Help!

I am really struggling. I am at the 700-800 level. I tend to play really poor against aggressive and hypermodern openings. The hypermodern openings in particular are super confusing to me. All the usual explanations just don't make sense to me and maybe I just don't see the pattern.

This first game is a perfect example of how I am not really appreciating aggressive players. I don't know if I'm just slow or too passive or what

A great example of a game where I play modern and black plays a hypermodern opening. Attacking it just makes no sense to me. I have no clue what I even did wrong here besides not recognizing checkmate at the end. Keep in mind this is a 700 level player I am against.

"I am really struggling. I am at the 700-800 level."
++ It is important to always check your intended move is no blunder before you play it.
Think about your move. Consider 3 candidate moves. Calculate. Evaluate. Decide.
Then do not play your intended move, but imagine it played on the board.
Check it does not lose any piece or pawn, or run into checkmate. Only then play it.
This little mental discipline alone is enough to reach 1500.

"I tend to play really poor against aggressive and hypermodern openings."
++ You do not win or lose because of the opening, but because of tactical mistakes.

1st game ++ 4...d5? loses a pawn, 5...Nxd5? blunders a knight. Blunder check before you play.

2nd game "I have no clue what I even did wrong"
++ You got your bishop trapped with 4 Ba4? instead of 4 Be2.

3rd game 18 f4? instead of 18 Nc3 blunders a knight.

"what I am missing here" ++ Blunder checking.

So what do those mean? Calculate Evaluate Decide. I think I understand what Calculate is, as in judge what moves or tactics come next, but I guess I don't know what Evaluate means.

I think I see the problem with 4 d5 in my first game, I guess I just miscalculated the number of attackers.

With the second game. I think I don't understand why that is a blunder. It may seem obvious to you, but I don't recognize 2... c5 as a trap for the bishop. So how am I supposed to calculate or evaluate if I don't recognize the trap?

On the third game I guess I don't understand how that is a blunder. I get they are threatening my knight, but are you saying that because they had a pawn there it wasn't a good counter move?

That doesn't answer any of my questions. I do the lessons. I only get 1 a week. How is that supposed to help?

you have to focus in improving your tactics

having said that, those openings you are showing are not hypermodern

you go this

first game as already mentioned you blundered the knight. for the mate you just needed to guard f7, Qd7 does the job - probably still lose but you're 700 so opponent is susceptible to blundering so worth playing on. Just have to capitalise on mistakes your opponents make and don't make any yourself.

second game I don't know why you played Bb5 it doesn't really achieve anything in that situation, Bb5 is a decent move if you're pinning a knight to the king/queen but this isn't the case in that game. The opponent can simply repel the bishop fairly easily or in your case lure you into trapping it (very unfortunate) but that is a mistake you won't make again. It's a good example of you needing to think about what your move is achieving, if the answer is nothing then it's not a great move. Yes you're developing a piece but you're not developing it in a logical way.

You also traded pieces with your opponent when you were down material (12. Ne5), you should try and avoid this if possible in games, if you're down material you should hang on to your pieces as they are the tools that will help you get back into the game if your opponent messes up. The opposite is true if you're up material, trading is beneficial as you're removing your opponents comeback mechanisms.

third game, move 18 you are trying to counter attack the opponent's knight on e5 (at least I'm guessing that was your intention) but the square was guarded by a pawn and so the opponent simply captures the pawn you pushed. Allowing this allowed the opponent to simultaneously attack your bishop on e3 and the knight on b5. TLDR - you lose a piece here. You were trying to overthink the situation and be fancy but simply retreating the night was the correct play as your counter attack wasn't viable.

I'm not the greatest chess player I hope these explanations helped.

Actually in second game you got your bishop trapped but that's okay at that level but you should try to avoid it

And in third game, I also used to do it a lot when I was below 1000 so from experience sometimes or a lot of times chess is not fancy, unless you are really sure don't do counterplay, and just retreat, because as in your example you just got 2 of your pieces attacked simultaneously and you were down material

Anyway I'm not great myself but it was all the advice I could give

@3

"So what do those mean? Calculate Evaluate Decide."
++ Calculate means I play A, he plays B, I play C, he plays D
Evaluate means is the position after ABCD won/drawn/lost?
Decide means out of your 3 candidate moves you pick the one with the best evaluation at the end of your calculations.

"I think I see the problem with 4 d5 in my first game" ++ OK remember that and in the future avoid this kind of mistake and exploit similar mistakes by your future opponents.

"With the second game. I think I don't understand why that is a blunder." ++ Look at this again and think of this loss and remember this pattern of a trapped bishop. It is a common pattern even in more difficult sequences, like 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 a6 4 Ba4 d6 5 d4? b5 6 Bb3 exd4 7 Nxd4? Nxd4 8 Qxd4 c5 9 Q-anywhere c4 winning the bishop. Whenever you retreat a bishop to b3, or b6, or g6, or g3, look for the danger of it being trapped by c5-c4, or c4-c5, or f4-f5, or f5-f4.

"On the third game I guess I don't understand how that is a blunder."
++ Count the material: you lose the knight. 18 Nc3 saves your knight.

Blunder-check EACH MOVE. That's the best advice I can give you.

The best thing that develop my game is to think what is my opponent plan, and attack it! After using these my last 10 games look like these 8W 1D 1L

;)

The games that I looked at you weren't protecting your King well, and watching for your opponent stacking pieces to line up on a particular point.

I think it comes down to training your mind to recognize threats and opportunities. The puzzles help, but mostly I think playing against other people who may be willing to coach you a bit.

In our range 700-800 you may notice that people are often playing the same openings. I find there are a lot of people who try the Scholar's Mate or the Fried Liver-type of opening. I'd recommend learning how to defend against them. There are videos on how to "defeat" certain openings or systems.