Anybody except IMBacon???
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If only that was true...your posts are simply not helpful in the slightest. Ugh, if only I could actually get some decent help around here.
Improving Your Chess - Resources for Beginners and Beyond...
https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/improving-your-chess-resources-for-beginners-and-beyond
https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell
Play Longer Time Controls...
For many at the beginner-novice level, speed chess tends to be primarily an exercise in moving pieces around faster than your opponent while avoiding checkmate, in hopes that his/her clock runs out sooner than yours. Or being fortunate enough to be able to exploit your opponent’s blunders before they exploit yours.
There is little time to think about what you should be doing.
It makes sense that taking more time to think about what you should be doing would promote improvement in your chess skills.
An effective way to improve your chess is therefore to play mostly longer time controls, including "daily" chess, so you have time to think about what you should be doing.
This is not to suggest that you should necessarily play exclusively slow time controls or daily games, but they should be a significant percentage of your games, at least as much, if not more so than speed games which do almost nothing to promote an understanding of how to play the game well.
Here's what IM Jeremy Silman, well-known chess book author, has to say on the topic...
https://www.chess.com/article/view/longer-time-controls-are-more-instructive
And Dan Heisman, well-known chess teacher and chess book author…
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627052239/http:/www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman16.pdf
https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/dan-heisman-resources
and the experience of a FIDE Master...
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/how-blitz-and-bullet-rotted-my-brain-don-t-let-it-rot-yours
It's not just SoupTime4. It really does seem to be a pretty widespread idea:
"... I recommend that if you are a beginner, you should avoid speed chess for a variety of reasons. Among them:
- it can get you into a variety of bad habits,
- cause inexperienced players to rush in slow games, and
- can be very frustrating when you are not very good and can't see the chessboard very accurately in a short glance.
However, once you get good enough to have sufficient board vision and tactical vision to play speed games, I do recommend you add them to your practice repertoire. This usually occurs in the 1200-1400 range, but of course can vary widely. ..." - NM Dan Heisman (2017)
https://www.chess.com/article/view/is-speed-chess-good-for-you
Well, maybe not those last two sentences. Anyway, to go a little further, lets take a look at part of one of your games
See anything wrong with that last move? What would it take to enable you to avoid things like that? You tell me. At the moment, I am not sure what to say about it (apart from the observation that lots of beginners have this problem). I suppose that improvement comes with practice. Eventually, I think one just gets to think of h4 as a not-so-safe square near the beginning of a game, but improvement, in general, is quicker if one practices with slow games. Just about everyone blunders to some degree in fast games.
Apr 1, 2020
0
#7
Not only for chess, but for every skill in life I can think of: the ability to be fast and accurate comes from slow and deliberate practice.
It's not enough to look at a game after it's over and notice that you blundered. You need to examine the blunder, what type was it? why did you make it? what will you try differently next game to avoid it?
For example, (what) I left my rook undefended, (why) I was distracted by trying to checkmate the opponent's king (what will you do differently) instead of assuming my opponent will react to my move, I'll look for all the different captures he can play. (these are just example answers).
After you have a strategy like that, choose time controls long enough to allow you to implement it.
Other than games, solving tactics puzzles is useful. Untimed puzzles. Spending 5 or 10 minutes on a puzzle, trying to calculate the most accurate moves, is useful (if you're sure you solved it before that then of course you can play the solution and move on).
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I desperately need help to stop blunders, can someone analyze my games or give me some help?