Insights after reaching 1500

 Hi everyone!

 
  I recently hit 1,000 rapid games and wanted to share some insights to beginners.

My current ratings :

bullet : 1000

blitz : 1162 

rapid : 1416

I play a lot of chess and would like to share what I have learned with beginners or anyone that might benefit with this advice! I will share some general tips like what time controls to play, how to study, and how to come back from a loss.

   
To start off , when you lose a game, keep your calm.  Tilt is when you start playing too fast from anger or trying to regain what you just lost. If you lose one game, but  keep your calm, then you will save yourself a lot of time regaining the elo you lost. I have experienced this myself. if you look at my rapid rating graph you will notice how much of a rating drop I had. This was not a normal losing streak .I recently had a rating drop that lost me 100 elo, so please, when you lose a game, keep calm.

  My second piece of advice is to use your time. I remember the day that I watched a Gotham Chess video where Gotham pointed out the time usage of the players. Learn to use more time. This is one of the reasons that I began my huge climb on my rapid rating.

    Thirdly, play time controls where you can grow. Playing blitz matches again and again will not let you improve as much. You should do puzzles to improve your tactics  instead of going on wild and failing attacks in blitz and bullet. However, blitz and bullet can help you play faster if you have an issue with using too much time in rapid.

   My next piece of advice is to understand the concepts of positional chess. To enter the intermediate stage, you should be (almost) blunder-free and you need to have a foundation of positional chess concepts. For example, don’t randomly trade a powerful fianchettoed bishop for a knight sitting on the edge of the board. When you play positionally, you leave less places for your opponents pieces to get in, meaning less chances to blunder. 

Blundering

 everyone without the name of stockfish or Leela has made a blunder

Realize what you did wrong, were you not focusing on the whole board? Have you not sharpened your tactics lately and didn’t notice your opponent had a fork? Saying ,” I blundered because I am X rating level and I will play so many games that I stop blundering” is not an acceptable answer. 

in conclusion, my advice for beginners is to play rapid time control with a healthy mix of blitz and bullet, use your time in rapid games, understand positional chess concepts and how they affect your game, reflect in your blunders, and keep calm when you lose.

I hope this helps someone!