I know the basics:
- don't hang pieces
- take hanging pieces
- control the center
- develop your pieces
- the Sicilian opening strategy
- keep an eye out for potential batteries and forks
Yet, here we are.
I don't always do these things perfectly. Hanging a piece occasionally happens. But that occasionally happens to >500 players also, I assume.
400-level players aren't nearly as bad as people think. They're not "learning how the pieces move" bad. They're not even "learning basic tactics" bad. They're way better than that.
Dear GaucheInTheMachine,
My name is Gabor Balazs. I’m a Hungarian FIDE Master and a certified, full-time chess coach, so I hope I can help you. 
Everybody is different, so that's why there isn't only one given way to learn and improve.
First of all, you have to discover your biggest weaknesses in the game and start working on them. The most effective way for that is analyzing your own games. There is a built-in engine on chess.com which can show you if a move is good or bad but the only problem is that it can't explain to you the plans, ideas behind the moves, so you won't know why it is so good or bad.
In my opinion, chess has 4 main areas (openings, strategies, tactics/combinations and endgames) and if you want to improve efficiently, you should improve all of these skills almost at the same time. That's what my training program is based on. My students enjoy the lessons because they cover multiple aspects of chess in an engaging and dynamic way, keeping the learning process both stimulating and efficient. Of course, there are always ups and downs but this is completely normal in everyone's career.
If you would like to learn more about chess, you can take private lessons from me (you find the details on my profile) or you can visit my Patreon channel (www.patreon.com/Bgabor91), where you can learn about every kind of topics (openings, strategies, tactics, endgames, game analysis). There are more than 37 hours of educational videos uploaded already and I'm planning to upload at least 4 new videos per week, so you can get 4-6 hours of educational contents every month. I also upload daily puzzles in 4 levels every day which are available with a FREE subscription.
I hope this is helpful for you. Good luck with your games!
Hi everyone,
Back in 2021, I went from 0 to 500 Elo in Rapid chess in just 3 months. I’ve shared my journey, tips, and lessons learned in this article:
👉 Breaking Through – A Beginner's Guide to Reaching 500 Elo in Rapid Chess
I’d love to hear your thoughts—feel free to leave a comment or reaction on the article!
Thanks and happy playing! ♟️
Well, I commend your efforts, but people whose ELO is under 500 don't have the skills to review and analyze a game. If they did, they wouldn't have a ELO of under 500.
Your article reminds me of my high school senior year wrestling coach. I had changed schools and the coach at the new school (a soccer coach who volunteered to coach wrestling) insisted that everyone had to do a inside standup their first move from bottom. He said that if anyone thought otherwise they would have to wrestle him and beat him to prove that we could do another first move. This guy was 6'3" and about 240 pounds. I told him (I wrestled at 157) that I would do whatever move I felt was best against my opponent, but usually it was an outside switch. I said this in front of everyone at a team meeting. So now the guy had to put up or shut up. We all go to the gym and of course I took the bottom position while he took top. At the whistle I hit the switch (that he knew was coming), locking his wrist at the same time and slammed his face to the mat I then went up top, put him in a 1/4 nelson and baited him to push up against it. I hit him with a pancake slam and pinned his fat butt. This is all true. I did what ever move I wanted to that season. You can't tell people what pieces they shouldn't move X amount of times and that bishops should be moved before knights or vice a versa. You don't have the experience to give anyone advice on chess except for 1. develop your pieces. 2. Try to control the center. 3. Blunder check as best as possible for their level.
I would hold off with giving chess advice until you are at 2000.
Hi JBarryChess and thank you for your comment.
I completely disagree. The web is full of people with over 2000 Elo explaining how to reach 1000 or 2000, but those tips never helped me. You know why? Because those people were rated 500 many years ago and don’t even remember the early steps they took to reach that level. I, on the other hand, remember them clearly, and the article summarizes exactly what I did to go from 0 to 500 in just 3 months back in 2021.
Of course, I understand that everyone learns differently, and what worked for me may not work for others.
My Rapid Chess Elo peaked at over 1200 — I know that’s still novice level — but it’s important to remember that platforms like Chess.com now have millions of players with access to tons of learning resources, so the overall level is much higher than in the past. In fact, on Lichess.org, my Elo is 1500 (which is closer to intermediate level).
That said, my article doesn’t claim to teach how to reach 2000 Elo — I’m still hovering between 1100 and 1200 myself. But I can explain what personally helped me break through the 500 and 1000 barriers, and that’s exactly what I’ve shared.
My goal is to write two articles explaining how I reached those ratings.
As for things like “don’t move more than two pawns” or “develop knights before bishops,” anyone who’s studied chess even a little knows these are basic beginner guidelines — just common sense best practices (these one worked for me because avoided random moves). As players gain awareness and skill, of course these rules can be bent or broken.
My sister recently started playing and was moving completely at random. With just a few simple tips like the ones in my article, she reached 400 in just a few weeks.
Finally, I shared the Chess.com lessons (not my lessons) that helped me to reach the 500 goal. I've also shared the video lessons who helped me the most. For example, a lot of people suggests to learn open principles over a specific opening. Even if I agree with this suggestion study the italian game helped me a lot and the best resource I found on this item was the Chess Factor italian game playlist (for a 500 elo the first video is enough).
Regarding game analysis you're wrong. Yes, it's true that at that level you don't completely understand the suggestions but it helps you to understand how to play an opening (I learned openings and only later I learned their names), when you blunder or make errors you try to figure out the reason. For example, I remember the first time I lost against a Wynard attack in few moves with game analysis I learned how to defend from it. Since then a lot of people played the Wynard Attack against me (still today there are people who try it) and I won the majority of times (In this specific case, however, some suggestions on this forum also helped).