What am I doing wrong?

So I've known chess for years, but only registered here a few months ago to get some proper practice. I do weekly lessons, play puzzles every day when possible, analyse my games where I struggled and do the occasional drill at 1200-1500. And despite that, I'm permanently stuck between 600 and 750, and nothing I do helps me progress. The normal excuses of playing blitz (I don't even know what that is), not practicing enough, and not analysing games do not apply. So what the hell am I doing wrong? And no, I am not paying to upgrade for more lessons. (Also, unrelated, but why are ratings under 1200 all considered bad? It honestly pisses me off so much when I see stuff like that, and, for example, someone saying that they're 1700 but not that good really... How do you think that makes me feel when I'm trying as hard as I can?!)

So, I think the ultimate thing here is to develop your own strategy by knowing what each of your pieces mean to you and how they would assist you in achieving your goal. Keep at least one of each big piece for final and work with mainly one side of the board in the beginning.
Let your pawn only step out one block ahead of the king to release your Queen to the far upper corner for the attack. Make sure if that if their pawn is two blocks ahead of the king, to capture that.
They’ll usually move another pawn which would expose the castle (which you’ll capture next). Sometimes they’ll move the bishop too… so try and see how they would move. But more of then than not, this is how I’ve seen most of my games go.
Over all, a few practices is good, but best to keep on playing, and to think three steps ahead of your next move to try and lead the game.

I have the same rating problem. We're suffering different issues however as i looked at the last three games you lost and the solution seems obvious. You give away the center straight away and then go on solo missions using either the Bishop or Queen (which of course leads to retreat). You'd have stood a better chance in those games by bringing out both your knights first and protecting your center, then setting up attacks using multiple pieces.

Noted. I guess I'm just so sick of losing to cheap stuff like Wayward Queen, so I just naturally try and take out stuff early to stop that from happening.

Wayward Queen is easy to defend, it's all about your f7 pawn. In response to Qh5 bring your queenside knight out (nc6) and protect your e5 pawn (if you play g6 straight away they just play Qxe5 and check you), they will then likely play Bc4, you play g6 and threaten the Queen. They move Queen to f3 (Napoleon Attack), you respond with your knight (Nf6).

Got it, I'll keep that in mind. Thanks for your advice :)

Gotham chess has a good youtube video on defusing wayward queen attacks. The streamer I really recommend is John Bartholomew. Especially his chess fundamentals vids and his climbing the ratings ladder vids up to 1000 and 1000 to 1200. Absolute gold for beginners, and free.

 

You're welcome. It's not the only way to avoid the WQA but it works reliably for me. Once i was comfortable in avoiding Scholar's mate i was so much more relaxed during my openings and pre-castling, so it should be the same for you. All the best.

Most people would recommend you learn a lot of openings but don't do that. Take 1-3 openings for both black and white, and study those openings A LOT. No, you don't need premium or anything. Just go on youtube and search something like "How to win with ________ opening". One example is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECMMct_jnEM. I watched this when I started playing chess.

Now if your playing black, you could watch something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc8rzTIfFCw

I highly recommend gothamchess. He may not be a grandmaster, but he's an excellent teacher.

Hey!

I get how it can be frustrating to not feel progress in your chess play! Maybe you’ve got 1 or more key concepts missing or convoluted in your play that’s hampering you? I’d be happy to help try to pinpoint what that/they may be and see if we can push you past this barrier you seem to be at. Message me if you’d like, happy to meet up and discuss chess ideas, analyze your games, play some practice games, or things of that kind. Sometimes another pair of eyes can make all the difference in figuring out what’s hampering your play, I had to do that a few years back when I was working hard on my play for a few months. Either way have fun and look forward to hearing about your breakthrough in your progress!

-Jordan

The best way to improve is to analyse games you lost. Too many people come to these forums asking for help analysing games they won, but you'll rarely improve that way. The only thing that will improve is your ego.

Let's take this game for example:

 

 

Already as early as move 4, you've committed a major positional mistake. You're supposed to leave your pawn on d4 and reinforce it, rather than trading it off like this. This move shows to me that you don't understand the French Defence at all. You should watch a quick YouTube video on "how to play advance French as white" and learn the basics of this opening.

Move 5 again is a positional mistake: you've traded your good bishop for black's bad bishop. Again, if you do any study on the French at all, you should immediately realise that black's light squared bishop is bad, and you don't want to trade that off.

Move 13 is just careless. You're hanging the pawn on e5. Bc3 was better.

And move 16 is what cost you the game: again you were careless and didn't notice the x-ray attack on your queen.

A simple game like this reveals so many things you can improve on:

- Study the French Defence

- Don't carelessly hang pawns

- Watch out for x-ray attacks, particularly against your queen

Well, the reason why someone is saying that let's say 1 700 is bad (while they are 1 700) is because you always feel that your rating is insufficient. In a somewhat subjective way even a world champion might feel weak if he compares himself to modern engines. 


In any case, you can do a lot to improve. Here is what I did:

https://www.chess.com/blog/nklristic/the-beginners-tale-first-steps-to-chess-improvement

First of all, I notice in your games is that you are playing 10|0 games. For most people, these games are not optimal for improvement. In order to get better you have to think on your moves for a while. 10 minutes for the entire game does not allow that. A minority of people can get better this way, but most of the people will not be able to. 

Something like 45|45 or 60|0 is a completely different game in terms of how you play that kind of game. If you can, and you want to improve, play longer games. If you don't want to play such long games, something like 15|10 is still a major improvement on 10|0 games.


Apart from playing, you will have to study about chess. There is free material on youtube, and in that blog post you will find some good channels for improvement, if that is what you seek. 


 

 

Well, they say that the better a person knows how to do a difficult thing, the more they realize exactly how much of it is out of their reach.

I agree with @nklristic that you should be playing longer time control games to improve.  It's very possible that the additional time to think in a 30 minute game (and using it) would significantly improve your rating, because at the 600-700 level, who wins games is in large part a matter of who makes the earliest serious mistake that the other player sees.

(That's true in the 1000-range where I've been hanging out as well.  I just set a record for the highest rated opponent I've ever beaten, at 1177 rapid, because my opponent hung a queen.  Oops!)

I think the reason that very serious players put the boundary of "pretty good" between about 1700 and 2000 is that below that line people lose games to their confused play and big mistakes.  Above that range, games are decided by smaller edges here and there.

Hi! My name is Lauren Goodkind and I’m a respected  chess coach and chess YouTuber who helps beginners out : 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP5SPSG_sWSYPjqJYMNwL_Q

Loosing chess games is frustrating.  Here’s some ideas to help you get better.  

-I’ll be happy to analyze one of your chess games for free for my YouTube channel, since I love to help beginners out.  Share one of your games with me!  This is a great way to get better!  

-I recommend two books for you: “50 Poison Pieces”   and “Queen For A Day: The Girl’s Guide To Chess Mastery.”  Both books are available on Amazon.com.  Both books are endorsed by chess masters!  

-If you are serious about chess, I highly recommend you hiring a chess coach to help you.  

-Also consider all checks and captures on your side and also your opponent’s side. Always as, “If I move here, where is my opponent going to move?”. Do this for every single move!  

-Play with a slow time control, such as G/30 so you have plenty of time to think before every move. 

-If you are an adult, you are welcome to come to my free online beginner chess class on March 12: https://www.chessbylauren.com/blog/OnlinechessclassMarch12