Road to 1700 Rapid - trying to improve after every game. A tribute to Giasira.

I started playing chess last January after watching The Queen's Gambit and some chess videos. Before I knew it, I was addicted and I started playing 10 minute Rapid games religiously. I got discouraged when my rating fell to 265 after a few games (I can't believe that was about 2 years ago) but I kept playing. Eventually, I hit the 1200s after about 6 months of *relative* smooth sailing before crashing back down to the high 1000s. After climbing back up there, chess progress looked something like this: an initial, smoothish climb to the next place in the rating ladder (e.g. 1300 -> 1400) before crashing back down, with an eventual, gradual trek back to said rating. After I hit 1573 in April 2022, I CRASHED back to the 1300s, and I didn't return to the 1500s until a whole 5 months later! With that being said, the time it took for me to get back there makes me feel confident that my strength is similar to the average 1500 rated player. 

After the aforementioned painful journey back to the 1500s, I've realized that my method of brute-force rapid chess learning, accompanied with assimilation with hours of chess YouTube content, was great for me as a beginner and an early intermediate player, but insufficient for good improvement beyond that level. That's when I discovered a post by Giasira, who hit their 1600 rapid goal by playing and analyzing 30 minute games. They inspired me to start this journey of playing more productive, longer chess. 

I reached the 1600s a few days ago (let's see how long that lasts), and I'm officially going to bar myself from playing 10 minutes games. From now on, I will be playing at least 1 30 minute game per day (perhaps a 15 | 10 in a pinch) and annotating it before posting it here. For each game, I will take account of two things:

1. Horrible Blunders: Hanging pieces in 1 move, blundering obvious tactics and mates, etc.. I don't find myself making these that much these days, but they do happen, especially in time scrambles.

2. Avoidable Mistakes: This is going to be a more subjective category. These will account for moves that don't immediately appear to be blunders, but give away an advantage (e.g. positional mistakes), allow a semi-complicated tactic, etc..I will tally a move here if I believe that this mistake could have been avoided in the game.

With that being said, here's game #1. 

Game #1, White. 1-0

"Small Center Defense at the 1600 level?"

Horrible Blunders: 1

Avoidable Mistakes: 1

Besides missing a free pawn and missing the fact that my opponent could take one of my pawns, there wasn't much to analyze after they gave me their bishop. Overall, a fairly straightforward game. 

@1

"hours of chess YouTube content" ++ Useless

"playing and analyzing 30 minute games" ++ Analysing lost games is key

"I will be playing at least 1 30 minute game per day (perhaps a 15 | 10 in a pinch)"
++ 15|10 is better than 30|0.
Thanks to the increment you can always win a won position or draw a drawn position.

"1. Horrible Blunders" ++ Always check your intended move is no blunder before you play it.

"in time scrambles" ++ With 15|10 you have no time scrambles.

"2. Avoidable Mistakes" ++ Yes, learning from your mistakes is key.

Game 2: white

Result: Win

Horrible blunders: 1

Avoidable Mistakes: 1

"Pawns who stared at the face of death."

In summary, this is a game where I play a decent opening before playing e4 too early. Then, I blunder a pawn, but my opponent didn't see it, leading to me winning a pawn. An inaccurate queen trade by my opponent led to a winning endgame for me.

These past two games have taught me to not forget one thing: simplicity. I find myself overcomplicating situations, missing simple tactics for myself or from my opponent. Also, I don't really know when central pawn pushes are good for the position; in the first game, d5 was the best move because I got kind of lucky.

Thanks for the reply @tygxc !

Good points. While I believe watching chess YouTube was initially very instructive, especially as a beginner/early intermediate player, at this point it is just a way for me to procrastinate. Much of chess YouTube is geared towards beginners and advanced players, not for intermediates.

From what I've read on the forums, most recommend 30 minute games over 15|10 for learning. I understand your point about not throwing away winning/drawn positions, but I think having less time in the opening/middlegame would be pressuring for me. So far, I've been comfortable with 30 minutes of time and haven't fallen into time trouble. With that being said, I've played a grand total of two of them so far. I'll try my hand in a 15|10 game next time.

I am in similar situation and trying to improve, one thing I found useful is when you review your own game for mistakes, when you find something that you believe is common mistake in your game (opening problem, not sure how to break close position, etc), create a lichess study for it so you can look back at it.  Not sure this functionality is possible in chess.com, but lichess's feature is excellent for this

my road from 800 to 1570 was like this in less than 2 years (42 years old)

1. I was around 800 all my life with playing like 3 game every 2 years with same or worse friends...

2. Joined chess.com, played hundreds of game to reach around 1000

3. did all the guides on chess.com (from beginner to advance) to reach 1200

4. Logical Chess Move by Move by Irving Chernev - to reach 1400

5. The Art of Logical Thinking by Neil McDonald - to reach 1570

I do only fast analyzing of lost games when I run stockfish here and check where could I do better or lost winning chance... 

Solving puzzles is important, but I somehow like a lot to read book with instructive games

Way to persevere! That’s inspiring to hear.

I know the feeling of “crashing back down” too well and often.

Fresh blood! Leave chess while you still can. If you're still playing a year from now, 95% chance you're shackled to the chess demons for life.

That said, you seem to have great proclivity for positional chess. I like your opening and your finish - the rest needs work.

For example, in your first game there was no need to take the g7 bishop so soon, since it was still guarding the f8 rook. Look for tactical shots involving your most active pieces. You had a Ng5 combo coming in too. And yes, of course h4-h5 is very common to attack those fianchetto defense structures.

your chess progression looks very similar to mine. I've had 1 big fall i had to grind back up from but it was around 800 elo. I started about a year ago and hit 287 rapid at my lowest and am now ~1100. I sense a small fall coming but trying to stay steady and get up to 1350 by january. Any tips you have from 1100-1350 would be inspiring since you did grind hard in that stage.

When I play a 60+0 game I often feel I don't have enough time, yet when I play 3+2 I rarely feel I don't have enough time. It all depends on how much you want to analyse positions during the game. A daily game will not provide enough time if you want to solve chess. Other than that I agree with your points. That's also why suggestions from some people that chess should be played with time per move constraints are nonsense (instead of having 90+30 games, playing 0+3min games, you have 3 minutes on each move no matter what).

Wait 1500+ is above intermediate?

Also, 10+0 is GOATed, any longer time control sucks

The 1500-1600 range is the intermediate intermediate range, in my opinion. 1200-1400 is probably early intermediate.

Funny how while I didn't play any obvious blunders, I still lost because of bad positional mistakes. My opening was bad, but I was given an opportunity to equalize. I took it before going for a dubious kingside attack when I had the opportunity to start a much better queenside attack. Then, I opened my opponent's rooks, who teamed up with their knight and queen to crush me.

First, I've got to improve my e6 b6 repertoire. Then, I have to focus where I'm stronger instead of just saying, "ooo, King! h5!!!!!" Finally, I have to be more conscious of what my opponent wants; I can't be giving them good positions my opening up their rooks and weakening my king!

UPDATE: Since Game 3, I have played 7 games, 5 of which are worth analyzing; in one game, I lost in a winning position due to a time trouble stemming from real life, extraneous factors, and in another my opponent hung their queen in one move and resigned. The analyses are coming soon!

Happy that I didn't make any horrible blunders. Qxc7 was a terrible mistake, but I won't go as far as saying it was a horrible blunder because its refutation was fairly complicated.  I made a few bad endgame mistakes, but overall I'm not unhappy with my quality of play here. I need to do more tactics and learn endgames, though.

I have a suggestion. Annotate the game without Stockfish while giving the variations you calculated at various points in the game along with your assessment of the resulting positions and explain why you chose the line in the game over those lines. Only then go over the game with Stockfish but don't post what Stockfish says here, Stockfish is open source so we can all see what it says if we want to engine check our analysis. That will let you get more constructive feedback (from Stockfish and commenters) as well as allow you to filter out any poor analysis. Most of the time what you want to happen is to figure some things out in your own analysis while annotating, then have Stockfish tell you you're an idiot, then try to understand why and follow up with questions on anything you didn't understand here. Posting the lines and your assessment without the fish will allow the stronger players here to explain where you went wrong in your thinking. Engines can't explain thinking errors.

Thank you for the suggestion! I'll analyze and annotate the next game without using Stockfish.

Hi. Chirby.
Thank you very much for your experience sharing.

Could you please tell more about rating back down ?
Do you think what the reason is to back down and to return back?

Thank you. Have a nice day.

Good morning @LittlePersia,

In my opinion, the biggest reason for rating spikes is playing in streaks.

Let's say I was playing a 10 minute chess game, and I lost. Feeling a bit frustrated, I play another, hoping to win back my rating points. There's a decent chance that I lose again, making me even more irritated and making me want to play another game. Before I know it, I'm on a losing streak and I just lost 80 points. 

The way I eventually climbed back up was playing just a few games a day with a clear head, not letting losses tempt me to play more than I have to. This led to gradual returns to former ratings.

Forgoing the 10 minute time control in favor of G30+0 prevents sudden rating crashes, because it's hard to play more than 1-2 games a day.

An inaccurate pawn break, an egregious miscalculation, and an unfortunate mouseslip lost the game.