If you need help, I have a discord server for people trying to improve. Ranging from beginner to GM https://discord.gg/VevKjjM8ZU
I've been playing chess for 10 years and I'm still terrible.
Sort:
Dec 16, 2021
0
#23
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
Here’s some ideas to help you get better.
-I recommend two books for you: “50 Poison Pieces” and “Queen For A Day: The Girl’s Guide To Chess Mastery.” Both books are available on Amazon.com. Both books are endorsed by chess masters!
-If you are serious about chess, I highly recommend you hiring a chess coach to help you.
-Also consider all checks and captures on your side and also your opponent’s side. Always as, “If I move here, where is my opponent going to move?”. Do this for every single move!
-Play with a slow time control, such as G/30 so you have plenty of time to think before every move.
I also offer 500 two-choice puzzles on my website: https://www.chessbylauren.com/two-choice-puzzles.php
I hope that this helps.
Please explain this game:
https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/33437986355
You resigned on move 6, in a better position. Why?
Dec 17, 2021
0
#25
Study the games of masters and play slower time controls like Daily chess if you really want to improve. Make it a habit to use blunder checks in every move. Memorize patterns like checkmating patterns etc.
1337NaNoViRuS wrote:
I'm just not sure how to not make these kinds of blunders.
I methodically go through a 'checklist' in my mind for most moves I make, and I look at all my opponent's pieces to see how it is attacking my own. Then, I look at how my opponent's piece could attack my own. Then, how I can attack my opponent's pieces. If I find something, then I look at the potential drawbacks. (Can I be forked, pinned, mated). If I don't find anything then I try to apply tactics. (How can I control files, how can I develop my pieces, am I blocking any of my pieces.) Whenever I blunder I think I just completely miss what my opponent can do when going through my checklist.
So getting lower rated can have different causes, but by far the most likely are tactical mistakes. Not losing your own pieces and winning your opponent's pieces win games and the lower rated you are, the more tactical opportunities there are and the more opportunities get missed.
Missing tactical possibilities can have many different causes. Mental state is one of them. It seems from a previous response that you do have a mental state problem. Basically you can play the best possible chess out there, but if you play half of your games angrily and not applying proper thinking processes for your moves, you're likely losing half of your games. This is something you need to be aware of and can only fix yourself. Try and think why you're angry. Losing is part of chess, so not getting angry over a lost game is an important skill to learn if you want to enjoy this game.
What I wonder though is whether your thought process during your games is good. At first I thought it sounded pretty decent, but there are some questions. You write that you look at all the pieces and try and see all the possible attacks. Now that might be a mistake. Do you really go through all the possible attacking moves? If so, you might be spending too much of your time on this, looking at too many moves, obviously risking that you do miss a move in the maze of different possibilities. And going through all of these move at every turn seems to be a huge workload.
If the above is right, then I would think you have a problem with your solving strategies for tactics. A solving strategy is basically the process you're using to find tactics. Solving strategies often get forgotten when learning tactics, but I think they are a big part of studying and learning tactics. Basically it feels like you're trying to brute-force your way into finding tactics (looking at all possibilities) instead of finding a strategy to only have to look at the most likely candidates.
The basic principle of tactics are forcing moves. Forcing moves are moves like check, threatening mate, taking your opponent's pieces and attacking pieces that are undefended, insufficiently defended or attacking pieces with lower valued pieces (like attacking a rook with a bishop). Attacking a piece that is well defended is not a forcing move and is rarely a tactic.
So what you need to look for are forcing moves in a position. Think: check, take, attack. Look for moves that put your opponent in check (usually there are not that many), see which pieces you can take and then look for moves that attack a mating square or an undefended piece / insufficiently defended piece or a piece of a higher value. The rest can be ignored in your tactical survey. With experience you'll know to reject even more moves. Some moves are after all quite silly and will never work. For example, if your opponent has a pawn on b7, you can quickly reject Ba6, as the pawn will just take your bishop with bxa6 in almost all cases.
The thing about forcing moves is that they don't change all that much during a game. If you have a bishop on d3 and black has castled, then Bxh7 is a check. But if your bishop and his king don't move for a number of move, that move will still be check in 10 moves. So your task becomes a little easier during a game once you know of the forcing moves that were there. The question simply becomes after each move: are there new forcing moves and are there (new) pieces (now) undefended?
Examples work best I think, so let me show you how you could apply this solving strategy in one of your games.
(please note: the variations in this game are not mine, but the engine if you analyse it. Just ignore them)
Let's do this tactical solving strategy from move 17. h4. What are the undefended pieces? Rh1. Where can you put him in check? Rook to the d-file. There are no mate patterns in sight. For white: he can't put you in check, no mate patterns, only your rooks are undefended. Done. Can't reach Rh1, so no tactic and you make a normal move.
Notice, I didn't even take into account undefended pawns. You could if you want to. That would mean that a2 and b7/g7 are undefended. It gives Nb4 as a possible forcing move. Quick calculation turns out white can just defend it or move it out of the way.
Ok, let's continue. 17. ... 0-0-0+, 18. Ke3. New forcing moves: Rd3+. Undefended piece: Rc1 is now added. Can't attack it though except for the silly Rd1. No point in calculating that! For white: b7 is no longer undefended. Time to make a normal move. Notice: 18. ... Ne5 is not a forcing tactical move, as c4 is defended often enough.
18. ... Ne5: new forcing moves: Nxc4+ and Ng4+. Both are defended, so not overly important. For white there is f4 as a new forcing move, as it attacks the black knight, a piece of higher value than the pawn. After 19. f4 we see that the forcing move: 19. ... Ng4+ is now possible without material loss. We can calculate that single move, but if it doesn't work out, we make a different move with our knight. After 19. f4 we also need to see that white has a new forcing move: f5: this also attacks a piece of lower value. If this would be a problem, we need to take Ng4+ as a forcing move to defend against f5.
After. 19. f5 and 19. ... Bd7 we should see that f7 is no longer protected, so a possible target for white. But our pieces are still all well protected. No new forcing moves in the position. We did lose Rd3+.
After 20. Nf3, we go for 20 ... Nb4 attacking a pawn, so a forcing move. This gives white a new forcing move: a3. We gain Nc2+ as a forcing move, but white has guarded this square. We also gain Na2 as a forcing move, attacking the rook. We should also note that 20. .. Nb4 is an unprotected piece.
White plays 21. a3, we play 21. ... Na2? Tactical survey: Na2 is a forcing move, as it's attacking the rook, but white can just move it, so it's not a tactic. We need to be aware of the fact that our knight on a2 is undefended before we play Na2. This gives white new forcing moves. Ra1 and Rc2. Both need to be calculated. And suddenly we've found a tactical trick for white: Rc2 is forcing and the black knight is trapped. We might already have been worried unconsciously about the amount of squares our knight has on a2 if we had previously spend time learning about the tactic of trapping pieces and how to spot them. There is a solving strategy for trapped pieces: look how many squares they have left to see if you could potentially trap a piece. But in essence, by being aware of the forcing moves in the position, you could both have seen Rc2.
After. 22. Rd1 we have new forcing moves: Ba4 and Nc3, and Rd1 is undefended. No new checks. Likely no tactics, cause we don't have a check and there's only 1 undefended piece, but we can check our 2 forcing moves. If they don't lead to anything concrete for us, we can play another move improving our position.
After 24. Be2 we can see we still have almost no forcing moves. Only Rd3+ is check, white rook on h1 is undefended but we can't attack it. Pawn a3 is undefended but we can't attack it. White has gained Ra1 as a forcing move, as Na2 is still undefended. 24. ... Bb3 is not forcing, as c4 is defended. After Bb3 we could potentially gain forcing moves as c4 becomes potentially insufficiently defended (we only have to attack it once more). But we can't attack it once more, so we gain no forcing moves. (Maybe Nc3 attacking the guard of c4, but let's keep it simple). White has lost Ra1 as a forcing move, as Na2 is now defended, but gained Rb1 because Bb3 is undefended. Nd2 is also a new forcing move attacking the new undefended piece. And there's Bd1, but this is clearly silly as black can take c4 or in fact Bxd1.
So white plays 25. Rb1, a forcing move. You play 25. ... Bc2, but your blundercheck should've said ' hey, watch out, now we have 2 pieces undefended. That's a recipe for tactics! What are the new forcing moves for white?" and I'm sure you would've spotted Ra1, Rc1 and Rb2 as 3 forcing moves attacking at least one of your undefended pieces. Rc1 is silly, black can take, but Rb2 attacks both undefended pieces and wins a piece. See how fast we can spot this blunder if we'd only look for undefended pieces and forcing moves?
I wrote this all out to show you the thinking process you could have when looking at tactics during your move. You can see that there aren't that many new forcing moves to consider each move (Rd3+ has been check for multiple parts of the game), so once you play a game it's more a question of updating which forcing moves either side gained or lost and which pieces are undefended. This process is much more lean than simply looking for all attacking moves in a position. It'll leave you with much more time to play other moves.
Another thing you might notice in this exercise is that 2 things seem to happen to you in this game. One: you play a lot of forcing moves, without them being tactics. You see you can attack a pawn and you go for it. You see a move that attacks a rook and you go for it. Simple attacks are not tactics. It's better to play normal moves than just simple attacking something that can move out of the way. Secondly: you create a favourable tactical position for your opponent by putting your own pieces on squares where they no longer were defended. Loose pieces drop off. Try and keep them defended and you will lose fewer pieces.
So my advice would be threefold:
1. Think about your thinking process: can it be leaner to just look for forcing moves and undefended pieces? I would think yes and that this actually will improve your tactical vision during a game.
2. Play fewer forcing moves when they're not tactics. Only go for forcing moves when they gain you something. If they don't, play a normal move instead. Play 20. ... Rhe8 (improving your worst piece) then planning to play Ne5 (so your bishop can go to c6) or g6 to get Bd7 to a better square (improving your pieces). In fact, the game could've concluded with 21. Ng5 (attacking f7 and h7: a double attack on 2 undefended pawns), 21. ... Ne5; 22. Nxh7 (wait, but that knight has only a few moves available...) 22. ... f6! No way back for the knight and with 23. ... Rh8 you could've won the knight, similarly to the way you lost yours.
3. Evaluate your mental state. Is it costing you games? Why do you get angry? How can you prevent getting angry or should it mean that you take a (short) break from playing chess instead of starting a new game immediately?
Aight
RAU4ever wrote:
1337NaNoViRuS wrote:
I'm just not sure how to not make these kinds of blunders.
I methodically go through a 'checklist' in my mind for most moves I make, and I look at all my opponent's pieces to see how it is attacking my own. Then, I look at how my opponent's piece could attack my own. Then, how I can attack my opponent's pieces. If I find something, then I look at the potential drawbacks. (Can I be forked, pinned, mated). If I don't find anything then I try to apply tactics. (How can I control files, how can I develop my pieces, am I blocking any of my pieces.) Whenever I blunder I think I just completely miss what my opponent can do when going through my checklist.
So getting lower rated can have different causes, but by far the most likely are tactical mistakes. Not losing your own pieces and winning your opponent's pieces win games and the lower rated you are, the more tactical opportunities there are and the more opportunities get missed.
Missing tactical possibilities can have many different causes. Mental state is one of them. It seems from a previous response that you do have a mental state problem. Basically you can play the best possible chess out there, but if you play half of your games angrily and not applying proper thinking processes for your moves, you're likely losing half of your games. This is something you need to be aware of and can only fix yourself. Try and think why you're angry. Losing is part of chess, so not getting angry over a lost game is an important skill to learn if you want to enjoy this game.
What I wonder though is whether your thought process during your games is good. At first I thought it sounded pretty decent, but there are some questions. You write that you look at all the pieces and try and see all the possible attacks. Now that might be a mistake. Do you really go through all the possible attacking moves? If so, you might be spending too much of your time on this, looking at too many moves, obviously risking that you do miss a move in the maze of different possibilities. And going through all of these move at every turn seems to be a huge workload.
If the above is right, then I would think you have a problem with your solving strategies for tactics. A solving strategy is basically the process you're using to find tactics. Solving strategies often get forgotten when learning tactics, but I think they are a big part of studying and learning tactics. Basically it feels like you're trying to brute-force your way into finding tactics (looking at all possibilities) instead of finding a strategy to only have to look at the most likely candidates.
The basic principle of tactics are forcing moves. Forcing moves are moves like check, threatening mate, taking your opponent's pieces and attacking pieces that are undefended, insufficiently defended or attacking pieces with lower valued pieces (like attacking a rook with a bishop). Attacking a piece that is well defended is not a forcing move and is rarely a tactic.
So what you need to look for are forcing moves in a position. Think: check, take, attack. Look for moves that put your opponent in check (usually there are not that many), see which pieces you can take and then look for moves that attack a mating square or an undefended piece / insufficiently defended piece or a piece of a higher value. The rest can be ignored in your tactical survey. With experience you'll know to reject even more moves. Some moves are after all quite silly and will never work. For example, if your opponent has a pawn on b7, you can quickly reject Ba6, as the pawn will just take your bishop with bxa6 in almost all cases.
The thing about forcing moves is that they don't change all that much during a game. If you have a bishop on d3 and black has castled, then Bxh7 is a check. But if your bishop and his king don't move for a number of move, that move will still be check in 10 moves. So your task becomes a little easier during a game once you know of the forcing moves that were there. The question simply becomes after each move: are there new forcing moves and are there (new) pieces (now) undefended?
Examples work best I think, so let me show you how you could apply this solving strategy in one of your games.
(please note: the variations in this game are not mine, but the engine if you analyse it. Just ignore them)
Let's do this tactical solving strategy from move 17. h4. What are the undefended pieces? Rh1. Where can you put him in check? Rook to the d-file. There are no mate patterns in sight. For white: he can't put you in check, no mate patterns, only your rooks are undefended. Done. Can't reach Rh1, so no tactic and you make a normal move.
Notice, I didn't even take into account undefended pawns. You could if you want to. That would mean that a2 and b7/g7 are undefended. It gives Nb4 as a possible forcing move. Quick calculation turns out white can just defend it or move it out of the way.
Ok, let's continue. 17. ... 0-0-0+, 18. Ke3. New forcing moves: Rd3+. Undefended piece: Rc1 is now added. Can't attack it though except for the silly Rd1. No point in calculating that! For white: b7 is no longer undefended. Time to make a normal move. Notice: 18. ... Ne5 is not a forcing tactical move, as c4 is defended often enough.
18. ... Ne5: new forcing moves: Nxc4+ and Ng4+. Both are defended, so not overly important. For white there is f4 as a new forcing move, as it attacks the black knight, a piece of higher value than the pawn. After 19. f4 we see that the forcing move: 19. ... Ng4+ is now possible without material loss. We can calculate that single move, but if it doesn't work out, we make a different move with our knight. After 19. f4 we also need to see that white has a new forcing move: f5: this also attacks a piece of lower value. If this would be a problem, we need to take Ng4+ as a forcing move to defend against f5.
After. 19. f5 and 19. ... Bd7 we should see that f7 is no longer protected, so a possible target for white. But our pieces are still all well protected. No new forcing moves in the position. We did lose Rd3+.
After 20. Nf3, we go for 20 ... Nb4 attacking a pawn, so a forcing move. This gives white a new forcing move: a3. We gain Nc2+ as a forcing move, but white has guarded this square. We also gain Na2 as a forcing move, attacking the rook. We should also note that 20. .. Nb4 is an unprotected piece.
White plays 21. a3, we play 21. ... Na2? Tactical survey: Na2 is a forcing move, as it's attacking the rook, but white can just move it, so it's not a tactic. We need to be aware of the fact that our knight on a2 is undefended before we play Na2. This gives white new forcing moves. Ra1 and Rc2. Both need to be calculated. And suddenly we've found a tactical trick for white: Rc2 is forcing and the black knight is trapped. We might already have been worried unconsciously about the amount of squares our knight has on a2 if we had previously spend time learning about the tactic of trapping pieces and how to spot them. There is a solving strategy for trapped pieces: look how many squares they have left to see if you could potentially trap a piece. But in essence, by being aware of the forcing moves in the position, you could both have seen Rc2.
After. 22. Rd1 we have new forcing moves: Ba4 and Nc3, and Rd1 is undefended. No new checks. Likely no tactics, cause we don't have a check and there's only 1 undefended piece, but we can check our 2 forcing moves. If they don't lead to anything concrete for us, we can play another move improving our position.
After 24. Be2 we can see we still have almost no forcing moves. Only Rd3+ is check, white rook on h1 is undefended but we can't attack it. Pawn a3 is undefended but we can't attack it. White has gained Ra1 as a forcing move, as Na2 is still undefended. 24. ... Bb3 is not forcing, as c4 is defended. After Bb3 we could potentially gain forcing moves as c4 becomes potentially insufficiently defended (we only have to attack it once more). But we can't attack it once more, so we gain no forcing moves. (Maybe Nc3 attacking the guard of c4, but let's keep it simple). White has lost Ra1 as a forcing move, as Na2 is now defended, but gained Rb1 because Bb3 is undefended. Nd2 is also a new forcing move attacking the new undefended piece. And there's Bd1, but this is clearly silly as black can take c4 or in fact Bxd1.
So white plays 25. Rb1, a forcing move. You play 25. ... Bc2, but your blundercheck should've said ' hey, watch out, now we have 2 pieces undefended. That's a recipe for tactics! What are the new forcing moves for white?" and I'm sure you would've spotted Ra1, Rc1 and Rb2 as 3 forcing moves attacking at least one of your undefended pieces. Rc1 is silly, black can take, but Rb2 attacks both undefended pieces and wins a piece. See how fast we can spot this blunder if we'd only look for undefended pieces and forcing moves?
I wrote this all out to show you the thinking process you could have when looking at tactics during your move. You can see that there aren't that many new forcing moves to consider each move (Rd3+ has been check for multiple parts of the game), so once you play a game it's more a question of updating which forcing moves either side gained or lost and which pieces are undefended. This process is much more lean than simply looking for all attacking moves in a position. It'll leave you with much more time to play other moves.
Another thing you might notice in this exercise is that 2 things seem to happen to you in this game. One: you play a lot of forcing moves, without them being tactics. You see you can attack a pawn and you go for it. You see a move that attacks a rook and you go for it. Simple attacks are not tactics. It's better to play normal moves than just simple attacking something that can move out of the way. Secondly: you create a favourable tactical position for your opponent by putting your own pieces on squares where they no longer were defended. Loose pieces drop off. Try and keep them defended and you will lose fewer pieces.
So my advice would be threefold:
1. Think about your thinking process: can it be leaner to just look for forcing moves and undefended pieces? I would think yes and that this actually will improve your tactical vision during a game.
2. Play fewer forcing moves when they're not tactics. Only go for forcing moves when they gain you something. If they don't, play a normal move instead. Play 20. ... Rhe8 (improving your worst piece) then planning to play Ne5 (so your bishop can go to c6) or g6 to get Bd7 to a better square (improving your pieces). In fact, the game could've concluded with 21. Ng5 (attacking f7 and h7: a double attack on 2 undefended pawns), 21. ... Ne5; 22. Nxh7 (wait, but that knight has only a few moves available...) 22. ... f6! No way back for the knight and with 23. ... Rh8 you could've won the knight, similarly to the way you lost yours.
3. Evaluate your mental state. Is it costing you games? Why do you get angry? How can you prevent getting angry or should it mean that you take a (short) break from playing chess instead of starting a new game immediately?
Thanks.
I've been trying to apply this to my games but I've sunk to 482. In the game where my opponent forked my bishop and knight I just completely didn't notice that he was able to.
I also looked at a bunch of the YouTube videos and links that people have sent.
I just lose 10+ games in a row.
...like am i just completely terrible?
#29
Whenever you lose a game, stop playing and analyse it first so as to learn from your mistakes. That channels the negative emotions of the loss towards a positive goal: improving.
It also prevents mental tilt.
Is daily chess advised over long rapid? You have as much time as you like, but perhaps having multiple games is not ideal for focus.
I don't think it matters as long as you spend your time thinking about important positions that come up in your games ..
1337NaNoViRuS wrote:
I just lose 10+ games in a row.
I agree with TwoGames1, tygx and RAU4ever. I often play many games in a row and when I'm tired my rating plummets by 100 or 200 points. Finally I give up, have rest and little by little I return to my level. RAU4ever has done a great job in explaining how to think about tactics during a game, but if there are no tactics and you are not used to positional play, your rating can go down even further. That's because if you just attack undefended pieces, at your level your opponents can simply miss that or retreat to unsafe squares and you win material, but if you play (bad) positional chess you go for little advantages and that might be not a challenge for them. In the long run, however, if you play the first way you cannot improve, because stronger opponents make less blunders, while if you force yourself to play better overall, eventually you should improve.
https://www.chess.com/lessons/capturing-pieces/avoiding-bad-trades
https://www.chess.com/lessons/introduction-to-tactics
https://www.chess.com/lessons/reading-the-board
These lessons specifically should be helpful.