they randomly just give up their queen, etc.Thanks for this info. I will help me!

for the original post...shawn1964.

I found your story interesting to read.  good luck in your games.  I'm only around mid 700 elo with just over 200 rapid games played/ one year on chess.com.  So no advice from me.

I agree about chessbrah extra - youtube series "building habits".  Accidently stumbled across it after many hours searching and watching lesson videos that didn't quite work for me..  Teacher Aman Hambleton...great stuff.  Just what I needed and wanted to learn.