Looking for advice on playing stronger OTB players

I have been playing chess online since December last year. I have made gradual progress but mostly focused on the daily games and generally find faster time controls more difficult.

Recently I joined a real chess club. Whereas online I am generally matched against people at my own level at the chess club the weakest player besides me is approximately 300 points above me and the average player is about 500 or 600 points above me. So far I have played 7 games and lost them all. Against the club president, if I am White I play e4 and he plays 1...c5 and we get into a Sicilian Kan game, and then by move 15 or so I have lost a piece due to a fork that I failed to see.

I can see that I am just playing at my level and the others are playing at their level, but I am still feel disheartened that I am getting beaten game after game after game.

Clearly I need to get a lot better at spotting tactics and opponent plans, but it is not something that you can just turn on like a light-switch.

I am wondering whether I should be learning more about ideas in the Sicilian Kan or instead play an anti-Sicilian such as the Alapin. Should I do more puzzles or review more games? I am recording most of the games that I play, so I have some pointers in the areas where I am doing well and badly. I typically get a CAPS score around 75% and the opponent plays somewhere in the range 80-93%.

All the games I've played at the club have either been 30 minutes per side, or casual games without a clock but played at about the same speed.

I have played a lot of Daily games but not many slow live games. I like playing 15|10 on this site, but I am considering changing to 30 min or even 60 min.

So here’s my advice for but, please take it with a grain of salt as I have not played much OTB and I’m a sub 1900 player.

1.”I am wondering whether I should be learning more about ideas in the Sicilian Kan or instead play an anti-Sicilian such as the Alapin”. The Sicilian might be the most complicated and theory heavy opening in chess. I would highly recommend choosing some anti Sicilians. They avoid learning tons of theory and will normally take the Sicilian player out of there comfort zone. I found a good anti Sicilian study on l****ss and can send it to you in PM’s if you’d like. 

2. “Should I do more puzzles”? I’d recommend picking up a good tactics book. The woodpecker method is a good one. While the method itself might not be the best, the puzzles in it are great! You will also need to set them up on a real board (which is good just to get used to playing on a board). I’d recommend just doing as many as you can in 1 hr but, make sure you take your time on each one and try to calculate multiple lines before you look at the answer.

3. “Should I review more games”? You should be analyzing every game you play (okay maybe not bullet). After you play a game go over it without the engine 1st. Try to find where you went wrong, what you could have done better, when did you get out of book, did you miss any tactics, etc. After you do a self analysis then you should analyze the game with an engine. It’ll tell you what you did wrong and right. Try to find when you normally go wrong is it the opening, middle game, endgame, etc. Then you can study your weak point and make yourself a stronger player.

4. “All the games I've played at the club have either been 30 minutes per side, or casual games without a clock but played at about the same speed.I have played a lot of Daily games but not many slow live games. I like playing 15|10 on this site, but I am considering changing to 30 min or even 60 min.” I would recommend playing more live chess but, longer time controls. 15|10 is good gives you at least 10 seconds per moves and helps prevents flagging. 30|0 is good as well (and what I primarily play on the site) but flagging can happen (yes people still flag in 30|0 which is kinda funny) and 60|0 is good to but, you need to have plenty of free time as games can last up to 2 hrs. Daily chess is good but, the “problem” is you have all the time in the world to deeply analyze each move. In a live game (depending on the time control) you can’t really spend more than 20 minutes on a move. I’d even recommend playing blitz to (not as much as the longer time controls though) as it’s good practice for time pressure which happens a lot in OTB games.

 

Well I hope this post helps and let me know if you have any more questions  I wish you luck on beating him and I’m sure you’ll get the best of him soon

 

Ricorat is speaking facts.

A player as weak as yourself (no offense) should be prioritizing tactics and analyzing your games.

Learning Sicilian theory will not benefit you nearly as much.

Who cares if you have preparation for the Tarrasch variation of the French Defense 20 moves deep if you hang pieces every other game?

Tactics, analysis, and calculation are what is needed for you.

Good luck! :)

you can improve your strength and even your results by grasping even just a few fundamental concepts that have nothing to do with theory.

how to make use of an advantage in development, which i saw you get a lot of times particularly in your white games

how to use tactics to finish off winning positions much faster instead of going the technical route

the typical plans in the openings you play. what do you do when everything is already developed and your king is relatively safe

you should be able to verbalize the reason for playing each move. it's not very helpful to know that a move is good if you can't verbalize why. if it's way over your head, find something that is within your grasp. there are openings that can be played in a conceptual way in that knowing where the pieces go and why they go there is for the most part enough.

#1

"if I am White I play e4 and he plays 1...c5 and we get into a Sicilian Kan game, and then by move 15 or so I have lost a piece due to a fork that I failed to see."
++ You lost because you failed to notice a tactic, it is not related to the opening.
Always check your intended move is no blunder before you play it. 

"Clearly I need to get a lot better at spotting tactics and opponent plans, but it is not something that you can just turn on like a light-switch."
++ In part it is: just a mental discipline to always blunder check before playing your intended move. Never hurry. Take time to think.

"I am wondering whether I should be learning more about ideas in the Sicilian Kan or instead play an anti-Sicilian such as the Alapin." ++ The opening has nothing to do with your loss. If you change openings you will lose more, not less.

"Should I do more puzzles or review more games?" ++ Puzzles are good, analysis of lost games is good, study of annotated grandmaster games is good.

"All the games I've played at the club have either been 30 minutes per side, or casual games without a clock but played at about the same speed." ++ Never play without a clock: whoever thinks longer, wins. The best time control is the FIDE rapid standard 15|10.

"I like playing 15|10 on this site, but I am considering changing to 30 min or even 60 min."
++ 15|10 is good. 30|0 is worse as you get into time trouble. The FIDE classical standard is 90|30 but that is hard on the eyes online.

Yes after the first game he said I played well in the opening and he thought I had a slight advantage. This is despite not really knowing how to play the opening. However by about move 10 or 12 the Sicilian Kan positions tend to be, not the simplest, so that's why I am wondering if I would be better suited playing something that somewhat limits the opponents chances of outplaying me in the middlegame. It would be nice just to reach an endgame with reasonable chances on both sides. Going into an endgame down a piece is probably not the best experience for either of us.

I have played five 30 min games today, won four of them and reached 900. I did not play very well but at my current rating players do not use their clock time well at all in the longer time control games. I probably played too fast as well but generally managed my time better.

I don't remember ever getting into time trouble in an online 30 min game. Probably at some point it will happen but at <1000 level it seems to be almost impossible.

OTB though, against club players is a different story. Pieces do not get traded off as quickly and at move 40 it can be just transitioning into an endgame, whereas <1000 online it often never even reaches move 40, and if it does it is a more simple endgame.

One upside to being the local club whipping boy is the online games seem a lot easier now, so I can play them with more confidence.

There is nothing better than playing stronger players! You can learn so much from every serious game. Losing isn't fun, of course, but you have to remember that you very near the beginning of your chess journey. You are going to play hundreds more games, and these early losses will help you get where you ultimately want to go.

Here are a couple of practical tips: 1. If you are a pleasant opponent, stronger players will often go over their game with you. You can learn a tremendous amount from these sessions--but you need to listen! 2. You should make a habit of keeping a score sheet for every game. This will help you when you analyze with your opponent, and when you go over the game later by yourself. You do go over the games later, don't you? 3.As you analyze your games, try to identify your most frequent types of mistakes: When you identify your bad habits, you can work on fixing them

 

in your otb club games- even if casual- write down the moves so you can go over your games later- hopefully with a stronger player or even a coach at your club (take a lesson or two where you have some longer games that really pushed your limits to use for the lessons)

also- maximize the benefit of playing live games in the club- go over games with opponent afterward- that is half the fun too

there is always someone at the club where you can just do random stuff (my very first visit to local club was an introduction on how to mate with k + r vs. k and it has severed me well)

play your best against the stronger players and maximize that chess time

but dont neglect playing those at your level- so good quality rapid games online will suffice

it can be frustrating always losing to stronger players and it might be hard to notice or articulate your improvement as you keep getting stomped

but my main advice is to take advantage of the “chess culture” atmosphere of a local chess club as you will soak in more than you might even notice

I totally agree. Changing the opening will do nothing. As a 900 player you don't lose because of the Kan. If you play another opening you will lose to a fork on move 20, which is not better. In fact avoiding tactical positions might be worse, because there are less opportunities to practice them.

So practice tactics, and as Erik said, ask your opponents to give you advice after the game. That's like getting lessons for free. Usually the fork is just the most obvious reason you lost...

     Playing with longer time controls lets you analyze positions more thoroughly and allows you to notice details that escape notice with a more cursory examination. And recording the games and post-game analysis is a must.

     The good part of being the weaker player is that on every move in every game your opponents are showing you what they consider the most important factors in the position. Try to figure out what your opponents are trying to accomplish and you will find out how to think about chess.

You gained 150 rapid rating points in the last month. Keep it going and within a year or so they don’t want to play you anymore at your club.

 

I'm the opposite, I play great in person, and terrible online. IRL I'm rated around 1500, and I lost the first 12 games at my local chess club, only last week did I win against one of the better players there. Point is just keep going to the club, ask for advice on what you did wrong. Studying chess is a good idea if you can, I personally can't stand it.

My impression is that their post didn't say if they played better online or OTB. (They may very well play better in one vs the other of course, I just don't think that's been stated one way or the other yet.) The people they face OTB are people they would never play through the online algorithm because it wouldn't be a fair match-up, there's just no other players to play there. It's not that they are playing badly, anyone loses vs those several hundred points above them.

While true, sometimes it's the only way to develop, before I was on chess.com, my only challenging opponents we're my uncle who lives in CA & my former scholastic state champ grandad.

Don't focus on trying to counter these players. Take your games against them as a learning experience. Don't feel pressure to beat someone who has that kind of an advantage on you, you don't need to worry about beating them. It would be more accurate to see them as a valuable resource rather than competition. Focus instead on enjoying your time there and picking up what you can, and accepting that you're going to lose to them almost every time, just like anyone else would when playing people with that kind of skill advantage over them. Beating those people is not the point, frustrating as it is to lose to them over and over. 

Well, it worked, I consistently beat my uncle and 50/50 my grandad so. But it took years of playing them every chance I got. It's like the whole "if you hit the wall enough times you'll eventually go through it" I just kept hitting the wall.

All the advice here makes a whole lotta sense -- although few mentioned this: play longer games.  If you're playing online, and have the time, I would set a challenge for 30|30.  (It always takes less than a minute to get somebody, usually a lot shorter than a minute)

I also particularly like the comment above that said: to treat these games against better opponents as a valuable resource.  Even more valuable if you can go over the game with them.

The typical learning path:

Can’t win, period

Can’t win but realize why

Can’t win but getting close

Got lucky and managed a draw

Can’t win due to managing a draw

Got lucky and won

6 months later got lucky and won again

3 months later got lucky and won

1 month later got lucky and won

No longer winning by sheer luck

Winning more than losing

Retirement

How long each step takes is based on the individual. 

 

Yes, it is hard to say after only 7 OTB games but I don't think there is a huge difference between how I play online and OTB. Just a huge difference in my win rate. Online, I'm typically playing other people who have been playing for less than a year. OTB, some of the opponents have been playing for decades (there's one guy there who has been playing for over 70 years).