How do I improve in chess, I´m only crying.

Stop playing bullet. In fact, don't even play blitz. Play rapid 10 minute games at the bare minimum. Fast time controls don't give you enough time to check whether a move is good or bad before you make it, or enough time to analyse for threats. You will only improve very slowly (if at all) if you don't consciously learn patterns. That means recognising when you're about to repeat a mistake which worked out badly for you last time, and choosing to try something different instead. With bullet and somewhat blitz, the games go by so fast that you won't absorb the patterns properly to be able to recognise them the next time.

Blitz and bullet are not for learning, they're for sharpening your instincts so that you can more quickly and confidently respond correctly to patterns you've already learned. That way, you'll save more time and brainpower when you do play in slower time controls, since more of your thinking will be automatic without needing to calculate everything, you'll just see a series of possible patterns you already know and be able to choose the one with the outcome you like the best.

But not without learning those patterns in Rapid first.

Keep practicing, you got this!

Thanks to every non-troll!

bc premove

Hey I saw your forum message! I suffer the same problem as you and I may not be able to help you as much as those who have years experience with chess. But back to the point, to improve in chess, you should do the following:

-Persevere. Even though things may not go the way you want them to go, that doesn't give you an excuse to stop trying. "Good things don't come to those who stop believing". Grandmasters don't become grandmasters overnight, this is implied for well-known players like Bobby Fischer or even Magnus Carlsen, they devote a LOT of their time in chess just to improve. Now that's perseverance alright.
-Practice memory. If you watched GothamChess or Hikaru on any entertainment platform, you'll surely know how insane their calculation is. To calculate you need highly competent memory, especially photographic memory in in-person games. 
-Don't down yourself; take a break. Why most people don't succeed in chess is usually because they down themselves and spend prolonged periods of time doing something that won't impact their chess competence. And make sure you take a break, don't make yourself do something for a long time, according to neuroscientists or doctors in general, taking a break increases blood flow around the brain, therefore giving us a clearer mind that would impact our cognition, etc.
-"Amat Victoria Curam" [Victory loves preparation]. In order to succeed in chess, or any other skill in general, you need to prepare in advance. If you REALLY want to become a chess god then I suggest in your spare time you prepare what you are going to do to benefit your chess technique, tactic, etc.. As this would consolidate what you are going to do and better keep you on task. 
Hopefully you will get better at chess! Learn at your own discretion, no one tells you what to do, you do you. [Before you say, "Well your telling me what to do so I won't listen" this is just a suggestion lol]. 
Have a great rest of your day/night. 

@WilmerWIilsonWillyWonka

I love u

Actually a whole bunch of studies have shown that memory ability has little to no influence on chess skill/prospects, and training your memory in general doesn't improve your chess. From the outside it looks like memory but it's actually all down to the number of "chunks" (arrangements of pieces) you know and how much practice you've had at utilising them in practical settings.

When shown a chess board with a random configuration of pieces which would never appear in an actual game of chess, there is no difference in recall ability between grandmasters and complete beginners. Whereas, if the board has an arrangement of pieces which includes things you WOULD see in a typical game, such as both rooks on the 7th rank, or a little pawn pyramid around the king, or castled king and rook position, bishops in corners etc, then the people who are better at chess have a much higher ability to remember the setup and recreate it on a physical board from memory. It roughly correlates to FIDE rating, actually, so an 800 will remember more placements than a 400, and an 1800 more than a 1000, etc.

And that's not because they have a better memory, they just have more patterns actually stored IN their long-term memory. The more often you practice recalling and recognising the patterns you know in order to strengthen the neural connections, and the more patterns you learn, the better you are at chess, and that's literally all there is to it.

So rather than generalised memory training, your best bet is to play/watch/recieve coaching in order to learn more patterns, and to practice spotting them by either playing chess or solving puzzles and tactics puzzles. Chesstempo is the best app/site I know about for both learning patterns and practicing them, as you can train openings as well as tactics on it.

Infodump complete, all credit to my autism.

Oh and as for Hikaru and co being able to project well into the future during their calculations, that's also because of the number of chunks they know and how easily they recall them. Partly that's down to how early in life you start chess (hardly any GMs didn't start playing as children) so that your recognition is as instinctual as possible, but the thing is that once you know those chunks well enough, your brain treats them like 1 individual piece of information instead of multiple ones. So Hikaru may describe a 5 move sequence out loud and then another 5 move sequence which follows on and then a 3 move sequence, and that seems crazy, but in reality his brain is completing 1, 2, 3 patterns which he knows extremely well, including knowing how the board looks at the end of each one.

It's akin to being better at immediately recalling your 9 digit phone number, versus a random sequence of 9 digits without any meaning to you. I bet you could tell me 3 different phone numbers you know by heart, one after another, and then when I ask you to repeat the whole sequence, you'd easily be able to tell me them again, in the exact same order. That's because you're only telling me 3 pieces of information, not 27. If somebody didn't know that they're phone numbers, you could pretend they are a random sequence of numbers you just came up with on the spot and the person would be amazed that you can repeat all 27 numbers exactly perfectly multiple times.

That stuff may look like a photographic or extremely good memory from the outside, but it's categorically not that, it's simply what you know and how well you know it. Which is good, since it means that anyone can become excellent at chess by learning and practicing.

Thank you for addressing that, indeed I did make a mistake on my end. Even Google affirmed that. So what you're essentially saying is that the more familiar you are with a certain idea, the more one would be able to recall information similar to the topic (or between those lines) they are utmost greatly experienced at? Like how doctors are able to recall memory that is akin to those working in medical fields (i.e., diseases or pathogens) whereas those unfamiliar to that subject will perceive that as just "pure gibberish "?

Nah man your "Infodump" was more than helpful! Thank you for the advice that you gave and information you provided based on your expertise, your knowledge will give those that are not as experienced in chess a better insight to what to learn.

Honestly, W Essay.

Ty I only just checked your ELO, you seem really good as a first impression (ELO wise). At least you're not like those chess players that try to do the same thing over and over expecting to get something out of it (I mean, nothing against them but they honestly should try to approach their problems differently), you're different, you're trying to improve! That's a great sign that you might end up being an intermediate or even advanced chess player!

Kind of! But with doctors that's just like learning anything, it's in their long term memory because they deliberately learned it and then get the opportunity to deliberately recall and use that knowledge on a regular basis.

When it comes to 'chunking' of patterns in particular, it's more akin to what doctors do in medical school when they need to learn and remember anatomy or diagnostics- they use mnemonics which work as a shortcut by making a large amount of information easier to recall by condensing it into some initials or a funny rhyme. Then that information is more like a phone number instead of a string of digits, it helps the brain store it as a single piece of information instead of as lots of different pieces.

In chess, you and I might see a queen and a bishop in the correct positions to deliver scholar's mate on the next turn, and we have seen that so many times that even though it's using multiple pieces (and the rest of the board could be set up all sorts of ways), we recognise it as one piece of information when we see it, and it doesn't take us long to see it either. And if you asked us to set up a board with those pieces in those positions, we could do it pretty easily. Another example, I can see immediately when the pieces on a board are in a position where the Greek gift sacrifice will work- even though it involves multiple pieces and multiple factors (the square can't be defended by an opponent bishop from the other side, the square for your knight needs to be defended by your bishop, plus your knight and queen need to be in the correct starting positions), and multiple moves (it's a 3-4 move sequence). I see the arrangement, I immediately see a Greek gift, the whole sequence and all the required positions are stored in my brain as one 'chunk' of information, which helps me to know it when I see it.

For a GM, they might instantly recognise when pieces are set up for a combination of moves which they know well, followed by another one and another one after that. They know what the board looks like after the first set of moves purely because each set of moves and the locations of the pieces at the end is in their long-term memory due to playing/seeing the set of moves so many times. So although Hiakru says each move for each player out loud when he calculates out loud, those moves are actually stored in his brain in combinations of multiple moves for each players. If all the chunks of multiple move sequences which Hikaru knows had their own names, then he wouldn't have to say each move out loud one by one to express them to the audience- his brain isn't actually calculating those moves one by one at all.

He might describe out loud 4 moves for him and 4 moves the opponent will do in response but in his brain that sequence is just "the wiggly maneuver which gets the pawn to this square and the knight to this square". He's used the sequence of moves (independent from the setup of the rest of the board) so many times before that it's in his long term memory as one chunk, one thing he can instigate. So that's why he can come out with 20+ move sequences, because in fact it's just 2 or 3 sequences of moves he knows very well. Like 2 or 3 phone numbers.

The only time he truly needs to think rather than just remember, is if the pattern doesn't quite work due to other pieces nearby causing complications, at which point there's usually another chunk of moves in his memory which either fully or partially deals with that issue. Or sometimes there isn't, so the sequence isn't going to work and he has to pick something else.

I feel you. My memory is not great, as I’m just learning at 64-years-old! I feel like I just don’t have the capacity to be good at chess.

So long as you have the ability to notice patterns, your brain will take care of the rest! You don't need a great memory to be great at chess, because as long as you keep playing and you pay attention to what happens (rapid time control is best) your brain automatically condenses the information into useful chunks of multiple moves or positions, which will be easy to recognise when you see them It gets easier and easier!

I feel like I’m getting worse. 😭

Thanks guys!

Could be worth trying bughouse 2v2 variant in chess.com. Its all I play for months. You will experience maybe 90 checkmates against you in so many creative ways but it might help pattern recognition. But in normal chess, I think its important for you to know how to checkmate with 1 rook 1 king vs 1 king. Also playing ...g6 as Black doesn't suit 1.e4 e5 because when the first two moves are mirror (like 1.d4 d5 or 1.e4 e5) that means the game becomes classical, g6 belongs to hypermodern play (the opposite of classical) like 1.c4 e5 white does any move then black does g6 if they really want. Also watch out for forks in advance.

For now it's important for elo 400 to know what "exists" in chess before you learn that. For something to learn you must firstly know that thaat even "exists". 36+ tactical motives. Harder ones are just combinations of that simpler ones. Until 2000 elo you don't need knowing openings at all, just fundamental opening principles. Beside typical tactical patterns there are couple of dozen mating patterns, also. There are values of pieces (rook 5, queen 9... etc... knight and bishop 3, pawn 1). Process of thinking: is it even important to "flip" the board? Does we flip the board when doing puzzles? "I am playing for me and my opponent" - Alekhine. There are tactical patterns and they have name, mating patterns, named also. "Tactics when there's something to do, strategy when there's nothing to do". Psychology - find your own way thinking of what chess is according to YOU and fitting to your own personality. Two bishops stronger than two knights BUT two knights stronger in closed positions. Beforementioned values of pieces changing according to position. Do you know chess principles exist, there are hundreds of them... three phases of the game.