Just so everyone understands, I'm not stating I am trying to memorize any moves, I, as a new player, want to understand how to learn to get better. Most of the time I would say yes I learn more from defeats than victories but as it stands I don't seem to be learning much. Going through the game analysis I get things like "WTF!!! this move is not even in our database. What in God's name were you thinking!" "The best move is a3" But there is no explanation as to why a3 is the best move. I do understand that the best player's are different than the rest of us, Magnus can look at a game board and tell you who was playing and the year it was played and where. That is just freaky and the reason I am asking about memorization. However since it is not, I can thankfully continue to lose because if it was I would hang it up.
Is chess just memorization?
Just so everyone understands, I'm not stating I am trying to memorize any moves, I, as a new player, want to understand how to learn to get better. Most of the time I would say yes I learn more from defeats than victories but as it stands I don't seem to be learning much. Going through the game analysis I get things like "WTF!!! this move is not even in our database. What in God's name were you thinking!" "The best move is a3" But there is no explanation as to why a3 is the best move. I do understand that the best player's are different than the rest of us, Magnus can look at a game board and tell you who was playing and the year it was played and where. That is just freaky and the reason I am asking about memorization. However since it is not, I can thankfully continue to lose because if it was I would hang it up.
Show us a game you've played then. I don't see a lot of games on your Chess.com account. I could probably pull from there for examples if need be, though you only have one game from this month.
Edit: I posted a game before that didn't pop up in my vision, now it's fixed when I went over it again, so you can see one example game I posted above.
Hi! My name is Lauren Goodkind and I’m a respected chess coach and chess YouTuber based in California:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP5SPSG_sWSYPjqJYMNwL_Q
For the most part, chess is not memorization. You need to calculate before each move.
If you want to play a specific opening, then memorizing the key moves is helpful.
After 1400-1500 rating memorizing tons of openings & all the lines becomes critical I say. You need to start learning what the ideas are behind the opening moves you make. To know the plans & traps.
If we considere a computer, I think that it can't create anything, all its answers come from a database.
If I am correct he just use memory instead of create new moves.
There is a lot more memorization today with computer generated lines, than I remember when playing back in the 1970’s. I believe memorizing lines and positions is more important today, than before the advent of computers.
Learning chess is comparable to learning an instrument, or a sport.
In the beginning, it may feel unnatural, and require memorization to learn the fundamentals.
But the more experienced you get, the more memorization eventually gets replaced by instinct, intuition, and understanding.
After 1400-1500 rating memorizing tons of openings & all the lines becomes critical I say. You need to start learning what the ideas are behind the opening moves you make. To know the plans & traps.
I haven't reached that point yet.
After 1400-1500 rating memorizing tons of openings & all the lines becomes critical I say.
This is really untrue. You can easily get way over 1500 without memorizing opening lines. Opening are not important below grandmaster level, and possibly not even there.
What you need is to outplay your opponent in the middlegame. For that you need good tactical skills. The most important is solving many puzzles. Watching some videos of legendary players of the past (and present) is also great - fun and instructive all in one package.
After 1400-1500 rating memorizing tons of openings & all the lines becomes critical I say.
This is really untrue. You can easily get way over 1500 without memorizing opening lines. Opening are not important below grandmaster level, and possibly not even there.
What you need is to outplay your opponent in the middlegame. For that you need good tactical skills. The most important is solving many puzzles. Watching some videos of legendary players of the past (and present) is also great - fun and instructive all in one package.
ok this is just laughably wrong.
When you hear top GMs complaining that chess is nothing but memorization, they mean that FOR THEM it is necessary to know the lines they play in all the playable variations perhaps 20 or so moves into the game because their opponents have spent many hours with their computers figuring out the strongest moves in these positions. Then the player who does not have all their variations at their fingertips can fall into a slightly inferior position, and their GM opponents will usually be able to squeeze out the victory.
As a beginner you don't have to worry about your opponents knowing all those moves or being able to grind out a victory with a tiny advantage. So just know basic principles and a few moves in your favorite openings and wing it from there. Positional principles and endgame technique are more important than trying to build up extensive opening knowledge.
After 1400-1500 rating memorizing tons of openings & all the lines becomes critical I say.
This is really untrue. You can easily get way over 1500 without memorizing opening lines. Opening are not important below grandmaster level, and possibly not even there.
What you need is to outplay your opponent in the middlegame. For that you need good tactical skills. The most important is solving many puzzles. Watching some videos of legendary players of the past (and present) is also great - fun and instructive all in one package.
ok this is just laughably wrong.
Hikaru once beat Jeffery Xiong, a very strong grandmaster with the bongcloud, a terrible troll opening. Knowing opening lines is way overrated.
After 1400-1500 rating memorizing tons of openings & all the lines becomes critical I say.
This is really untrue. You can easily get way over 1500 without memorizing opening lines. Opening are not important below grandmaster level, and possibly not even there.
What you need is to outplay your opponent in the middlegame. For that you need good tactical skills. The most important is solving many puzzles. Watching some videos of legendary players of the past (and present) is also great - fun and instructive all in one package.
ok this is just laughably wrong.
Hikaru once beat Jeffery Xiong, a very strong grandmaster with the bongcloud, a terrible troll opening. Knowing opening lines is way overrated.
Blitz / bullet is garbage by nature, that doesn't mean a lot.
But sure, openings aren't critical for >99% of players.
IMO you can treat openings as a side project, just researching them a little at a time, after your games and such.
Of course some people do much more, but it's not critical like knowing proper middlegame plans for the positions you get, and good calculation habits.
its just terrible rationalizations. Just because you can get away with something a small handful of times and in blitz settings does not mean any serious player can make a profession of not caring about these things.
Openings are absolutely crucial to get playable middlegame positions. Even an advanced "chess redneck" will have to make a repertoire precisely to avoid getting a deep opening book.
I am a mere NM and i dont play heavily theoretical lines but for certain lines of stuff i play in, its not unheard of for me to know 15-20 moves deep in critical lines, and this is really the case for most decent players (maybe its fewer lines X long, but more sidelines wide, or maybe its far more openings but more shallow, or maybe a very narrow but deep repertoire, these configurations are our weapons of choice.)
but people handwaving the importance of openings i cant take seriously. And this is from someone who has mostly played offbeat stuff his whole life. It is also a very foolish position to take because learning openings deeply helps greatly with middlegame understanding. You are basically netting the easiest points, which will give you either objectively more pleasant positions, or at least a familiarity that will make you be able to play into a good middlegame position safely.
:)
I think it's important to distinguish between opening prep and having a full repertoire.
Noobs learning main lines and typical middlgames will definitely have an advantage over their peers who don't.
But noobs buying repertoire videos, and learning dozens of lines... that's completely pointless.
First of all, some middlegames are beyond a player's understanding. You can't play something well just because you've memorized 10, 20, or 30 moves. You have to pick lines you can actually understand.... for "noobs" this is a big problem when buying repertoire material.
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So yeah, memorize some main line stuff, and in general treat it as a side project as you learn about strategy, endgames, and tactics. After that you'll be able to actually learn openings well.
That's how I see it anyway.
It is not the remembering of moves which is hard, it is remembering the move order.
But sure, openings aren't critical for >99% of players.
IMO you can treat openings as a side project, just researching them a little at a time, after your games and such.
Of course some people do much more, but it's not critical like knowing proper middlegame plans for the positions you get, and good calculation habits.
When I was about 1200 (OTB) I did some minor memorization of openings but earlier than that I read a book on ideas behind the openings (I think it was by Horowitz - it had some lines but it was not very comprehensive and missed some good responses). The book on ideas behind the openings was more valuable than memorization was at the start and helped me look for openings I would like to play.
Memorizing for a little bit at 1200 helped me reach 1900 (OTB) and then I did some deeper study of the openings so that I wouldn't fall so far behind in the opening and have to claw my way back in the middle game and endgame. That took me over 2100 even though my opening memorization was not as good as my 1900+ opponents and I still had to claw my way back.
One advantage(?) of somewhat inferior opening play has been a better grasp of middle game and endgame play because I often did not enter those phases with an overwhelming advantage.
I'm glad to hear it's not just memorization, just wish they would make that more obvious. For instance I have been trying to learn how to study the 1.e4 opening, they all seem to say well if you start with the King pawn opening you need to know these eight variations based off of how black responds. It comes across to my feable mind when opponent plays this, the proper response is "this" and I just get lost.
At what level is such Chess advice really for though? I probably know 3-4 of the first move replies as openings to E4, and frankly 1 of them is only because I literally play it, otherwise it would be 3. I didn't actually prep vs it because I don't see it much and didn't have issues when I did. Of those three, 1 of them I probably don't know that well and the other was me being annoyed by a particular opening that frankly I was doing fine against anyways. E4, E5 I have some preplanned moves for, the set-up was common enough. Still, it's not a make for break deal, the game-changing stuff is for later.
A lot of Chess advice in books seems to be concerned with small details that don't come up yet for you. Is their information important? Sure, there's value to it, but it's probably not making up the big factors calling your games right now. To look at one example.
None of this was about memorized moves, these come just from looking ahead a move to avoid losing material or getting checkmated. That's a skill you do need in this game, looking ahead 1 move, and more as you get better, to see potential threats. It doesn't have to be anything complicated, even just "if I go there, they take my piece for free, so I won't go there," will do you a ton of good. No one is memorizing responses to every possible combination, and for a lot of players they don't even know exactly what they're doing, they're just making random moves. You can't memorize your way through that. You just have to make moves that look reasonable and go from there. Reasonable being not hanging a piece, or taking free pieces when offered. As you improve you make more observations that you can add to the list, but a lot of game-deciding factors early on is just the simple stuff.