The most helpful thing for me was the saint louis chess club yt channel. They have tons of lectures on there by titled players. It's basically free coaching. The videos are long but I found them more helpful than any other online resource. On my first online chess account my rapid rating was around 800. I knew how to play chess but hadn't played in years. I was 1600 within a year and I credit the majority of that improvement to those lectures.
Trying to reach 800 in 60 days. Advice?
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In that short of time. Hire a chess coach.
Play me choose daily matches standard an chess 960.. do puzzle rush every day an focus primarily on doing chess lessons
29 days ago
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#5
Tbh just focus on tactical vision. No one below 1000 knows what they are doing, and most games there are decided by a dumb dumb blunder.
Getting better at tactics by doing puzzles can help you take advantage of the mistakes your opponents make. Think a bit longer whenever your opponent makes an unexpected move. You will be surprised how much better your game quality will become
okay so like... do you want to reach 800 through skill, or just reach 800??? If all you want is to reach 800, learn the wayward queen opening, and like... really really learn it. 50% of wayward queen games under 1000 either have checkmate or white being up a rook within 10 moves.
Or... if you want to actually improve and get there in a way you deserve.... so it then depends on whether you want to improve in bullet blitz or rapid. bullet is easy, use a touchscreen. that should be enough to get you to 800 if you play 1 min and 30 sec (with no increment) with perfect wifi for a while. blitz is slightly harder... in my opinion blitz has the most skilled low elo pool of players, so improving is harder for 600-1000. maybe try getting there in rapid before you even try. Rapid is better, but requires more time (obv), so like... actual improvement.
so theres a lot of articles out there telling you how to not blunder, long story short, stop asking yourself what you want to do and start asking what your opponent wants to do. Also, in all honesty, PUZZLES DONT HELP. puzzles are a measurement of skill, not a means to improve it. with 60 days, reaching 1000 from 200 is probably doable, but only if you use your time wisely, and are actually committed to it. Openings: dont do anything crazy. to minimize loses, dont accepted the englund gambit, not worth your time studying until you are ~1400 rapid, but accepting it would often result in early loses. choose one opening as white, and stick to it. most players under 1300 play e4 e5 or e4 d5, if you choose e4, honestly just learn that (based on the assumption you dont choose wayward queen). d4... is a little easier to learn at a high level, but 800 is still low enough that e4 is easy. as black, honestly nearly no one at that level plays anything other than e4 or d4 in rapid and blitz.
For endgames, those arent important until maybe 1200.... up until above my rating, at any rate, in both blitz and rapid, games are determined by middlegame blunders and not overall skill.... just dont blunder. if you cut your blunders to even 1 per game, probably enough to get you to 800. if you cut them to 1 in 3 games, and have basic theory, you it should be enough to get to 1200. Do note however, engine evaluation gets harsher the higher you rating. also, dont learn from online coaches, most of them are good players but terrible coaches.
of course if you spend enough time playing you will improve, but honestly being careful is enough, if you insist on taking the hard way, analyze every blunder you make, every mistake, and figure out, then memorize the best sequence instead, even if without game review. be prepared to spend a lot of time.... i personally spent ~10hrs per day in chess during the period i went from ~800-1200 in all formats to ~1300-1450
When you were a beginner, what helped you consistently improve your rating, and what would you recommend focusing on?
I’ve been watching videos, doing endless puzzles, practice games, learning openings and drills and trying to implement them for a few games after a learn each one to see what sticks with me and what doesn’t. Etc.
Basically now I’m trying a few different methods to improve, but I’d really love to hear what actually worked for other people when they were starting out.
What helped you see the biggest improvement?