Struggling to Improve

I did read your comment.

The fact that there may be a mistake or two in a book does not mean the book sucks. There is still a lot of good advice there. Get over the mistake and focus on the good advice in the book.

The beginner books I have read, have been good and have helped me improve.

If you do not want to take advice and want to keep on doing what you are doing, feel free to do so, but don’t expect the results to change.

My dude, continuing to read the books is exactly "keep on doing what you are doing".   What are you even talking about?

In the example I gave you, the thinking that Chernev gives, and the concrete move he endorses, directly lead to a lost game via a position that a low-level player could / would absolutely call out.   "Follow the advice but don't make the bad move it implies when it's a bad move" is worthless.  It's just the same old "don't make bad moves" that everyone's advice boils down to That's the opposite of helpful.  It's not "one or two", by the way.

Does Chernev recommend this move because he's a bad player? No.   In fact - there are several editions of this book and no one ever bothered to correct it.  The level of caring here is clearly not high.  

I don't want a book / source to say "here are a bunch of games and some (crappy) analysis with Joe Money type platitudes you've heard before, good luck!".   I want to to say "here is a set of steps or routines you can follow to increase your ability to calculate at the board and have greater positional understanding".    This doesn't exist so far as I've seen, and the MLE is just that the reality of the situation "we can't help you, if you got it, you got it".

#16

"calculate the tree of all possible moves several lines deep and wide, and make sure there are no hung pieces and that all resulting positions are acceptable"
++ No, you calculate several lines as deep and wide as you can to decide on your move. Then you check it is no obvious blunder (checks, captures, threats) before you play it.

"If I can even "see" my opponents' candidate moves one move ahead, that is a good day."
++ It comes with practice.

"The problem isn't "Wow I haven't thought of doing that blunder checking thing!"
++ There is a difference between a mistake because of insufficient tactical skills and a blunder because of lacking attention.

"avoiding what you are calling "obvious blunders" will most certainly not get you to 1000 on this site." ++ It gets you to 1500.

"Got to be wayyyyy closer to that 99%, and I just don't understand how anyone can do it."
++ Mental discipline.

Even the best of the best are not immune.
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1066901
9...Ba6? is an obvious blunder, certainly for his level. He clearly was thinking about assailing the weak pawn c4 with 9...Ba6 and 10...Na5 and he forgot the obvious threat 10 Qa4.
If he had checked before he played 9...Ba6, he would surely have seen it and then e.g. decided on castling O-O first.

The books I have read give advice beyond a certain move in some position. They give advice like control the centre, develop fast and with threats, castle for king safety, knights towards the centre, don't block your bishops, open lines for rooks, rooks on the 7th etc. Also they teach about tactics like pins, skewers, forks. They teach how to do a space count, they teach to consolidate your position when up in material. They teach how to count attackers and defenders.

It is so much more than some single move. And even if there is a mistake here and there in some position it does not make the general advice bad. The advice is still valid, just maybe not that exact move in that exact situation.

List of some of the very good books for beginners I have read:

Play Winning Chess by Seirawan

Discovering Chess Openings: Building Opening Skills from Basic Principles by Emms

Pandolfini's Ultimate Guide to Chess by Pandofini

Kasparov Teaches Chess by Kasparov

Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess by Bobby Fischer

Now if you take the advice contained in those books and put it to use, you will play better chess. If you disregard the advice, you will remain at the same level you are at right now.

This is a legitimate complaint and I think many people don't realize it.

It would be fun to work with you face to face, once a week, to see whether improvement happens over the course of several weeks. You could also give no BS feedback like "you think  this exercise helps or is possible but you're wrong"  

True. This is another thing many people don't realize I think... that players (who are still way below master level) are avoiding basic blunders in the 99.99% range (one in 10 thousand).

> They give advice like control the centre, develop fast and with threats, castle for king safety, knights towards the centre, don't block your bishops, open lines for rooks, rooks on the 7th etc. Also they teach about tactics like pins, skewers, forks. They teach how to do a space count, they teach to consolidate your position when up in material. They teach how to count attackers and defenders.

No one is unaware of these principles except rank beginners (ie. they just learned the moves).   You clearly have not experienced what I am talking about, and aren't willing to listen / try to understand, so it's really pointless to continue this conversation, but: it is possible /to know these things and not be able to "apply" them/ because you lack the visual processing and memory necessary to do so.

If in a given situation you pick three of these principles, and apply them blindly, they will give your three or more different moves, usually.  Maybe all of them are bad.   None of the principles will save you from blundering in any way.  The only way you can apply them is to have the raw processing power / calculation ability / visual machinery necessary to see what the hell is happening on the board.

You take it for granted, because you have it.   You do not understand what it is like to look at a position and not be able to see what pieces share a diagonal without counting one-by-one, or have pieces seem to appear and disappear randomly as you're trying to calculate, or have to start calculating the same few lines over and over again maybe 20-30 times because you can't remember what you were doing from one moment to the next, or to exhaustively count out your opponents moves on the board for 20 minutes straight and then discover you missed one all five times you did that....

It's absolutely a brain thing, and no amount of sage proverb or reading games in books will ever fix it, if it is fixable at all.   It probably isn't, is the impression I get from listening to people like yourself give "advice" that is completely oblivious / unaware of the problem I'm actually describing, and based on the fact that almost no one here seems to be able to relate to what I'm experiencing in any way...  

you need to practice more that is hard truth if you want to get better practice more lose more,blunder more and you will learn. you are on level where you want to learn everything qouickly but that is not how chess works. you need grind and hours of playing to get better.  If you want learn openings and strategy i can recomenned one very good youtuber for intermidiate players who is showing main lines in each opening. his name is hangining pawns on youtube. Also on level below 1000 and even 1500 you should be focusing to not create weakness and play solid and most of players will blunder eventually 

It would be fun to understand what you're doing in detail. For example do you ever have that "oh no!" moment immediately after moving when you realize it's a big mistake? That's common for pretty much everyone but maybe it never happens to you?

One blind spot many people seem to have is they spend most of their time and effort looking at their pieces, and the more they pay attention to their opponent's pieces, the better they become... and this sort of skill exists on a continuum as I still find small improvement in my play by more closely judging where and what my opponent's pieces are doing.

Maybe one way to force this from yourself would be to divide your time into two different phases. In phase 1 you look at your pieces, where they can move, where you want to move (as normal). In phase 2 you do the same but only for the opponent's pieces, keeping your eyes almost exclusively on your opponent's half of the board. Maybe if you repeat phase 1 and 2 a few times before making a move that'd improve this "machinery" you're talking about.

> do you ever have that "oh no!" moment immediately after moving when you realize it's a big mistake? 

In blitz games / short time control, yes, every game ends that way.   In longer games, it's either blind spot invisible pieces / moves that I only see when my opponent makes them, or inscrutable positional stuff  ("I suddenly have no good moves and the computer says it's because six moves ago I should have moved <x> piece in a way that would have looked totally random, that was the only good move").

Lately I just randomly quit games b/c I get discouraged, so I think I'm pretty much done playing at all and just venting here.

> Phase 1 ... phase 2

Of course I do this.   It's just random moves if you don't do that.  

The problem isn't remembering to look at the pieces, it's looking at the pieces and not seeing how the interact (ie.  is piece <a> attacking piece <b>?)  When I first started I had trouble seeing that /on the board - for example I could not reliably tell if two pieces were on the same diagonal without putting my fingers on the screen and tracing.   Now I can *usually* see how pieces on the board interact, but when I try to calculate - ie. position is now in my head - I will most always have "blind spots" and no matter how many times I go over it, or how carefully, I'm not going to see. 

Like I said, this is most likely a brain thing - I have a vision disorder from an injury which prevents me from doing basic things like focusing both eyes in the same place or putting together shapes of letters into words (left eye only, can read with the right).   I was hoping learning to "see" in chess would help with the rest of life, but it's apparently hopeless.

Blindfold chess / reading chess books without a board in front of me and playing it out - a skill which a most people report is "easy" or comes naturally to them with "concentration" or "mental discipline", is impossible for me.  I can't tell you where a single piece on the board is unless it was either just moved, or has never moved and it's the first two or three moves of the game.   I definitely can't "visualize" anything.  

I'm sorry if you have not been able to put the advice mentioned above and in the books to use. That does not, however, make the advice bad.

I think that the best way to learn to visualize and calculate is doing puzzles. A lot of puzzles. Start with the easy ones and move up when you get them right almost all the time.

When playing, choose a move, but before you play it, visualize it, and then step into your opponent's shoes and try to think from his perspective. Is the opponent going to be able to take that piece for free? Or is he going to be able to take your queen and only lose his rook for it? Also check the lines that are opened if you move that piece. (Online you can even drag the piece and just keep the mouse button pressed while you hower it over where you are going to move it and don't let go so you can actually see, if it is going to be hanging. If it looks bad, move the piece back to where it was before letting go of the mouse button. There is no touch rule in online chess and the clock is only pressed, when you let go of the piece somewhere other than where it was.)

You can solve puzzles, so I think the problem is, you forget to think about what your opponent wants to do on his next move after you make yours. (That advice is also in the books).

I know how you feel. When i started chess i was 700 hundred player couldnt see any tactic didnt know where my rooks or bishops were and only way i would win was with battery checkmate and if i dont get it i lose the game  but then i started learning principles and chess strategy and i started improve  rapidly. I would recoomend you to learn from books dont focus on computers we are humans we could never play like them. i think your problem is more psychological i think you dont belive in your chess abilities maybe i am wrong but this seems so but that is also ok you will get rid of that you just need to improve it dosent matter how fast it can be slow improvement but it is still positive.

This is the second time you changed your advice completely.   Anyway I'm 1700-1900 depending on the day in puzzles/tactics.   The skills do not translate over in any way.  If anything I got worse at actually playing as I got better at puzzles.

I assure you the my problem is not "forgetting to think".     That borders on asinine. 

This is really not productive.   Sorry, I'm just ranting at this point,  and there's no use - probably going to close my account and find a new hobby.

But it is impossible for you to get a 1900 puzzle rating without being able to visualize. It is the same board, the same pieces.

The only difference is, in a game you have to check that you do not make a tactic available for your opponent. Or a free piece. In a puzzle you know that one exists and is available for you.

Eh... I don't think phase 1 and 2 is so obvious... I think a lot of players almost exclusively look at their pieces.

But ok, thanks for the explanation.

One guy told me when he was still fairly new (and rated 1600) he could play up to 4 blindfold games at the same time... so definitely I think there are physiological (dis)advantages  and limits for people. My ability to calculate has improved over the years, but when I play a blindfold game I'm not "seeing" it any better than when I was about 1300 (in fact I don't really "see" the board at all... hard to explain). Meanwhile others tell me when they play blindfold they see an actual board with pieces... and when I question them a few times, they emphasize they really do see a board (and I definitely don't).

So you say you can't see how pieces interact... ok, I believe you. And yeah, maybe there's nothing you can do about it. Like you've said, books and advice often assume it will come automatically.

And by the way, I did not change my advice.

It is a different thing to improve at chess in general than to improve at a specific skill like calculating or visualizing.

That is why I recommend different things to achieve these two different goals.

Although, of course, better calculation or better visualization will probably improve your general chess skill also.

That's incorrect, in a way that can be made mathematically / statistically formal (I know this because I've done it, writing a program to generate and analyze puzzles in a n attempt to improve).

Puzzles are constructed in a very particular way.   They are usually extremely forcing lines - or the puzzles get extremely difficult in a "must evaluate position and choose the narrowly better one at the end" way, and there must be /only one good move/ for the player's side each move because there must be a single right answer.

These constraints are hugely limiting and combine to cause the calculation trees to have a particular shape - they become extremely narrow, branch in divergent ways, and utilize only a small number of pieces on the board.   The upshot of this is that I can use language / linear memory ("if I <a>, the other side can <b> or <c>, now the piece is on the a2 to g8 diagonal", etc - in words) instead of visual processing.   I can do the former much, much better.  (You can study these shapes with graph theory and even do cool things like turn existing puzzles into more puzzles....)

But real games are not like this, and there are only a tiny number of situations where you can apply puzzles skills.  Witness:  I find 3 and 4 move mates way more reliably than I find 1 move mates, according to the insights tab statistics.  The reason is the longer mates are like a puzzle - it's forcing, narrow trees, and you go into it knowing something is there.  If I try to "talk out" a game like I talk out the puzzles, I instantly lose.

At the risk of sounding like a jerk, maybe, in general - when someone is telling you their direct experience, replying "that's impossible" is sort of bad form / makes the person you are talking to not feel heard.....

There is nothing more forcing than a check and you can not checkmate without checking. So if there is a mate in one on the board, if you look for all forcing moves, you should find it. It is the same thing as in puzzles.

Now for checking for your opponent's threats, you have to look at it from their perspective. This is easy to forget and that is how one hangs pieces or blunders a mate in one for the opponent.

Same board, same visualization, same checklist.

Check for forcing moves on every move, Checks, captures, threats, in that order. So if there are no checks, look for captures, if there are no captures, look for threats to check or capture. Do this for your every move and before you make your move, from your opponent's perspective, every time, as if you had already made the move.

I can not believe that 1900 puzzle rating is possible without visualizing. Even if the lines are forcing, it is still visualizing, and often the opponent has multiple responses you need to consider, so a 3 move mate may require looking at 4 different lines of a couple moves etc. It does require visualization, unless you just play it like lottery, and are very very lucky.

There's a guy right now on another forum post that has been playing half the time I have (ie. since 2019) and went from 600 to 2100 rapid.  I'm.... still at 600, where I started.   He describes what he's been doing to train, and it's just depressing - so painfully obvious that there is natural inborn chess talent an I just don't have a drop of it, he gets ten times the result for way less effort.

IDK if you're serious about checking in once a week or whatever I'd be interested / would stick around for that, but it's probably a total waste of your time, I'm hopeless.  =/

Ok, you must be right then and I'm just confused.  I really don't talk puzzles through instead of visualizing, because you say it's impossible, and I'm really secretly very good at visualizing but don't know it because I'm totally unaware that I do it or anything that's going on in my head ever.

In addition, the time and effort I spent figuring out mathematically how puzzles are different from games was totally wasted and I must be wrong about that too, because you say it's just the same, and there's no arguing with Habanababananero's gut feeling on this subject, it's definitely correct.

This all makes sense and is definitely the most likely explanation, thanks for letting me know.  This has been super-helpful in every way, I'm glad it just took finally meeting someone with such impeccable logic to let me know everything I was experiencing was a fake lie and thereby solving all my problems.  

You should be a therapist.  Have a great day.