What's my problem? stuck under rating 500

Yeah, I played some unrated games against lower rated people and in most cases I can see that many times someone 600 is playing more random moves than someone rated 1 000 or something. Definitely there is a difference. 

It's really hard to get from 900 - 1000. Many of my opponents already know good tactical patterns and can spot Mate in 2 very easily. I think that looking for blunders would only get you to around 800.

Nope, it is entirely accurate.  The difference between virtually every rating difference below 2000 is the frequency of their blunders.  Below 1500, it is the frequency of their 1- and 2-move blunders.

Being aware of the tactical motifs and recognizing them in a game are 2 different things.  I'll give you a simple example:

Over 90% of games between 2 players under 1500 are decided by 1- and 2-move tactics.  The reason many people do not progress is they study the wrong things and in the wrong way.  Specifically, most people do not drill tactics.  They will do a tactical pattern until they get it right and move on.  The people that progress are the ones that drill it until they cannot get it wrong (same concept as other sports - Jordan was notorious for practicing his foul shots after practice had ended until he could not miss!)  Many people "study" for years and never make it to 1500 because they try to memorize opening lines (mostly) and do not review their games to learn from their mistakes.

That is only the case for people who got stronger as kids.  Someone else mentioned the Peter Svidler quote.  Svidler was an IM at ~14 and a GM at ~18.  He has been at the GM level for almost 30 years - so yes, he doesn't remember what it was like to be 1700.  The same goes for these kids that make the GM title by age 15.  They were 1700 when they were 10.  Asking them how they improved at that level when they are 30+ is going to be foggy.  However, I can tell you from experience those kids did 2 things:  1)  They played a LOT of chess (and reviewed their mistakes), and 2) they drilled a LOT of tactics.  

And this is nonsense.  I'm skipping over your claim of being 1500 a year ago and now coaching players at that level (as an adult improver).  The whole notion that telling people that tactics are the primary differences between a 500 and 1500 is false is simply wrong.  This discussion has been had on several forums lately and it is always the same:  a low level player complains they cannot break a certain rating level while they are 1) playing speed chess, 2) dropping pieces left and right, 3) not analyzing their games, and 4) not drilling tactics.  When they are told how to fix all 4 of those issues, someone comes in and says "No!  That isn't right!  That isn't how you improve at that level!"  Take it from the people who have done this for years:  the primary weakness sub-1500 (and really, sub-2000) level players have is their tactics.  If you are in that rating range and want to improve, start drilling tactics.

Now, how do you drill tactics?  Do you just load up the tactics trainer and start solving puzzles?  No.  That is like trying to learn Calculus by taking the final exam over and over until you get a question right.

The simplest way would be to go on Chessable and buy the "1001 Chess Tactics for Beginners" course and work through each chapter.  Set the repetition mode to "Custom" and select 1-hour time frames for all 7 levels.  Then Learn the whole chapter, and drill the puzzles until you are getting 90%+ correct every time.  Then pause that chapter and move on to the next.  When you have finished the whole course, unpause everything and drill the whole book to ensure you have remembered all the patterns.  Once you've done that, you can repeat the process with other courses like "Improve Your Chess Tactics", "1001 Chess Tactics for Club Players", "1001 Chess Tactics for Advanced Players", "Tune Your Chess Tactics Antenna", "The Checkmate Manual", "The Woodpecker Method", etc.

I can almost guarantee that if you can go through any 2 of the courses I listed and get 90%+ accuracy on all the puzzles, you will be able to play at a 1500+ level (if not close to 2000).  There are other ways to accomplish the same idea (de la Maza's 7 Circles Method and the Woodpecker method can be done by collecting your own puzzles, or you can use something like CT-ART).

Hi, you should learn some really basic things like elemental openings, tactics and mates,  If you want to improve you will need to allocate some weekly time specifically for training. You will also profit to play at your local chess club, hire a chess coach, read a book...

Good luck!

What is bad for beginners is this constant talk that just by avoiding blunders they will get to 1 500. Tygxc is doing it all the time, and he is mistaken. It will not most of the time. It might sound that simple, but in practice it is not. 

Technically however, that is correct, but that is technically correct for every level. I mean, if you never blunder, you will beat or at least get a draw against every player in the world. Does this help anyone? Not really. 

Even though 1 500 rated player still blunders, he has a lot more chess knowledge than a complete beginner, and not only tactical knowledge.

Novice players will have to work for that rating and learn something that 500 rated people do not know. That knowledge will help them prevent blundering. And yes, some, even a very important part of that knowledge is working on tactical stuff, but when they get to 1 500, they will probably know that king should be active in the endgame, that creating passed pawns and pushing them can be a great weapon in the endgame, they will know how to checkmate with a single rook, they will be better at pawn play, they will understand that 2 rooks on the 7th rank are very dangerous, etc. 500 rated player doesn't know most of these things. Their play will be more erratic and random. And because of this, they are more likely to blunder at every move.

So yes, both 500 and 1 500 rated player blunder, but the reason why 1 500 rated players blunder less is not that they just magically learn to avoid blunders, it is the fact that they know more about general chess stuff that makes them better than 500 rated people.

So tygxc is technically correct, but that kind of advice is not that helpful. You however gave some concrete suggestions, which are superior to saying : "Don't blunder, you got this."

I would say he isn't mistaken, but rather the way he conveys it is not useful.  It is a bit like saying "How do you avoid accidents?" "Drive better."  And in that, I agree.  But the underlying point is valid:  the reason someone is 500 vs 1500 is they are weaker tactically.

Above the 2000 level, it is not 1- or 2-move tactics that decide most games, but strategic elements (i.e. going into an endgame with a good knight vs bad bishop or a strong same-colored bishop endgame, etc).

They may have the knowledge, but most of the time they lack the ability to apply it properly.  At that level, it is common to see things like avoiding doubled-pawns but walking into a tactical trap.  That is, the positional concepts are usually familiar to them, but they lack the understanding of when to apply them correctly.

My 0-rated 7-year-old son knows how to checkmate with a single rook.  That is one of the first things we teach beginners (opening principles, basic winning endgames, and basic tactical patterns).  But many times it is not that the players at a certain rating do not know those concepts, but they do not know how to apply them or when they are important.  I do agree that the lower the rating, the more likely to see erratic and random moves.

This is where I both agree and disagree.  Yes, they do not magically avoid blunders - you avoid blunders by getting better at tactics.  Where I disagree is the "general chess stuff".  If you only knew general opening principles, the basic winning endgames, and did nothing but drill tactics every day, you would be a fairly strong club player (1500+).  If you throw in some technical endgames and openings, sure, you will be a little stronger still, but you do not need that to get to that level.  I think it was Jonathan Hawkins who discussed that he got to 1900ish with tactics alone, and then it was technical endgames that got him from 1900-2400ish.

Ah but you see, they lack in practice department compared to you, but are still better than 500 rated player at that stuff. For instance, I will make some plan, that plan will not be a GM level plan, but it will still be more refined than a plan of someone 500 rated. And by having that plan, in most cases, I am more likely to avoid a mistake. Sometimes it can be the other way around, but still...

"   PawnTsunami wrote:

Well, you don't actually know what it's like above 2000. As somebody who is way past the 2000 mark, I can guarantee you that the frequency of 1- and 2-move blunders is still very high, and not all that much lower than said frequency around the 1500 level.

Yeah, just like most of the games over 2000, and probably all the way until ~2800. Did you not read the comment that you are replying to carefully? Blunders are almost always the differentiating factor between players of similar strength (unless neither player blunders regularly, but, as I said, that doesn't happen until ~2800 in online blitz) because blunders are far more impactful than any other aspect of chess; thus, given that there is little enough to set both of the players' chess skills apart that neither player would have a good chance against the other with a full blunder's worth of odds, a single blunder will almost always decide the outcome of the game unless it superseded by yet another blunder. THAT is the reason that most 1500-level games are decided by blunders ─ not what you're claiming, which is a very classical example of the causal fallacy, violation of the "correlation does not imply causation" rule. If you pit a 1500 against a 1000, you will see that the 1500 will almost always win even if the 1000 doesn't make any blunders.

Your example proves nothing as it is explainable by the familiarity trap ─ if a position looks familiar to you, you tend to assume that you know what you're supposed to do and thus not think too much about your moves (or at least think about them within the context of what you think you're supposed to do). EVERYONE, even superGMs, fall into this trap. Why don't they fall into the particular trap in the provided example? They've seen it before. It's as simple as that. If they hadn't seen it before (hard to imagine but just as a thought experiment, e.g. if they've never played e5 against e4), I can easily imagine a 3000+ player thoughtlessly blundering a pawn like that in blitz.

Erm... You do realise you're telling this to somebody who got to 1500+ in 6 months without doing any tactics at all, right? Do you know anybody "drilling tactics until they cannot get it wrong" who got to 1500+ from scratch this fast or faster? Yeah, I don't think so, and there is a reason. Drilling tactics is an extremely inefficient and borderline non-functional way of improving past, like, 800-1000. I could somewhat get behind the method of solving complex compositions to develop an effective classical thought process and improve calculation, but none of these things are relevant at the sub-1500 level.

Why should I take it from people who know nothing about what it takes to improve at their level when I have first-hand experience trying both the "tactics-first" and "understanding-first" coaching strategies and seeing that the latter clearly outperforms the former?

That sounds like an EXTREMELY inefficient way of learning. Do you realise how much time all of this will take when the alternative is to either self-learn through play and analysis or receive high-quality personalised coaching for a few months? I'm sure your (outdated) method works as well and might get you somewhere around 1200-1300, but by the time you will have completed, you could've simply been playing and analysing games and gotten even higher-rated than that.

Press X to doubt. Even if you are a tactics god but don't know/follow the opening principles, you will probably fall behind in development and/or expose your king, and no tactics will save you ─ even at the 1300 level. Don't believe me? Well, get a 500 to play a 1300 and inform the 500 of any tactical opportunity (no matter how complex) that arises for either them or their opponent (but just tell them the sequence ─ don't inform them how powerful the end-result of this sequence is from a positional perspective). Then see who wins. Be ready for a big surprise.

Also, wait. So we agree after all? Yeah, this is most often the exact reason people can't reach 1500 even after years of practice and study. That was the point that I was trying to hammer across the whole time. I'm confused.

I actually think that you agree on most points, but PawnTsunami perhaps interpreted your post as: "Tactical stuff is unimportant" which would be incorrect, instead of : "Avoid blundering and you will be 1 500 isn't helpful as it is too broad of a concept, and can be said for pretty much every rating".

Actually, I do, but nice of you to assume I do not.

And I'm not talking about blitz and bullet (where even GMs fall into 1- and 2-move blunders from time to time).  When you watch long time control games against 500-level players, there are a ton of 1- and 2- move blunders.  When you watch the same games against 2000+-level players, there might be 1 of those every 3-5 games.

It is not even in the same ballpark.  The type of move Magnus considers a "blunder" is something that makes his position difficult to play.  The type of blunder you see at the 500-level is the loss of a massive amount of material.  When you look at the evaluation graph of a game between 2 sub-1000 players, it often looks like a polygraph machine hooked up to Bill Clinton while being asked if he hooked up with Monica.  You do not see those wild swings at the 2000+-level (again, except in blitz/bullet/massive time trouble).

Their lack of tactical skill costs them games.  That is not a causal fallacy, that is a fact.

If you pit a 1500 against a 1000, the 1500 is expected to win roughly 94% of the time, lose roughly 3% of the time, and draw roughly 3%.  That is simply based on their past performance.  The skill difference between them is literally 1 thing:  tactics.  The 1500 will be significantly better at identifying tactics his opponent is trying to play, and ones his opponent has left open.

A 1000-rated player is a 1000-rated player because they blunder.  When they consistently stop blundering (i.e. their tactical vision improves) their rating will follow.  If a 1000-rated player plays a perfect game against a 1500-rated player (who also plays a perfect game), the result is a draw.  You can see GMs say things like "If I play a 1200 and he plays 40 perfect moves, I make a draw, but they are a 1200, so the likelihood they play 40 perfect moves is remote" (paraphrasing Ben Finegold).

Again, I'm not talking about a blitz or bullet game here.  I've seen that many times in classical OTB games.  It is a simple removal of the guard tactic.  Strong players do not need to see the opening to know the tactic - they see "my knight is defending my pawn, so if he can safely take my knight, I lose my pawn - I need to ensure he cannot safely take my knight or that my pawn has additional protection".

First of all, do you really want to try to use yourself as an example?  It doesn't take a genius to figure out what is going on with your 2 accounts (@maxkho and @maxkho2).

Second, pattern recognition is literally how you learn tactics.  Just like you learned your multiplication tables by drilling the basic multiples until you didn't have to think about 8x9 anymore - you just knew the answer as soon as you saw it.  Saying it is an inefficient way to learn demonstrates a misunderstanding of the human brain.  Hell, Chessable's entire business model is based around that understanding.

Do tell the world how they should "understand" a smothered mate pattern or a hook mate pattern.  Or when a Greek Gift will work vs when it won't.  Go ahead, we'll wait.

The problem you'll have is that in order to understand the patterns, they must know the patterns.  The way you know them is by drilling them.  It is that simple.  That is why literally every chess coach tells their students to practice their tactics.  That is why the Polgar sisters were literally drilling tactics from the age of 3 (and why the book their father published is 5334 puzzles).  That is how Michael de la Maza went from 1300 to 2000 and won the U2000 section at the World Open.  That is how Hans Tikkanen earned his 3 GM norms in 7 months.

Feel free to write a white paper refuting literally 120 years of chess educational praxis.  I'm sure we will all wait with baited breath.

If you looked what what I wrote, I said (specifically) beginners should be taught:

1. Basic opening principles
2. Basic winning endgames
3. Basic tactical patterns

With #3 being the bulk of their work as the first 2 take very little time to learn and become competent with.

And your hypothetical is nonsense.

It does not seem like you got my point.  Positional concepts are great - whole books have been written about even simple ones (and many of them are quite good!), but they are useless if the player is dropping pieces.  

@PawnTsunami

I have one question. 

Let's say that 2 people of same strength, around 1 300 for instance, as that is below 1 500, play a normal game. Let's look it from the point of the person who plays with the black pieces. Now let's assume that he scores around 48% on average with the black pieces. Now let's say they play 10-15 moves and that white plays something underwhelming in the opening that doesn't lose pieces but it makes his position somewhat uncomfortable, say he has less space, his pieces are cramped, black's pieces are more active, and the evaluation is something like -1.5.

Now, I agree that the game is far from over even for GMs, but my question is this:

Will this player who have the black pieces score better than 48% on average or not?

Now, from my experience as a former 1 200 - 1 300 player, I would say that I would certainly score better than my average on the first move. Granted, I would blunder some games away and it would have nothing to do with that evaluation, but my opponent of similar strength would blunder probably somewhat more because his position is harder to play. Sure, I would not have a conversion rate of a GM, but that it wouldn't made a difference at all is a stretch in my opinion.

I will give one more proof.  If having somewhat better position for that 1 300 player is completely unimportant, how come that percentage wise almost everyone, sub 1500 players included, score better with white than black, where the difference is a single tempo, which is much less than the evaluation I've mentioned.

That is a bit too abstract to give a good answer.  The answer is really "it depends".

I'll give you an example of what I mean.  At my local club, there is a kid (~1920 USCF) who for 8 consecutive games across 2 events in long time controls (G/65;d5 and G/45;d5) got into completely lost positions against players 1600-1850 in strength (and when I say lost, I mean the positions were -3 to -5 in every game).  He scored 5.5/8 in those games (with no losses!)  The issue was the position was still complicated enough that his opponents still had a lot of work to do to convert and he was able to create problems to trick them.

So, to your question, the answer will be "it depends".  1.5 pawns is in the "winning" range, so if the position is simple enough, a 1300 may be able to convert it against an equal strength opponent.  If it is complicated and requires a lot of repositioning to convert, it is still a coin flip.

But to the core of your question:  does having a better position matter?  Certainly.  As the say goes "tactics flow from the better position".  However, in order to improve at anything, you must eliminate your weaknesses.  As already mentioned, for players below some rating threshold (I would say 2000, but certainly below 1500), tactics is their biggest weakness.

Ok, fair enough. 

As for the kid, ok, I would say that in that small pool of games, it seems that he had a pretty high score even when losing against people 200 rated lower than him on average, and made the evaluation irrelevant in those games. Though as he is a kid, his rating might be underrated as well.

But back to the similarly rated people, in my experience -1.5 is not a complete coin flip for a similar rated players, and I think that someone rated 1 300 would have slightly better score than said 48%.  But I agree that not every -1.5 is the same. On the other hand, in the erratic play of 500 rated people, it would probably be a complete toss up.

And as for tactics, how come that there are people with a pretty high puzzle rating that have memorized many patterns, but they are still around 1 100 rapid for instance? I've seen some much lower rated people that has your rating in puzzles, some are even higher, while they are 700+ points lower rated. As I've said, chess.com puzzles don't tell the whole story tactically wise, but are some indication.

Even though some people refuse to recognize it, not every sub 1 500 player is completely the same regarding on what his main weakness is. Some of them are really good tactically compared to their level, but have some other problems with their games that weigh them down.

The puzzle rating is a bit silly in my opinion.  I know people who have 3000+ puzzle ratings that I outplay tactically over the board regularly.  So when I say "practice tactics", I'm not talking about the trainer.  That is like a final exam - good for testing what you've learned with random puzzles, but not good for practicing to build the pattern recognition.

That said, while it is not uncommon to have a tactics rating 700-1000 (or even higher) points higher than your rapid/blitz rating, it is very rare to have a low tactics rating (assuming you've actually attempted at least 100 puzzles) with a very high rapid/blitz rating.

"Compared to their level" is the key phrase.  That is grading on a curve

To make a crude comparison, suppose a player was rated 1300.  Tactically, he was 2300, but positionally he was 200 and endgames he was 100.  That would get your your 1300 average.  If such a player existed, then yes, you would want to beef up his endgames and then his positional skills.  However, what you see more often is someone with a 1500 tactical skill, 800 positional skill, and 300 endgame skill level.  While many will argue (and I do not entirely disagree) that you should focus on endgames more at that level, the fact of the matter is from a practical standpoint, they are losing well before they get to an endgame and they do not yet have the visualization skills needed to judge a middlegame position based on the endgame it reaches.

Tactics are the arithmetic of chess.  It doesn't matter how much of a wiz you are at Algebra, if you cannot add, subtract, multiple, and divide correctly, none of the rest matters.

Of course, compared to their level. It is probably almost impossible for someone to be on FM level tactically and that low in other aspects, but I would say that there are people, younger people, especially children, that are very good at pattern recognition for their level, but worse at other stuff mentioned. I am sure that there are kids out there that are let's say 1100 rated OTB that have many patterns recognized and are better at it than some older 1 600 - 1 800 rated players, but are either atrocious in the endgame or they just play a bad middlegame and lose against such players, because they get outplayed.

I played a game against a kid here, let's say a year and a half ago (he was around 1000 rated at rapid, I think I was around 1 400-1 500 at the time). I made a mistake and he found a really nice tactical idea beyond maybe an average 1400  - 1 500 rated player, which won him a pawn with much better position or maybe even more, I don't remember. Then he blundered back, but I was still worse in the endgame. He proceeded not to activate his king, not to calculate pawn moves, played passively, made every endgame mistake in the book, allowed me to do what I want and he lost the game.

I think he is the prototype of a player that will not get better if he doesn't correct some fundamental flaws in his game that are not just tactics (he is not a tactical wizard, but I am sure if he had learned some basic endgame stuff, and got some idea on what to do in the middlegame, he would be at least 200-300 points higher at that moment).

I don't deny that there are the opposite examples, for instance my play would benefit immensely if I would be better tactically, and a lot of people are like that, but not all.

As for losing before the endgame part, sure one player might lose before the endgame, but the second one might blunder back as well, and they might still reach that stage.

I had a lot of endgames when I was between 1 000 and 1 500. In fact, I was actively seeking to exchange queens (I still sometimes overdo it, but not like before), because I noticed that at that rating when I reach an equal endgame, I tended to win most often than not. So what I wish to say is that, even though there is a good chance that you can blunder before the endgame, people at that rating level will still get some significant number of games that reaches that stage. 

Thank you for your insight. 

Just get a chess puzzles book and work on it for 1 hour every day for a month. Eventually you'll become a lot stronger

Yes, 500s blunder a lot. Blunders and tactics are certainly a significant factor at the 500 level, but they diminish in importance the higher the rating. In classical, 1500s also outright blunder comparatively rarely; even when they do, that would usually be after a period of sustained pressure that the opponent would need to fend off not to emerge in a simply losing position, and which a sub-1500 would not be able to do more often than not.

It is. I'm talking about blitz games here. Again, if we're talking about classical, a number of decisive positional moments will have occurred before the first tactical blunder even in a game between 2 1500s.

So there is nothing that separates a 1500 from a 1000 other than tactics? Again, I already proposed an experiment which would definitely either corroborate or definitively disprove this claim. You have conveniently ignored it, but that won't stop it from existing. I'm having a hard time believing that even you yourself believe that there is nothing that a 1500 is better than a 1000 at than tactics. It's a completely idiotic statement that not even the most hard-core tactics proponents would agree with.

I'm genuinely curious. What do you think is happening with those 2 accounts? Do you think I'm cheating or pitting them against each other to farm rating? I'm no genius, but I'm struggling to pick up on your implication.

Yeah, it's important to learn the patterns ─ personally, I have done that either directly from seeing them in my games or through post-game analysis with the engine ─ but that doesn't take long at all. The rest is down to practice ─ real games are FAR better practice than puzzles (for reasons that I can't be bothered to explain, but which most people already know). Either way, all of this is irrelevant as I've clearly stated I don't think tactics are the predominant component of chess ability past, like, 1000.

Yeah, these are very specific patterns that are far less essential to know than general concepts such as what constitutes king safety, how and when to attack, etc.

I think we're beginning to go in circles. You know what, let's just agree to disagree. According to Mark Dvoretsky, we are both wrong. So let's just go about it our own way and each just do what works for us.

When i had a chess breakdown and grenaded my previous account I found plenty of challenging games around the 500 mark. Don't be so hard on yourself, lots of tricky games at 500, the thing is there is a long way to go to get to plus 1000, so I was inclined to grind game after game which doesn't help with improving. If you want to dive in the deep end re sign your account as intermediate, it'll start off at 1200 elo however with each loss or victory there will be large jumps till the engine has suited you to a skill level. If your losing games due to lack of discipline rather than skill level then playing full focus at a higher elo with fewer games may be the key.