Game Feedback?

Rather new to chess. Started in 2020. Began at 400 elo on hear, rose up to a peak rating of 960. Fell back nearly 120 points. Sad, was hoping to hit 1,000 as a milestone. but that'll be in the distant future now.

Have been going at it completely on my own, played a few games over the board but that's about it. 

Would anyone mind looking at a few of my games for feedback please? It would be much appreciated. 

I started getting flustered seeing gambits too. I'm not sure how to approach them. I mainly play with a 30 minute control. I still hang pieces, but when playing occasionally on shorter time controls it feels easier to miss that.

I guess the reason for asking is that I also get lost trying to follow the engine analysis, and thought it might help hearing from other people.

Hi Herecomestheblunders,

Your openings look good. It seems like your mistakes are in the middle game and end game mostly. Looks like you usually have plenty of time on your clock when you make a mistake, might be worth slowing down a little more to take your time spotting tactics. As far as engine analysis goes, don't worry about looking too far down the engine line. Focus on the one or two move threats your opponent makes against your pieces and think about how best to defend against those threats. The Show Threats option is off by default, but I think it is a great idea to turn it on in the settings, it will indicate threats with a red arrow.

Best.

Thanks. I wasn't aware there was an option for showing threats. There were many settings I wasn't aware of now that I look at it.

"I started getting flustered seeing gambits too. I'm not sure how to approach them."
++ To refute a gambit, accept it. Think carefully about your defence, trade pieces when you can and approach a won endgame with an extra pawn. Do not get greedy: 1 pawn is enough to win. Do not grab a 2nd or 3rd pawn, or give it back right away for defence.

"I mainly play with a 30 minute control." ++ Play with increment: 15+10 or 25+10.

"I still hang pieces"
++ Make it a discipline to always check your intended move is no blunder before you play it. When you hang no pieces or pawns you are 1500.

"occasionally on shorter time controls"
++ Do not play shorter time controls. It breeds bad habits: playing too fast and superficial.

Stuck with 30 because it seemed to be the only setting giving me players near my rating. When I played with 15+10 it paired me with a 1300 and a 400. Maybe that was a chess.com issue or it was just bad luck at the time.

Thanks.

Oddly I received the opposite advice recently, that one pawn wasn't significant.  

The Vienna Gambit would like to have a word with you.

LOL all good statements.

I've come to the conclusion that bull rushing my way up to 1,000 is not beneficial at all. I fell back into the 700's because of this. However it does seem like a good chance to 'start over' and turn this into a positive. 

I'll be playing much less games, carefully going through the analysis of each game before moving on. As well as that, I'm going to try to hit at least 10 puzzles per day.

It'll take forever to get that lost ELO back, however I think this method will benefit me in the long term.

Breaking 1000 elo on chess.com should be a walk in the park since according to your profile you have a 3000 FIDE rating lmao

Seriously though... Your openings seem fine enough, it looks you know the principles and a bit of theory. That's great.

I also see you analyze your games so keep that up as well...

I assume at this point you probably know basic checkmating patterns such as :

• King and Rook vs King;
• King and Queen vs King;
• King and 2 Rooks vs King

If you don't, learn them ASAP

If you're doing all that and practicing some tactics it's only a matter of time before you stop hanging obvious pieces frequently, but your opponents are going to keep blundering and giving you free pieces, so all you have to do is capture their pieces, trade down into a winning endgame, ie, trade your pieces for your opponent's pieces of equal value... then you'll have an extra piece left which you'll use to capture your opponents pawns, then advance and promote your own pawn to queen and checkmate. Easier said than done, but not really that hard to do either... On that alone you can reach your 1000 elo milestone and a little beyond even, but don't worry too much about rating (also easier said than done)

Keep in mind that there are good days and bad days, so you're not always going to be playing your best... I have beaten people 300 elo above me and lost to people 300 below me, it happens... if you notice you tilted (lost too many games in a row and started playing faster and blundering sooner than you usually do), it's a good time to take a break and cool off, tilting happens to everyone, it happened to GM Ian Nepomniactchi in a World Chess Championship

If you enjoy watching chess on youtube, there are a couple of interesting series on youtube I usually recommend that helps players improve. It's pretty much Masters playing beginners and intermediates going through every rating explaining most common mistakes and how to take advantage of that... They are:

• Daniel Naroditsky's speed runs (that are not so speed, because he slowly explains a lot lol) 
• John Bartholomew's Climbing the Rating Ladder series
• Chess Brah Building Good Chess Habits series

They are all great, it's just a matter of taste, I like Danya's better, but they're all fine... he recently started a new one called Sensei something (he also has others, I think this is his 3rd one or something)... I think it's worth checking it out (maybe watching one video while having lunch if you're eating alone, or that time with your phone when you're laying in bed before going to sleep, or when you're waiting at the dentist's reception, anyways, you get it....

Good luck, and most importantly: Have fun =] 

Thank you for the insightful post.

I am aware of all those YouTube channels. I did like John Bartholomew, I would even go as far to say that it was his 'undefended pieces' video that jumped me from a 400 rating to 700. 

I do analyse all my games, however I'll openly admit I don't look through them precisely enough. It's something I'll start doing.

Still finding more enjoyment out of puzzles at the moment, and I just hit a 1400 rating on that which is pretty cool.

It really doesn't have to be a deep analysis... sometimes the engine will say you have a missed win, or you made a mistake but there's no obvious immediate advantage, it's a positional one that it's harder to understand and to take advantage for us non-masters because it pays off in the long-run... but the engine can be helpful to let us know where we went wrong and for some tactics you or your opponent might have missed!

Puzzles are fun! Sometimes I want to buy premium just so I can play more puzzle rush!

Hey, as long as you're enjoying yourself and having fun that's all that matters! 

I haven't tried Puzzle Rush. It takes me a long time to solve puzzles. Anyways I'm now 1500 at puzzles. I know puzzle ratings are usually higher than ELO ratings, but I'm curious how far up this is actually going to end up being. Currently the puzzles aren't giving me any trouble.