I'm just somewhat of a beginner too. But your puzzle solving indicates you're thinking is better than your gameplay to me. Are you analyzing your games? Yeah it's kind of boring. But to win consistently against higher rated people, and increase your own rating.. you're going to have to make less mistakes and improve your correct move percentage . So in particular look at your mistakes.... And ask why you did that. And what should you have done instead. Many mistakes in the opening sequence lead to an overall weaker position that leaves you scrambling and getting your pieces pushed around the board, and exchanged by the opponent who has the better structure. Then when it gets to the end game his advantage becomes clear. The disadvantage of playing poorly in the opening is hard to see I think when you're playing other low-rated players. But better players will absolutely destroy you when you do that.
Pawn Racing and Endgame
Just as an example I'm looking at your last game with the draw against the about 600 rated player. Your correct move percent was like 64%. It's going to need to be in the 70 to 80% range to beat around 800 to 900 rated players consistently. We all play poor wild games and you can win against a 1000 rated player only making 50% correct moves...... Just not consistently. On a consistent basis it's got to be better to improve it's better players.
The other thing everybody will tell you that I think is true too is to play longer games. 10 minutes is not long enough to think through the positions for relatively inexperienced people. The longer your games the better the outcome is going to be. I play 30 minutes for that reason and most of time it's way too much but occassionaly it's not enough.
Hi all,
I started playing Chess seriously on October 27th 2021 and my minimum Elo in Rapid Game was 230. On December 31st, I achieved my goal of 500 Elo here on Chess.com.
The problem is that from then I stuck in the range 540-600.
I completed all the Beginner lessons and I do 25 problems a day, 3 games a day in rapid 10 minutes, I practice simple End game like Two Rooks, Queen vs King, Rook vs King, Two Bishops. I know the Opening principles and I try to apply them. I know a bit about Italian Game, Spanish Game, Scotch Game, Queen Gambit, Petrov Defense, Sicilian Defense. I know a bit of Tactics like fork, pin, screwer, etc. I know some common checkmate pattern (even if there are times when I don't see them). I play often against bots and I won with all bots <1200, now I am fighting with Nelson. Typically, I consider a bot beaten when I manage to beat it 3 times in a row.
However, analyzing my games it seems my problem is with Pawn Endgame (I probably still have bundlers and other kind of problems too). I mean, while in the 0-500 games my end games was always the one mentioned above I knew how to do them, now I always be in a situation of pawn racing with my opponent that always win. Sometime I have an end game with a Piece and Pawn and I rarely win.
Let's see few of my recent games:
1. https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/39049787911
Here I drawn but my opponent was able to transform a pawn in a queen. The draw only occur thank to time.
2. https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/38956780839
Here another draw for stalemate, however my opponent was able to convert the pawn in a Queen and I only won because he didn't know how to run a Queen vs King end game.
3. https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/38687648785
Here I was a bit behind of material but lost on end game.
What do you suggest to study to improve this kind of end game.
More in general, what do you think I should do to make some progress over 600 elo and above? My goal was to reach 1000 in a near future.