Openings are not important on beginner level. You shouldn't memorize opening lines. As a beginner you should play slower time controls exclusively if you wish to improve. First of all, here is a guide on how to improve your game. No quck fixes as there are none, only steady improvement:
https://www.chess.com/blog/nklristic/the-beginners-tale-first-steps-to-chess-improvement
Everything on openings you need to know right now:
https://www.chess.com/blog/nklristic/surviving-the-opening-first-steps-to-chess-improvement
When you get better, you will know when it is a sound move to sacrifice something.
Hello. I'm new and noticing my flaws. Comments?
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Nov 15, 2020
0
#2
nklristic wrote:
Openings are not important on beginner level. You shouldn't memorize opening lines. As a beginner you should play slower time controls exclusively if you wish to improve. First of all, here is a guide on how to improve your game. No quck fixes as there are none, only steady improvement:
https://www.chess.com/blog/nklristic/the-beginners-tale-first-steps-to-chess-improvement
Everything on openings you need to know right now:
https://www.chess.com/blog/nklristic/surviving-the-opening-first-steps-to-chess-improvement
When you get better, you will know when it is a sound move to sacrifice something.
I should clarify! Most of my games are not memorized opening lines, I've been trying to play reactive moves, and come up with tricks "on my own" (if you can call it that) by throwing stuff at the AI. The reason I asked for sacrifice heavy openings, was because I figured it might be a way to shoehorn myself into noticing those types of moves more.
Good to know I'm not ruining myself by playing slow for now! I wasn't sure if I was supposed to grind bullet, and muscle memory the whole thing until it stuck.
Nov 16, 2020
0
#4
Playing bullet or blitz is not that good for improving players. That way you will be playing too fast in slower games as well and will not pause when you need to think a bit.
There are no tricks on how to spot a tactic, sacrifices and whatnot. You need to train tactics and get better at it. You have that in the guide I 've linked for you. It will take some time to get better.
i agree with @nklristic however if you want a crazy sacrificing line I'll give you one:
Ayy thanks for the feedback, I'll have a great time mulling over those positions. Imma keep grinding, lots of material out there! The puzzles have been helping a bit as well.
You are thinking about the wrong things. Openings are not important at all. Opening principles ARE important, but they are easy to learn. "Eval points" are not important at all. What is important at your level is to not hang your pieces (and take those that your opponent hangs).
A great tool for practicing combinations and improving pattern recognition on this site is the tactics trainer. However, you are doing it wrong. Play slower, try to calculate stuff, don't just make some random move after 20 seconds.
cerebov wrote:
You are thinking about the wrong things. Openings are not important at all. Opening principles ARE important, but they are easy to learn. "Eval points" are not important at all. What is important at your level is to not hang your pieces (and take those that your opponent hangs).
A great tool for practicing combinations and improving pattern recognition on this site is the tactics trainer. However, you are doing it wrong. Play slower, try to calculate stuff, don't just make some random move after 20 seconds.
While I do appreciate getting this formulaic advice again, I might point out the social opening principle of reading my posts. Great tool for providing feedback, harhar. Playing slow and calculating is all I do, and I don't mind the eval bar. You seem to be responding as if I said the opposite!
MortenBlunders wrote:
Playing slow and calculating is all I do
I honestly don't know what to say. I was talking about the tactics trainer specifically, and you are playing too fast there, making some move (often the wrong move) after roughly 30 seconds. That would be the tool to help you improve a lot, but not like this.
cerebov wrote:
I honestly don't know what to say. I was talking about the tactics trainer specifically, and you are playing too fast there, making some move (often the wrong move) after roughly 30 seconds. That would be the tool to help you improve a lot, but not like this.
Maybe that's where the misunderstanding is happening. Tactics trainer? You mean the puzzles? In that case you're telling me to do what I already am, but slower. Alright. But my mistakes aren't "random moves" - They are calculated wrong. Working on it.
You still seemed to think I was obsessing over openings or eval values, hence the "formulaic" comment. A lot of the advice people give to newbies seems rather identical, often to the point of disregarding the questions.
The puzzles. Sorry, I used the wrong word. It was called that a long time ago, or maybe that's another site 
In your opening post you were talking about "my openings are not top tier" and "don't mind sacrificing an eval point or two" and I tried to address those, but maybe I totally misunderstood what your points were, sorry about that too.
My point is that you should continue to do puzzles, but slowly and carefully. Close to 100% success rate should be the goal, although it is pretty unrealistic in the long run.
cerebov wrote:
The puzzles. Sorry, I used the wrong word. It was called that a long time ago, or maybe that's another site
In your opening post you were talking about "my openings are not top tier" and "don't mind sacrificing an eval point or two" and I tried to address those, but maybe I totally misunderstood what your points were, sorry about that too.
My point is that you should continue to do puzzles, but slowly and carefully. Close to 100% success rate should be the goal, although it is pretty unrealistic in the long run.
Gotcha! Yea that makes sense! The reason for mentioning openings and eval values, was that other people complained at me before, for not playing e4/d4 lines enough. I'm just having fun with it! I'll try giving those puzzles a bit more time going forward.
MortenBlunders wrote:
Hey there! I've only been playing/following chess for a couple months now. My little brother came home from boarding school and traumatized me 8 games in a row, so now I'm naturally on a secret mission to improve. I'm noticing some specific flaws with myself that I'd like to ask about.
One - Something about sacrificing pieces doesn't click with me. I manage to analyze positions fairly well, but consistently miss aggressive tactics. Are there any specific tools, especially lines, that encourage this type of play?
Two - I'm slow, and feel like playing fast barely gives me time to see what's going on. I hear people talk about pattern recognition, but as a newbie, I barely have any yet. I calculate everything. Am I gimping myself by playing slow formats for now, or is this okay for forming basic understandings?
Disclaimer: I realize my openings are not top tier. I don't mind being "that guy" - I enjoy dictating the style of the game, and often don't mind sacrificing an eval point or two for it. All comments welcome, though!
Do you have examples where piece sacrifice is causing you trouble? I don't see a lot of recent games on your profile, and your most recent are daily wins vs much lower rated opponents. I glanced in at your 1200 opponent in daily but they blundered horribly and made an easy game of it for you, so not a lot to look at.
Generally playing slow time controls is a good thing. It doesn't hurt to play some games you finish in one sitting, such as 15-10, or stuff like 30+ minutes per player, but keeping it slow is definitely useful for being able to pay attention to your own moves.
catmaster0 wrote:
Do you have examples where piece sacrifice is causing you trouble? I don't see a lot of recent games on your profile, and your most recent are daily wins vs much lower rated opponents. I glanced in at your 1200 opponent in daily but they blundered horribly and made an easy game of it for you, so not a lot to look at.
Generally playing slow time controls is a good thing. It doesn't hurt to play some games you finish in one sitting, such as 15-10, or stuff like 30+ minutes per player, but keeping it slow is definitely useful for being able to pay attention to your own moves.
Thanks for responding!
I don't think I have a specific example of me missing sacrifices, outside of puzzles unfortunately - I just know I tend to miss those types of aggressive ideas, based on me hardly ever doing it. Perhaps my current game with smi1er is a better example, can't analyze it yet, but I'm certain that I failed to convert a winning position by being too passive.
10-15 minute time controls are starting to look attractive, might try some of those, instead of super slow dailies!
you should recognize some patterns, I think because of you I will do a long blog post about checkmate patterns, then sacrifice tactic patterns
chamo2074 wrote:
you should recognize some patterns, I think because of you I will do a long blog post about checkmate patterns, then sacrifice tactic patterns
Well, then I guess I'd be a fool not to read it!
@MortenBlunders One word: Tactics. Tactics are the single most important thing for beginner level play. Heck, you could play Kf2 and still win as long as you have a supreme knowledge of tactics. I don't think you even need to learn positional play till your rating hits 1450. Chess.com tactics are very fun and engaging, but if you don't have a membership, you should use chesstempo. Liche*s sucks for tactics.
Chessguy149 wrote:
@MortenBlunders One word: Tactics. Tactics are the single most important thing for beginner level play. Heck, you could play Kf2 and still win as long as you have a supreme knowledge of tactics. I don't think you even need to learn positional play till your rating hits 1450. Chess.com tactics are very fun and engaging, but if you don't have a membership, you should use chesstempo. Liche*s sucks for tactics.
I'll prolly grab a membership soon, seems like a good service. Other people have echoed your sentiment, so I'll up my volume on those. Wouldn't mind the extra analysis either!
Hey there! I've only been playing/following chess for a couple months now. My little brother came home from boarding school and traumatized me 8 games in a row, so now I'm naturally on a secret mission to improve. I'm noticing some specific flaws with myself that I'd like to ask about.
One - Something about sacrificing pieces doesn't click with me. I manage to analyze positions fairly well, but consistently miss aggressive tactics. Are there any specific tools, especially lines, that encourage this type of play?
Two - I'm slow, and feel like playing fast barely gives me time to see what's going on. I hear people talk about pattern recognition, but as a newbie, I barely have any yet. I calculate everything. Am I gimping myself by playing slow formats for now, or is this okay for forming basic understandings?
Disclaimer: I realize my openings are not top tier. I don't mind being "that guy" - I enjoy dictating the style of the game, and often don't mind sacrificing an eval point or two for it. All comments welcome, though!