low rating, improvement

I just wanted someone to chime in on a silly question. I'm in my early 30s (a little neuroplasticity left) and decided to get into chess because I like the game, and it is a nice distraction from work and raising kids. BUT my rating is pretty low and I wonder if I'm doomed to be a low rated enthusiast and so shouldn't worry so much about my rating? or is there hope for improvement and how much work is that going to take? I had a lot of anxiety playing live games when I first started and my score plummeted I think in part due to anxiety. since then it has steadily climbed from around 600 up to 850 and I'm hoping it continues to climb. I would like to get to around 1,200 or 1,500 at some point. I have a chest tactics book by Susan Polgar I work in a few days a week, I do chest tactics on my phone, and I have Silman's Endgame (read the sections for under 10000 and some for 1200) and Reassess Your Chess (read the first 50-60 pages as he recommended for beginners). I did a little opening training enough to have a basic plan for white or black. I try and play live games 15-10 time control when I can, and 10 games/week is good for me. Daily games are nice but I end up not sleeping because I wake up at 3am going over solutions and decided that was not great for me. I get rating improvement is slow and takes a lot of work, but any insight from the more skilled would be an encouragement.

Oh, and I started this journey about 6 months ago

It seems to me that you are already doing some good things. You can certainly improve, but as you have many other obligations try not to be bothered by rating too much. Try to enjoy playing first and foremost. 15|10 time control is good for improvement. If you have the time, you can play some even longer games, but 15|10 is fine as well. 10 games per week is more than enough. When you don't have the time, you can play less than that and still improve.

When you finish a game, it would be a good idea to analyze it in some capacity. For now it will mainly be blundercheck. After a while, you will get better and you might even understand more, so you will be able to analyze a game in greater detail.

You've mentioned 1 500 rating, if you are interested, here is how I got to that rating:

Guide of sorts

If you have additional questions, feel free to ask. Good luck on your chess improvement.

Thanks! Appreciate the thoughtful reply. I read through your guide. Nice to meet another long distance runner :-) tearing a gastrocnemius is a great fear, but I have yet to do it. I make a habit of analyzing every game. I use chess.com analysis, but have worried that maybe it's not the best. I usually look through the earmarked mistakes and blunders, and as you recommended try and play some alternative lines with the engine. You mentioned PGN chessbook, would that be significantly better than chess.com? Or is just going through the games enough of an exercise?

Well, I feel that PGN Chessbook is better, at least it is better than depth 18 analysis of chess.com. For instance here it can suggest a move, and after having it on the board engine realizes it is not the best, because depth is just not enough from time to time. Of course, it is still good enough to be fair. So if you do not want to use offline tool, you do not have to.

I play a lot with the engine. I mean whatever you do, it is not really a waste of time. For instance I had an endgame and suddenly the engine said that I was winning after a regular move by opponent. It turned out that he had to do some specific plan in order for him to neutralize my advanced pawn. In that game I pushed a pawn because I know that sometimes if there is no fear of losing it, it is just good to push it. It turned out pushing the pawn was good, but after an hour or so, I figure out a plan where the pawn box in his king and then I can push another pawn which is unstoppable.

Of course, you will not figure something complex for now, but you might figure out some tactic or an idea after a while.If you figure 1 thing during the analysys it is already a time well spend.

Of course, try to figure out why some move makes the shift in evaluation, but don't be to disappointed if it doesn't happen. In many cases engine moves might be too complex, especially for now. You can always ask in the analysys section of the forum - why this move is that great or something like that.

I use Lichess because its free and gives you a nicer analysis than chess.com does for free. Of course, chess.com's is a little nicer if you upgrade but I wouldn't. I would recommend doing puzzles and tactics everyday so you can learn to spot them faster in games. Also make sure nothing is hanging and play solid openings like a Queen's Gambit or Scotch

Hi there. Same age and reasons for getting into chess. I've found YouTube to be the best resource particularly Gotham and Chessbrah, especially Chressbrah's habits series. Can have it on in the background while playing with baby or feeding and the info gets slowly absorbed. I went from about 650 to 1000 over three months or so from watching these videos, bought a gotham openings course and loads of puzzles. Have hit a bit of a wall, most likely due to reduced playing time but hold.out hope for further improvements.

If I could be easily interrupted from playing a chess game, I would play quick casual games just in case you have to go, you can resign and not have it affect your rating 

Thanks, I like Gotham's videos. Definitely fun to watch and gives me some good groundwork.

 

I hadn't thought of doing mg unrated games to practice, I like that idea. Need to look into that option bc I do rune the risk of interruptions on the regular

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?”

-Play with a slow time control, such as G/30 so you have plenty of time to think before every move. 

 

I hope that this helps.  

You might want to check out Dan Heisman's writings.  His book "A Guide to Chess Improvement" discusses *how* to get better, rather than being a book of openings, or endgames, or tactics, or strategy, etc.

He also has a website, twitter feed, and youtube channel, and has won a number of awards from the Chess Journalists group for his writings.

He first made a name for himself as an educator when he wrote a monthly column called "Novice Nook" for chesscafe.  The first 10-12 years or so of his columns are still available at https://web.archive.org/web/20140714190611/http://www.chesscafe.com/archives/archives.htm 

I might add that he thinks that intermediate time controls (which he defines as 10-25 minutes) can instill bad habits.  It's too short to calculate the best move, and too long to be efficient.  (See https://web.archive.org/web/20140714190611/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman115.pdf )

He's also got an interesting approach to tactics (see https://web.archive.org/web/20140714190611/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman04.pdf)

Message me if you're interested in a more lengthy explanation of the above and/or his approach.

Good luck on your journey!

Improving Your Chess - Resources for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/improving-your-chess-resources-for-beginners-and-beyond

My Last 3 games were with peeps over 200-250 pts higher..  I know theres brackets to limit but why not just auto limit and then have a message ask if you want to play a person at a certain level..  really skews the ELO fast...  

You can set the rating range in preferences. 

Hey Thomas, 

Really interesting to see this as I am very much in the same boat as you. I started learning chess in Dec 2020 at 33 years old! And to say it has been frustrating and challenging is a massive understatement!

As others have said, I saw my biggest improvements by principally focusing on building a basic tactical awareness. I didn't find the puzzles very helpful here, or on Lichess, or on Chess Tempo. The biggest recommendation I can give is to purchase the two courses by Chess King, called "Chess Tactics for Beginners" and "Simple Defence (Chess Puzzles)". I have completed all puzzles in these courses several times now. Daily, I do "tests" where I complete 40 to 50 randomly chosen puzzles from these two courses. Earlier this year, I was getting crushed by 600 ELO ranked players, now my rapid score is roughly around 1050.

Thanks to others who have commented, very helpful to see this guidance. And Thomas, feel free to add me and shoot me a message if you ever want to keep chatting or play some games :-)

Tactics are indeed important. My coach says he reached 1700 almost solely on tactics. Dan Heisman has an interesting approach to tactics (see https://web.archive.org/web/20140714190611/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman04.pdf)

Basically, he says there are two types of tactics training: one is to learn how to figure stuff out and calculate. But another, much under-appreciated, way it to learn to recognize -- i.e., to memorize. (Just like, say, when we see a queen and a bishop pointing at that f7 pawn, we often see it right away)

He gives a great analogy: we all know how to figure out 7 times 6, right? You add 7+7+7+7+7+7. Simple as that, right? And yet, that takes time and brainpower that we don't need to you. Simply memorizing that 7x6=42 (which pretty much all of us have done) is much easier and efficient, right?

And so he suggests getting a simple book (e.g., Bain, Chess Tactics for Students) and doing them again and again, until you can get 85% of them in 15 seconds or less.

This is not to exclude the other way tactics are useful -- the seemingly infinite number of puzzles here, chesstempo, etc. It's just that the method I'm describing here is extremely helpful -- essential, he would say -- to improving.

And the reason this makes sense is simple: you don't want to have to calculate everything from scratch on every move. You want to able to see the back-row mate possibilities immediately, or the Qxf7 mate immediately, or Nxc7 fork of a rook and king.  Most of us already do.  But there are 2000 other patterns.  Another one that's just a tad above easy:  when a king is in a corner surrounded by his 7th rank pawns in front and a piece next to him -- you should immediately think: where's my knight, is there a smother mate here?  And so on. During a game you just don't have the brainpower or stamina or time to calculate all the possibilities -- you want to see the ones that might work because you've seen them before.

Great topic to follow. I'm end 20s (Almost 30) and it's fun to see i'm not one of the older players "returning". The advices you guys give is for me a bunch of information. But my goal this year is not to reach 1500 but 1000. 

Can i give a big thanks to all of you guys for this helping community. I hope the topic starter and i meet each other when we around 1000/1200 mark . 

Levy from Gotham Chess recommends that when looking at candidate moves you look at forcing moves like checks, then what you can take (or take your pieces) and what you can attack? Double checking for danger can actually hugely increase your rating since blunders decide so many matches below about 1600/1700.

Also as has been recommended tactics are great, being able to recognise them is essential because when you can you can take it a step further eg. 'If his bishop wasn't there I could pin the queen' - because then you can figure out how to get the bishop to move and so on.

I wish you the best!

My advice to somebody trying to reach 1000 is mostly this: (a) learning opening principles (not openings); and (b) learn and practice tactics; (c) practice the above by playing games (some blitz to practice opening principles -- and some long rapid games (30 minutes or more) to practice sitting and looking for the best move)

You can do it!

Wow, lots of responses, thanks everyone! I read through and I'm glad to hear similar themes. Read through an article by Heisman talking about the importance of memorizing basics until there is simple as 1 + 2 = 3. That approach makes a lot of sense, although I don't think I can justify buying Bain until I finish Polgar's tactics book and get through amateurs mind that I just ordered. I hit a five game losing streak last week and just stopped, I think I'll restart this weekend and just doing tactics in the meantime