Looking for advice on playing stronger OTB players

I agree with catmaster0. We have an expected score of about 0.15 against players rated 300 points higher; we cannot change that easily. They say you are quite ok in the opening; good, but they are probably better strategically, tactically, technically, so there is no real strategy to follow, but to keep cool, do your best and wait for them to make a serious blunder; eventually, it will happen and your expected score will raise to... 0.5 . Studying openings more will not improve your play overall, I think; better if you focus on endgames and tactics, which you can study alone, too. As for strategy, yes, your higher rated opponents can be an invaluable resource, more than books, provided they are not too conceited: they could think that they have followed an extraordinary, beautiful and profound plan, while in fact they have just been lucky that you missed a tactic in a superior position!  So, always check your games with an engine too. Good luck!

I learned some nice attacking ideas for White in the Sicilian Kan while practicing against Maia-1900 today. I cannot possibly play at this level in real games, but just remembering one or two good moves is a step in the right direction.

When you are a weak player, it is more productive to focus on becoming a better player than an individual game. just try to make the best move every time, don't worry about making the most practical move. focus as hard as you can on having better placed more active pieces than your opponent, and good things will follow.

That's normal. When I made the transition from youth to adult tournaments I suddenly didn't win every game anymore. Suddenly, I lost almost all my games. The OTB leagues were the same. There were seasons where I lost almost all my games.

At that time, a new trainer came into our chess club he was an IM and he analyzed our games. It was very instructive and I learnt a lot. While I continued my training I kept playing tournaments and eventually after one year I saw some progress and my results improved and eventually I was able to at least get +- 50% in the tournaments.

So it's normal. Don't feel discouraged. Just keep working on the areas you are weak at which is most likely not the opening.

Also forget about your rating. Don't even pay attention to it.

I need to some advice on breaking away from Hope Chess. I have read "Almost every player rated under 1500 plays Hope Chess at least once or more per game and often gets burned."

This is what is happening to me at the club. I have partial awareness that I am playing hope chess, but in the situation I can't see a better move and my online experience against weak players has reinforced my perception that those kinds of moves are good ones (because even though Stockfish tells me they are inaccuracies or mistakes after the game, they induce bigger mistakes from those weaker opponents).

Do you have examples of your Hope Chess to look at? Ideally both where it pays off in games and scenarios where it didn't. 

Yes I can give a few examples.

Here is a position from a recent Blitz game. I am Black. I played the mistake e5 (Best move is Qxh2 which I didn't see). 

However I "knew" the opponent was going just play Rxh7 on the next move and after ...Kh8 Rad1 ...Qxh6 opponent resigns. Easy. I was winning quite easily anyway here but the idea is you aren't just hoping, you can be pretty confident that the opponent will play the wrong next move at the lowest levels.

The following is from a game I played against a much better opponent last night

Spanish, Tarrasch opening. I don't know all the lines but it is mostly just opening principles up until there are two pieces attacking my knight, and Black knight also attacks my bishop. Here I miscalculated or mis-visualized and played Bb5 thinking I could capture the c6 pawn and I would be getting good counterplay.

Opponent is "no muppet" as the English expression goes so immediately plays c6 and I end up putting the bishop back where it was. Then I made a huge blunder by moving the King in the wrong direction.

I will see if I can find some more examples...

Pawn grubbing. Playing the blunder Qxb2 here. I figured with the bishop on that nice diagonal I had good chances of following up with Qxc2.

What actually happened was my Queen was effectively out of the game while my King and my other under developed pieces came under full assault.

Pushing that h pawn was also wishful thinking. He easily defended with g3 and used the tempo I gifted him to get into those nice attacking positions.

I think I have hopefully learned not to do those things against better players. But my thought process needs to improve a lot against better players.

I'm not a fan of the first example given how much you're winning as well as the time control. You'll still pull through even with a blunder or two and in blitz you can't be expected to notice what you can in a longer time control. You just didn't look for all of the captures on the board. In a normal game, you should be looking at all checks and captures available, as they tend to be quick candidates for brutal moves. 

You posting the previous moves in this case was nice. I probably would have played that out a bit further, it was losing, but they still have to find the moves to convert that into something a bit more tangible. They probably will, but I've seen players give away advantages like that and at the very least it gives practice seeing why the king direction mattered in the first place. I personally find stuff like that harder to see, no idea what your vision is like on this.  

Hm, I only see the board and not the moves. Did you only show the board here? Weirdly enough my boards aren't showing up to me in my last post either, though when I check my message with the edit button I see the images there. Edit: seems to have fixed itself for my post, though I'm unsure what happened earlier. 

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong -- doesn't one have to play Hope chess, to some extent, in blitz?  One doesn't have the time to look through all the major possible responses, and if one can meet those threats (particularly in a complicated position), with a time frame like that.

Further, when significantly ahead: one doesn't necessarily look for the "best" move.  You want to simplify, bring to a position where there's less margin for error and less risk, trade pieces safely, make sure you won't get back-ranked mated, etc. 

(Obvious example:  when the engine says I made a mistake by taking my opponent's queen when I had a mate in 5.  I'll take the queen (presuming I'm doing it safely), thank you).

solve alot of tactics

In the first example, did you realize that your opponent can move the bishop with  Bxg7?

If you know your opponent has that option but still make e5 anyway, then I would consider it 'hope chess' since you expect your opponent make an imperfect move. But if you dont know, then I would consider it a tactical mistake which is quite common to all chess players.

Yes I knew that he could play Bxg7, and I was *hoping* that he wouldn't. I was also highly confident that he wouldn't as he was rated 630 and had spent 6.6 thinking before hanging his Queen.

@sholom90 Yes I agree that blitz is much more hope chess like than slower games. So in that sense too much of it can be damaging for players who want to play better.

@MelvinGarvey I have to keep reminding myself that I am still near the beginning of my chess career. I have played online at least a little every day for the past 10 months. It feels like a long time already, but is a very short amount of time compared to most chess players. I still have many years ahead of me for learning and improvement.

Ask your opponents to go over the game, afterward, with you.

If they're willing to, you'll learn quite a lot. Advice from stronger players (especially in the form of post-game analysis) is one of the best ways to discover new ideas, and improvements.

Also, don't beat yourself up over your losses. Losing is the path to improvement.

Losing games at your first tournament is absolutely normal. Just work hard on them - all of them, from start to finish.

You may ask some guy like GM and FIDE top trainer Stratos Grivas how he fared at his first OTB tournnament. He had a perfect score: zero out of thirteen.

But Stratos is a workaholic, and less than five years after that he became Greek Champion, and just one year after that he was 4th at the World Junior Championship.

(It's from two separate posts, I just put them together since I'm replying to both.) It isn't just about playing better vs stronger players. You have to get in the habit of playing stronger and safer vs weaker players too. Don't rely on ideas that you already know do not work when you should be able to beat them using things that you aren't aware of any particular flaws to yet. You may be able to get away with more vs weaker players and still win, but think of it as another practice game to get in the habit of playing more effectively in general. What you do in general creates habits. If you constantly play like that vs weaker players, it will affect what you do vs stronger ones as well. You can consciously fight that in a given game, but that takes mental energy better spent elsewhere.