Will I Ever See 1000?

When analyzing you are supposed to write out all your thoughts, look up stuff, and check for errors.  That takes at least 20 minutes or more for each game.  Lets say it was 150 Games.  That's 3000 minutes.  That's fifty hours.  That's a full-time job.  I highly doubt you are spending that much time analyzing your games.  Don't take this as bad-mouthing you.  Take it as constructive criticism.  Start analyzing longer and do these things.  This doesn't include analyzing with a coach or stronger player.  This also doesn't include analyzing with the computer.  Combined with those, nobody has time to do this for 150 games in a month.

You can get to 1000 in a few months....and 1300 is not very hard but it take a lot more games...but you need to carefully think on each move on both side and study the basic endgame and tactic and opening.

If this game is a good example, then you've absorbed the opening tips really well. Other than move 10 (your knight is hanging) I can imagine playing all those moves myself, and your position is overwhelmingly strong. (move 8 I don't necessarily count as bad since there's Nxc7 at the end).

So it's time to focus on something else. If you can find a collection of themed tactics (like 100 forks, and 100 removing the defender, and 100 discovered attack) then I think that would propel your play to the next level.

I don't know if it's more practical than simply solving puzzles... but for those who solve puzzles and say it doesn't improve their game, they're probably not developing these important habits

@idillis

I'm sorry I'm having difficulty attempting to annotate here. How do you guys annotate without seeing the current board state? This loss really hurt. I swore I was actually improving too and doing better after doing some puzzles.

Ever since move 31, I recognized the queen,knight checkmate, and did everything I could to try to avoid it but I couldn't. I lost again. One more strike on this 3 day losing streak no matter how many puzzles, practice, or anything I do, I'm not going anywhere. 

Why not 4. .. Nxe4.  Opening principles are a guide but tactics always apply.

At move 10 your b5 was hanging and 11. Bxb5 you would not have been able to take on e4.

Later You were about to give up 2 pieces for a rook but your opponent let you off easy.  The following attack was not carried out with any focus.

Need more Familiarity with how pieces move, protect and attack, Counting attackers and defenders of a square.

From 0 to 1000 level, It's probably not worth breaking down your study into opening, middlegame, and endgame:

• The purpose of the opening is to set the structure for the rest of the game. But the structure won't really matter if you're significant material up, as is usually the case for beginner games
• The only theoretical endgames you should really know are how to checkmate with queen, and how to checkmate with rook. It's much more worth your time to study theoretical endgames when the scenarios start to show up in your own games

An effective study plan to get up to 1000 level, assuming you know how to checkmate with the queen and with the rook, should probably look something like this:

• Blunders - Look out for when you can take stuff for free (Or make a better exchange), and before making a move, consider what your opponent could take for free too. Ultimately, getting better at this takes time - You might lose on time, but with enough practice, you get faster at this sort of stuff
• Tactics - Learn and implement the basic tactical motifs - Back rank, mate in 1, hanging pieces, pins, forks and skewers is probably enough
• Conversion - How to win the won game, and save lost games. Playing the bots from a winning (or losing) position is good for this
• All of this tied together with practice games

Watching titled players explain the moves is a good way to progress, but only when you have good, solid foundations.

I hope this helps

It is very difficult to annotate games unless you are using a computer on the website. If you use the computer, you can see the board when you are annotating.

I find it much easier to view the 2D board and pieces.  If you read the instructions in Help, you can learn some of the things you can do to annotate, flip the board,  start a diagram at the move you want to talk about, etc.

Your 31.. f5 wasn't bad but 32..f4+ opened up the diagonal for your opponent's checkmate attack again.

You recognized that but your 33..Bf5 wasn't suffidient because you put a piece defended once onto a square attacked by by two pieces.  

The simple g6 would have stopped the mate threat.

I wouldn't be too discouraged by the game.  All in all, did a lot of good things.   

It is one thing to be able to recite opening principles and chess principles in general, it is another thing implementing them in practice, in the game that you have shown you didn't play the moves which would be suggested by several chess principles (more about that in my next comment). When it comes to ratings, it is normal that they fluctuate, my ratings often fluctuated even up to 100 or 150 points. For instance, at some point in time my rating would fluctuate from 1450 to 1600. Don't look at 600-650 that you make in a day as progress and vice versa, don't view falling from 650 to 600 as the negation of your progress. View both of these things as normal rating fluctuations.

It doesn't matter on which site you play chess, you will always get paired with opponents of your strength and we all know how ratings from one website map to ratings of another website. If you say you are 1000 rated on some other website which is known to have inflated ratings compared to this website you are not tricking anybody about your actual chess strength. It is irrelevant that some other website will give you higher rating than this website since everyone know that maybe 1400 on another website maps to 1000 rating here, or that 1000 rating on some other website maps to 600 here.

It is much more than just mental discipline. Better players immediately and almost subconciously do the things which beginners have to consciously focus on. For beginners that's exhausting and no matter how mentally disciplined they are later in the game they may start making mistakes because of exhaustion. Multiplying and dividing numbers is easy, not forgetting a minus sign is easy, but if you don't practice it and you get to a test where you have to constantly do these things for 90 minutes, eventually you will make mistakes. It is similar with chess.

Aman Hambleton has done the speedrun where he plays to the level of their opponents. You can't get to 1500 just by avoiding 1 move blunders.

Playing longer time controls is useful. Daily is a long time control.

Watching good chess players is useful. Watching Nakamura's speedrun helped me progress and become an intermediate player back in the day.

There is no such thing as aiming in puzzles, every puzzle he should try to solve to the best of his ability.

Chess improvement takes time, don't worry you will definetily reach 1000, I felt the exact same way as you do when I started, I thought I would never become an intermediate player, yet I did. It took Michelle Khare 6 months in order to reach 1000 on this website.

You started the game nicely, you followed opening principles while your opponent played nonsense. However, on move 6 several opening principles are screaming to play 1 move. Before I name the move, I want you to use this as an excercise in implementing opening principles and chess principles in your game. You have developed your pieces, you are much more developed than your opponent, you are 1 move away from castling while your opponent is 3 moves away from castling. This is my first question, what should you do in such a position? I am not talking about a specific move, but what you should do in abstract. Think about it for a moment and then continue reading.

Here is a hint, when you have more developed pieces, or better pieces in general, do you have open or closed center? When you are a lot closer to castling than your opponent do you want open or closed center?

Second question, if your opponent is playing on the side of the board, according to general chess principles, where should you strike more often than not, in the center, or on the side?

Take your time to answer these questions.

Here are the answers. When you are more developed than your opponent and you are closer to castling than your opponent you should open up the center. When it comes to the second question, when your opponent is playing on the side of the board, general chess principles say that more often than not it is a good idea to strike in the center.

With this information in mind, try to come up with the correct move on move 6. In the game, you played d3. Take your time before you continue to read my comment.

Ok, here is the answer, the move that both the opening principles and chess principles in general scream to be played is 6.d4 opening up the center, maximizing the advantage that you have in development. 6.d4 says to your opponent that you mean business and that he is not going to get away with his nonsense pawn pushes in the beginning of the game.

The reason why I payed so much attention to this moment is because that's the moment when you should take the advantage, if you give time to your opponent to consolidate, your development advantage will evaporate. Another reason why I mentioned this moment is because that was the moment to implement opening principles and chess principles. That was the exam moment, that was a test to see whether you have actually mastered opening principles or not. Chess is hard, mastering opening principles and general chess principles isn't easy, it is one thing to be able to recite them and it is another thing to correctly implement them in your games.

Now I will analyze the rest of the game.

8.Nd5 is a flashy move, intending to play Nc7+ fork if your opponent takes twice on g5. It is very nice that you were able to find that.

After your opponent plays 9..Ra5 the Nc7+ fork no longer exist which means that your knight on g5 is hanging. You played 10. 0-0 which blunders your knight on g5. The move that I would consider is Qd2 defending the knight. Dropping the knight back to f3 is fine. Nxf7 at first looks interesting because of the discovered check, but after 10.Nxf7 Kxf7 if you play 11.Nxc7 double check you will have to waste a tempo bringing the knight back to e5 and then your opponent can develop and challenge your knight immediately with Nf6 where either you will trade or lose another tempo.

Anyway, your opponent doesn't see that he can take a knight on g5 and instead he plays 10..b5

On move 11. black plays Nge7 again not seeing that he can take the knight on g5 as Nxc7+ is no longer a fork.

12.b4 I don't understand why you played, just because a move attacks the rook it doesn't mean it is a good move. Your opponent's rook on a5 is misplaced, you want your opponent to have a rook on a5 because his rook is useless there. His rook is only a target on a5, later you might play Qd2 and tie up his knight into defending the rook. That is good because Qd2 is harmonious move in general, it connects the rooks it defends the eventual f4 pawn push.

If I were you I would play 12.f4 opening up the f file for the rook. By the way, whenever you push the f pawn you need to be careful about the tactics on the diagonal.

13.Nxf7 is an interesting sacrifice, 2 knights for a rook and 2 pawns is ok, especially considering the fact that you are more developed than your opponent.

16.c3 and then d4 to open up the center is a good idea I believe, opening up the position when your king is safer than his.

19.Bxd5 is something that I would never play. You are the one attacking and applying pressure, you want to keep the pieces on the board. He can't get to your bishop on a2, you should keep it. I would play Qf3 instead, defending c3 with tempo because Qf3 attacks the knight on d5.

20.c4 just blunders a pawn for no reason but your opponent inexplicably plays bxc4 giving you a protected passed pawn.

On move 22 you played an interesting move, sacrificing an exchange (Bxf1) in order to play Qxg5+.

22..Qxd4 is a horrible move by your opponent, not only it blunders a fork (b5), this move also blunders the g5 pawn,  which leads to losing the c6 knight wherever he goes with the king. Even if your opponent wants to take on d4, he should of course do it with a pawn, he should make 2 connected passed pawns in the middle of the board by playing exd4 if he wants to take on d4 (which he shouldn't do now, but if he had the luxury to do it, he should definitily take it with a pawn).

Because of this you get the best case scenario, you take the g5 pawn, you take the knight, his king is unsafe, you have a protected passer and he doesn't have 2 connected passers.

On move 27 I would play Qxa4 or Rc1 in order to remove the passed c pawn, I don't see the point in giving those checks.

On move 33 you blundered your queen in 1 move and that costed you the game.

It was Michelle Khare. OP doesn't know much time it takes to progress at chess. He shouldn't worry though, I also thought that I would never be an intermediate player after a week or 2 of playing chess online.

THIS ^ is the sort of kind and helpful post that keeps me coming back to this site.

this is more of a general mind/mood management advice that is not specific to chess.  this is what you're here for?

ok here you go.

Start a new account and say you're medium level it places you at 1200 automatically iirc. The problem is that you're winning games but your rating is too low. New account solves this.

I'm going to do tactics every day for the next week and see if I improve!

Two thoughts ----

1. Take several minutes break after every game.  I've come to learn that my brain is a bit dazed after a hard-fought game, but I'm not consciously aware of it.  A little break can make a big difference.

2.  It is well known in any sport that when you learn something new, your results might actually be worse for a while.  That's because it takes a while for your new stuff to assimilate smoothly with your old stuff, and until that happens your game can be a bit off kilter.

So in summary, keep learning, be patient, and give your brain regular breaks.