Will I Ever See 1000?

There are several things that help me when I hit a losing streak.

1.  Take a break.  If I lose 3 or 4 games in a row, I stop playing for a couple of days and do something else.   

2.  When I am consistently losing, it is generally because I have lost concentration.  When I am ready to start playing again, I play a couple of games against the computer.   I generally lose the first two until I get my concentration back.  When I have won a couple, I will go live.  This allows me to work out the kinks without affecting my rating.

3.  Be kind to yourself.  You are playing a difficult game against smart people and losing is part of the game.  

 

Best wishes.

If you are not actively trying to improve, even if you play a lot your rating will stagnate and possibly go down regardless of how much you play, because, the pool of players are also constantly studying and get better everyday. Everyone can goggle gothemchess, or, chessbrahs, and get quality videos for beginners to implement real chess strategies when they are just barely starting to play. That is not to say that you are not actively trying to improve, however, what I am saying is everyone even my friends friends grandma is spending at least 4 hours a day to learn chess, mainly, because of the movie, the queens gambit. What I am saying is beginners often have to try very hard to start improving, because the pool of knowledge for beginners is a lot greater than it was when someone like me was starting to learn. Everyone knows the first rule of chess is to develop develop develop. I actually saw a game played by someone below 400 who read the beginner articles on chess.com, and knew the dream position, and played it in this game I saw. The drawback to learning principles like that is that without a solid tactics base, you often miss winning tactics that come from those positions and often lose anyway, but that is why you analyze your losses, so you gain tactical understanding, to supplement general principles you are learning from videos.

What every chess player is trying to do, is learn as much motifs as possible. Tactics, so to speak. Let’s say an average 1800 player knows 10000 patterns, motifs, well, a beginner knows only close to a single digit number, or zero. As you can see, it will take a long time to improve in this aspect. It comes from doing tactics daily, playing, analyzing your games, playing over master games, etc. A lot of people say that the key to improvement is tactics tactics tactics, and the reason for that is that without tactics it’s like you are going into a game blind, not knowing where to go. You learn tactics, to improve your board vision, so you don’t have to think about where all the pieces are all the time. Yes, you can learn chess by following a checklist, and gaining the habit of going through that checklist, but, the most important part, is learning tactics, so you just “know” what to play. So, get a good checklist, and tactics tactics tactics, etc.

One can only learn so much by feedback from someone with more experience. The ultimate source to improvement, is from within yourself. I, nor anyone else can tell you what is best for your chess improvement. I can’t tell you to drill openings you lost to in the past. The main source of help you will ever be able to get, is from yourself, whether your realize it or not. This applies to anything in life. He said, “Know thyself.”

It’s hard to analyze all your games if your playing too many games btw, just fyi. I know this is obvious, but, I know, because I do it, a lot of people fall into the trap of playing a lot of blitz’s games thinking they are gaining a lot of experience fast, but they have no time to analyze all of them. Make sure you have enough time to analyze all of your games, first by yourself, then with a stronger player or coach, then with an engine. Each type of analysis is different, and requires a different skill set and tools.

It’s hard for me to recommend books because you are just a beginner and the books I am studying may not be the best fit for you. So I will just leave by saying I do not know enough to give you book recommendations, and hope you will look elsewhere for those.

Ugh.  That is not a book I would recommend for a sub-1000 player.

People tell you to improve but don't actually say what you need to improve.... I saw one of your games against a 400 where you could have gotten a rook for a bishop, rooks suck for normal play because they are placed awkwardly on either side of the board but once they make it to the center they start making the squares dangerous so are rated 2ic, the knights and bishops are rated equals but bishops go to the end of their diagonal and the knights move more twisty... So to improve I'd suggest watching and learning from others games for every action there is an opposite reaction. So,e2 - e4 than maybe Scandinavian d2 - d4 so maybe you take e4 x d4 and opponent tries Portuguese variation knight to f6 then you might protect d4 with knight to c3 while opponent bishop to g4.... I don't know but usually you have to be confident in what you are doing to play in 1000 ELO ranking before you even get there.... You win so your rank rises and your opponents get tougher let's say a 900 that earned a 1200 rank before a losing streak.... That's not a 900 but a 1200... Happens all the time and you not yet a 1000..... Good luck abbey you going to need it 

A sort of hardcore method, so I don't know if it's practical, but these exercises mimic what the finished skill of a strong player is able to do quickly...

 

Exercise 1:
Take some random game (one of yours, or from a grandmaster, it doesn't really matter). Get a piece of paper and pencil. If you set up the board with white towards you then you'll do the following exercise for every black move... after each move write down every single square that is newly attacked.

For example 1.e4 adds an attacker to 10 squares (uncovers the bishop and queen)

 

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Exercise 2:
Another exercise. Go over a game, and whenever there is a threat, challenge yourself to find ALL the legal moves that defend against it, and give them a rough ranking, let's say on a scale of 1 to 3. The best moves try to maximize piece activity and king safety.

Nf6 is better than Nh6 or f6.

 

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A more advanced exercise... go over a game, and if you set it up with white facing you, then you'll do this for white.

After each black move, pretend you get to make 2 moves in a row...

... no, I don't mean Bg5 followed by bishop takes queen.

What you're looking for are ways to create a threat with a simple tactic.

For example

a3 threatens to fork with b4
Nb5 threatens to fork with Nc7
Bg5 threatens to win the d5 pawn (BxN will remove a defender)

It's very useful to limit the sequence to only 2 moves. A typical mistake of a lower rated player is finding a 3, 4, 5 move sequence and then playing it even though it can be defended in 1 move. This is too inefficient.

For example this is too many moves

For example...

 

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Conclusion.

If you can:

find all the threats your opponent has made and
when there is a threat, find all the defensive moves and choose a good one and
when there's not a threat, see all the threats you can make quickly and
choose the threat that forces an awkward defense out of your opponent (decrease mobility, hurts structure, weakens king, etc)

Then you're probably already master level... because players below that frequently stop at finding 1 or 2 and miss the best threats they can make, or the best defensive moves, etc.

(and then if there are no threats for either side, you "improve" your position, which is a different lecture)

 

 

Of course you're asking to be 1000 not master level, but I want to emphasize two things:

1) These are fundamental skills that are particularly useful for newer players
2) Mastering them is NOT trivial

A lot of this relies of knowing many tactical patterns you gain from solving puzzles... so again, these exercises may not be the best way... but maybe it helps in terms of allowing an improving player to understand the sort of skills they're working towards.

Apologies for the long post... originally was going to be quick, but just kept growing...

The queen hang was a misclick. When I play on my days off on my laptop, the sweaty finger plus track pad makes for accidental blunders, at least if it's the game i'm thinking of. 

oh wait no that was my bad, in the game you referenced that def was a queen blunder on my part. 

@nMsALpg Thank you for that post, it's gonna help me practice while I'm taking a break from playing. 

@idilis 

This is what I mean. I thought I was doing pretty well but I lost and am now down to 600 even. 

Perhaps you could explain your thoughts behind the moves for eg. Nd5 were you thinking of winning the exchange? etc

Sometimes we make the right moves for the wrong reasons and vice versa.

I'm studying openings, opened a chessable account, playing unrated daily games with people attempting to teach me. I've been watching Gotham, John Bartholomew, and even Chessbrah and they all basically repeat the same things. It's the same stuff over and over again. 

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As far as I know, the videos done by chessbrahs, Gotham, and John Bartholomew are play-through games.  They play games with people at lower levels and show you common mistakes by people at that current rating.  Given the complexity of chess, I highly doubt you're watching the "same material," every time.  I believe you are glossing over the material and making a snap judgment based on your unwillingness to go over the material as deeply as you should.  It turns out, after a quick google search, I've found that John's videos are titled, and give different tips for each video.  That being said, there may be overlap in the three different trees of the pool of videos, however, repeating material further solidifies your understanding in most cases, especially being able to see different cases of the same technique.

Studying move trainer openings at your level for the purpose of memorization is probably a bad decision for a beginner.  Most of the positions you get in those move trainers will never occur at your level if any.  It's better, at your level, to skip the move trainer, and spend more time in Endgames, tactics, and general chess, (studying whole games).  You will only end up memorizing a bunch of moves that you will never use and in turn, forget and will have to study again.  

It's better to memorize the first 5 moves or so on openings that occur frequently when you play by analyzing the opening after you play it in your games.  Being done throughout the years you can learn a lot of openings this way.  Look up the opening, after it occurs.  If it's an opening you know, then less work for you.  you have to drill these openings later in order for this to work, so you have to take notes.

In the last game you posted, you actually allowed your opponent to take your bishop for free.

 

So, before you make a move, ask, Is it safe?  Remember how I talked about a checklist?  I said you should develop a checklist, to go over, before each and every move.  With time, you will learn to incorporate that checklist automatically.  You can supplement this with the exorcises given by nMsALpg.  All this has been said 1000 times already, but when you are making a move you have to consider all the candidate moves in the position.  Never stop at the first one, think of a bunch alone with opponent replies, until you think you have the best reply from your opponent.  If you stop before the best reply you will analyze long lines that need not be analyzed, so don't go too deep until you find the best reply.  I learned the hard way, as a rule, that if your opponent can get out of a pin, that is usually the best reply.  my two cents, will save you a lot of time.  this of course only applies to pins.  You should look up ideas to combat each kind of tactical motif, but leave the advanced ones for later.  My tip, you must include removal of the guard type tactics.

I've looked up your four most recent losses and what they all had in common was that they are 1 hour games where you hung your queen in 1 move: My frank advice: You NEED to check for every move if your queen is under attack or not and if the square your moving your queen to is safe or not. All that opening study and puzzle solving won't do much if you cannot use the time you are given to make sure that queen stays alive on the board until you trade it off for another queen. Just solve your queen hanging problem, and you will surely get to 1000 soon enough.

So, in a nutshell, in my opinion:

1.)  You are going over too much material and are glossing over it not getting what you need out of anything.

2.)  You are playing too many games and don't have time to analyze.

3.)  You don't do enough tactics.

4.) You probably also don't do much general chess improvement. (studying whole games)

About tactics... At your level, you should start with a good beginner tactics book.

Dan Heisman has good tactics books, and he recommends good tactics books on his page.  Just google his name.

When you play games and don't analyze them afterward, you repeat the same mistakes.  Just look at my own game history.

Losing a game can also be a blessing in disguise.  Whenever you lose, if you learn from the loss, it's not a loss.

Really useful! Those 2 move sequences remind me of Yusupov, who said Mate in 2 exercises is the best for this type of mentality when playing. LET'S GO!

Finish these two books 2 times and you will reach 1000 or may be even 1200 especially if you keep up with tactics trainer and in depth analysis of your games. You have to be serious to improve. 

1. https://www.chesstactics.org/ for tactics

2. Silman's Complete endgame course for endgame

That all being said I may be a little off on my assessment, however, your not giving us much to go on, as you didn't annotate a series of games played by yourself to help give us some backbone to the way you think and play.  My reasoning behind why I said, "you are glossing over the material," is based on the fact that it's known that you played at least 4 or 5 games recently while missing the fact that you are leaving material hanging.  This material you should have covered in the first video of John Bartholomeus's course on youtube, chess fundamentals..  I made the assumption that you just watched the video and went straight to the next one.  It's common to make these mistakes even after you drill them, however, I don't think, if you have systematically checked before every move these past 4 or 5 games, and asked the question, "is it safe?", that you would have made these kinds of mistakes, though at least, not as many.  But, I could be wrong....

Also, the reason why I said, "you are not analyzing enough of your games," because you played over 100 games in a month.  Unless you're speedy Gonzales, that's not enough time to analyze all of those games, unless you are devoting 3-4 hours a day just on analysis.  When I make an assessment.  I put together the pieces.  Apparently, most people here don't.  It's known that you've played over 100 games in the span of a month.  That is good that you're playing, but there is no way you had enough time to analyze all of those games, unless, as I said, you are devoting 3-4 hours of time a day just to analyze games, at least 3-4 days a week, if not more.  

If it is taking you significantly less time to analyze, then you aren't spending enough time doing it for each game.