good job, yeah i did the same last year i started playing again after 1 year
relearning
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Improving Your Chess - Resources for Beginners and Beyond…
https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/improving-your-chess-resources-for-beginners-and-beyond
20 days ago
0
#4
I came back to chess last year after about 20 years. My advice is to be patient with yourself. And to believe that you are capable of chess improvement - don't listen to anyone that tells you otherwise.
If you are looking to improve, you should play humans. The bots are programmed to make random blunders to simulate playing against different rating levels, but they do not play like a human would. Also, many are rated incorrectly so as to give you a boost to your ego. For example, beating a level 1500 bot is in no way equivalent to beating a person of the same rating.
Overall it depends what you are looking for and what motivates you.
20 days ago
0
#5
kerfy23 wrote:
I started playing again after about 40 years now.. got a chess dot com, lichess, chessbook, nocti , and chessbook accounts, even bought a chess set.. My first get yer rating game on noccyi rated me at 800 something, so i watched a ton of videos and did a lot of the learning stuff on lichess and puzzles on chess dot com and other stuff... to day I did another one on nocti.. rated 400 or so.. lol
I am doing the english opening , only doing white at this point.. Is this sorta normal ? I am not discouraged, kinda find it funny.. I am have not played a human yet.. too shy or embarrased maybe.. any input, good or bad would be helpful... thanks in advance.. btw I just turned 65.. no dementia yet.. lol
Just got back into the game myself after decades of absence
It’s definitely a tough learning road once age catches up on you, but I would rather be on this road, trying to relearn than not doing anything at all
Best wishes and welcome back to the game
20 days ago
0
#6
kerfy23 wrote:
I am doing the english opening , only doing white at this point.. Is this sorta normal ? I am not discouraged, kinda find it funny.. I am have not played a human yet.. too shy or embarrased maybe.. any input, good or bad would be helpful... thanks in advance.. btw I just turned 65.. no dementia yet.. lol
The English is an excellent opening.
Some people will try and tell you that it's "too complex for low rated players". Ignore them.
My favorite set-up in the English is what's called a Botvinnik formation. It looks basically like this... just setting up White's pieces.
White completely dominates the d5 square... he has two Pawns, a Knight and a fianchettoed Bishop on g2 all focused on that square. That should keep the center under control. And depending on what sort of set-up your opponent adopts, White can generate play either by arranging to play b4 (perhaps after Rb1), or by arranging to play f4 (perhaps after Be3).
Of course every formation has drawbacks, and in the Botvinnik formation the d4 dark square is weak. But at least you know where your weakness is going to be, and can take measures in good time. Sun Tzu (author of The Art of War) said that every good fort should have a weakness. His point was that then you will at least know from which direction the enemy attack will be coming, and what part of your fortress it will be aimed against. If you are equally strong everywhere, there is no such assurance.
General advice on improving?
Play slow games. Blitz is fun, but you can't improve if you have no time to think. Learn your skills in slow games, test them (if you like) in fast games. I used to play Daily, at three days per move. You might prefer to play Rapid, with a ten-second increment.
Don't let losses bother you. I must have lost thousands of games in the past 50 years - many of them painful losses in tournaments - to reach my current playing strength. Your lost games are a treasure trove of information on which aspects of your play really need improvement.
Always look over your losses, and don't stop until you are satisfied that you know WHY you lost each one. I don't just mean "I blundered my Rook away"... WHY did you blunder your Rook away? Ran out of time, so you were reduced to just making random moves without blunder-checking them? Then work on your time management. The position just made you uncomfortable, too closed or too unbalanced? Then either work on getting familiar with that sort of position, or else work on ways to avoid that type of position entirely.
Other than those points... studying tactics and model checkmating patterns will benefit you far more than memorizing sequences of opening moves. Too many players spend FAR too much effort memorizing lines instead of learning to play chess.
When you feel ready for something a bit more advanced, try reading my posts in this thread:
Read my posts #4, 7-to-10 and especially post 12. Then play over the three sample games on the first two pages of the thread, reading the annotations.
I started playing again after about 40 years now.. got a chess dot com, lichess, chessbook, nocti , and chessbook accounts, even bought a chess set.. My first get yer rating game on noccyi rated me at 800 something, so i watched a ton of videos and did a lot of the learning stuff on lichess and puzzles on chess dot com and other stuff... to day I did another one on nocti.. rated 400 or so.. lol
I am doing the english opening , only doing white at this point.. Is this sorta normal ? I am not discouraged, kinda find it funny.. I am have not played a human yet.. too shy or embarrased maybe.. any input, good or bad would be helpful... thanks in advance.. btw I just turned 65.. no dementia yet..
lol