I summon you, chess nerds! Help a poor beginner improve

Hello everyone!

I started studying chess two months ago and I'm here because I'd like to ask for some tips from you, chess nerds. 

I've been practicing for the past two months every day doing puzzles at least 30min everyday and playing at least 4 games everyday. I feel I'm struggling ranking up. 
At the moment I learnt a good king's pawn opening with all the useful tricks(italian opening) and a black defense(caro-kann). I feel I struggle a lot when someone plays something that catch me off guard like queen's pawn opening(really rare at the ELO I'm playing) and weird defenses(sicilian, scandinavian, etc). 

Also I'd like to ask for some serious advise about what I feel it's the most frustrating thing above all: I lose consistently because of time. I generally lose 1 every 3 games because of time: I end up in a major winning position but I'm 5-6min below my opponent and I lose because of flag. 

I followed some suggestions I found on chess.com forum at first, like "play blitz, so when you'll be back to rapid you will perceive time like if it's a lot more!", but this didn't help. Specifically, if I play 1 min, I lose by time. If I play 3min I lose by time... if I play 15 min +3 rapid I lose by time. This is what I mean with "I consinstently lose by time": regardless of the format, I spend an awfully amount of time thinking about the best move. 
I also tried to implement some apparently-good-tips from gothamChess like "don't look for the best possible move, look for a good move", but I either blunder a piece or I play the best move of my life it seems

I'm very frustrated because I feel I can perform much better but I'm stuck hitting a wall that, tbh, it's pretty low in ELO.

I summon you, chess nerds, please give me all the tips and tricks you have!

ps. I attach my stats for rapid for general context!

I can relate. I lose a lot of games on time.  I got used to playing slow over the board chess with time limits like 40 moves in 2 hours. Playing 10 0, I often run out of time. It is easy to spend a minute on a couple of moves and before you know it, you're up against it.

I was encouraged that they recently added 10 5.  I hope enough people give it a try.

I will still be in time trouble but I will survive more often.

#1

"I've been practicing for the past two months every day doing puzzles at least 30min everyday and playing at least 4 games everyday." ++ That is good.

"At the moment I learnt a good king's pawn opening with all the useful tricks(italian opening) and a black defense(caro-kann)." ++ No need to learn, just play and analyse your lost games.

"something that catch me off guard like queen's pawn opening" ++ If that happens, think.

"weird defenses(sicilian, scandinavian, etc)." If that happens, think. If you lose, analyse.

"I lose consistently because of time." + Do you lose in won positions or in lost positions?
If you lose in lost positions then that is OK: you gave it your best effort. Analyse your lost game and pinpoint your mistakes so as to learn from then.
If you lost in a won position, then look which single move cost you most time.
Was your move good? Could you have found it faster?

"I'm 5-6min below my opponent and I lose because of flag." ++ Play 15|10 time control.
Then you always have 10 seconds/move to win a won position or draw a drawn position.

"play blitz" ++ Bad advice.

"if I play 15 min +3 rapid I lose by time" ++ Play 15|10.

"I either blunder a piece" ++ Always check your intended move is no blunder before you play it.

"it's pretty low in ELO." ++ If you just blunder check you get to 1500.

I thank each every one of you for the advise in this posts! I'll try to make treasure of every little help you shared. If you want to add me as friend, please do! I see you have high ELO, so to play against some of you may be very instructive, if you feel like it

Play Daily, at three days per move.

If you still find yourself losing on time, then there's a problem.

Losing on time is part of it.  All tournaments are timed, but usually you have a good hour per game and usually, that is enough esp for lower rated players. 

So for that you can do one of 2 things...  play faster, or play longer games.  Its really that simple.  Playing faster means knowing your openings and endgames cold so you can move a couple times per second without worry that your move is bad.  Talking like queen/king mate ending, or 1 or 2 rook ending, or king&pawn walking, etc ... that shouldn't be taking time to think about. 

Practice helps speed, you recognize patterns and such after a while and speed improves over time.  

comes down to what you want.  But slower games are better games.  Taking your time to play your best game vs shoving stuff around and hoping it was right because no time to look. 

Play 30 minute or longer games, do puzzles every day.

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

Welcome to the wonderful world of chess!

If a rating number is your goal, you will give up chess quickly.  If understanding chess is your goal, you should not spend too much time worrying about your rating.

It looks like you are falling into a couple common pitfalls of beginners.  The first is that you are "doing puzzles" - meaning the tactics trainer.  That is a bit like trying to learn math by taking the final exam repeatedly and looking at all the answers you got wrong each time.  That is not a good way to build up the pattern recognition you need at the beginning phases of your chess development.

If you want to use the tactics trainer, set it in unrated mode, pick a theme, and set the rating range to something low.  For example, you could start with pins in the 100-1000 range.  Drill those until you are getting 90%+ accuracy consistently.  Then increase the rating range to 1000-1400, rinse and repeat.  When you start doing a given them in the 2000-2400 range, pick a new theme and start the process over again.

Alternatives are to buy a tactics book ("Chess Tactics for Students" is a good one to start with), buy one of the tactics courses on Chessable ("The Checkmate Manual" and "1001 Chess Tactics for Beginners" are a good place to start there), or pick up CT-ART 6.0 (which has 10,000 puzzles, organized by theme and difficulty that you can drill).

You can use the tactics trainer to test yourself, but to build up the skills, you must drill it in a similar fashion to when you were learning basic algebra:  doing the same kinds of problems over and over until the patterns are burned into your brain.

This is the other common pitfall you are running into:  the obsession with openings.

The only thing you really need in terms of opening knowledge right now is the general opening principles:

1. Develop your pieces to active squares as quickly as possible
   1. Corollary:  It is usually better to develop your knights before your bishops as most of the time the most active squares for your knights are known, but the most active squares for your bishops may not yet be known.
2. Move your pawns as little as possible
3. Get your king to safety as quickly as possible
4. Control the center of the board
5. Avoid moving the same piece twice until you have developed all your pieces
6. All of the above principles are superseded if there is a tactic at play!

You do not need to know the Scandinavian, nor the Caro-Kann, nor the Sicilian, etc.  Just develop your pieces, get your king safe, and avoid losing material and you will get much better fast!

You are playing mostly 10+0.  You will want to play longer time controls while you are learning.  You must learn to walk before you can learn to run!  I would suggest playing nothing faster than 15+10 right now (ideally, 30+0, or 45+45 would be even better, but it may be harder to find games at those time controls).

You need more time to calculate because you haven't built up the pattern recognition muscles yet.  You do not walk into a gym and try to bench press 350lbs on your first day.  You do not walk onto a track and try to run with Usain Bolt on your first day.  You do not magically play good moves fast when you just get started.  Most halfway decent players can identify a good move in a given position.  The difference between GMs and a 1600 (for example) is the GM will see the good move faster, and usually several moves before the position is even on the board.  They have the patterns stored in their head and can calculate "if I do this, his best moves are X, Y, and Z, which lead to these types of positions where I'm better, much better, and winning".  Until you have those patterns committed to memory, you must calculate more, which means more time.

The suggestion to play faster time controls to get more comfortable and avoid time pressure in longer time controls only applies to players who have mastered the basics.  You don't start running wind sprints when you learned to walk yesterday!

Again, that is a recommendation for players who have already mastered the basics.  For example, for several years, Fabiano was considered much weaker in blitz/rapid than his contemporaries because he would always look for the best move (meaning he would often spend too much time calculating things and get into time trouble in these short games).  Conversely, Hikaru, Aronian, MVL, and Magnus have always been considered beasts in the faster time controls because they identify a good move, verify it is a good move, and play it (instead of spending time trying to find a better move).  This only applies to the faster time controls and only applies to players who have already gotten to the point where they are not making 1- and 2-move blunders consistently.

Do not worry about rating (especially online rating).  Concern yourself with understanding and building up your tactical pattern recognition.  Rating will follow.

1. Play slower time controls.
2. Drill your tactics
3. Master the opening principles (and do not concern yourself with memorizing opening lines)
4. Analyze your games afterwards (win or lose!) and go over it (with your notes and ideas) with a much stronger player.
5. Do not worry about the rating number.

Play alot. In my opinion, the way to improve at time controls 15min & below is to simply play alot. Thats 80%. Maybe 10-20% studying openings. Puzzles help but tbh, i never practiced puzzles much consistently to reach 1800 rapid. But who knows, they might help. Also just briefly look at your games afterwards. Try to figure out why the engine considers some of your moves inaccurate etc. Good luck!

As far as losing on time goes, you'll find that the more games you play, the easier it is to make simple moves. For instance, there's lots of instances where you *have* to move something, and if so, there's only so many squares to choose from. If a Knight is threatening your Queen, you only have four choices:

1. Put the Queen somewhere safe
2. Take the piece
3. Sac the Queen
4. Put the opposing King in check

Unless you already have a plan, a Queen sac is off the table. So you either take the piece, move away, or check the King with another piece. (And if it weren't a Knight, you could maybe put something in-between.) If you check the King and it doesn't do anything to help your Queen, then it's not going to make any difference, obviously. If you can't take the piece, then that leaves you with one choice. Then your Queen may only have a few squares to go to. Which of them is safe and advantageous?

If it's written out, it's a fairly complicated algorithm, but of course it isn't. The more you make that sort of choice, the more automatic it becomes. Keep in mind that when you're learning to drive, for instance, those first few months it feels like you'll never get the hang of it. Then a year later you don't even notice yourself making perfect turns.

And yes, you're rated higher than I am. But this is just a bit of perspective. There's tons of moves that will start to take much less time.

I'm pretty much losing every game, but since I joined some low rating daily tournaments, I see gradual improvement in my playing. I find it more instructive than bots, and I can see the areas I need to go study, like how to play black lol.

The number one technique for improvement is to look over your own losses and figure out what you did wrong in each game. If you can correct one structural error in your play with each game lost, you'll be rated 2000 in no time.

I would agree with this if he was playing 30 or 60 minute games. Playing speed chess, I question whether he'll ever get better. Chess is a thinking game and if you don't practice thinking, you won't ever improve. Speed chess is not real chess because there is no time for thinking. 

Tip #1 don't be calling people needs

And don't call them nerds either.

Tip # 2 think before you do anything Tip # 3 always be conscious about the kings on the board. You don't want to ignore potential king checks. Tip # 4 make preparation moves. Don't just move carelessly. Always be prepared for your opponents best move. Tip #5 make sure you don't move pieces where they aren't defended or a place where they are useless. Moving for the sake of moving.

8. Nxg4