Finally Broke 1000!

I finally broke 1000 on my 980th Live Chess game, with a 10 0 Blitz rating of 1005. Nothing spectacular in these last two games. I simply paid more attention to every move made by my opponent, then checked for checks-captures-threats  before making my move.

I've got a 7 game winning streak going. It's a nice change, and credit this recent improvement also to  the exercises from Tactics Trainer, Chess Mentor, Chess Tempo, Silman's Endgame (the first few chapters) and Polgar's 5334 Problems, Combinations and Games. 

This curriculum seems to be all that I need at the moment, and it may take me to 1600 - 1800 USCF without adding anything else to my studies.

Looks like your opponent forgot to click "Claim Draw" in the first game?

I don't think there is a  "Claim Draw" button, only a button to offer a draw. Since I was up on time, I could win if I did not allow a threefold repetition, which I made sure of not to do. Thus, the win.

I did not realize that it mattered where you moved from.

Does it really matter if they forgot to claim a draw or not? They had a completely won position before senselessly throwing away the g-pawn.

Someone once told them "Passed pawns must be pushed" and they followed the advice blindly?

Oh, and it WAS a threefold repetition.  The position repeated more than 3 times.  It doesn't have to be in a row.

Such funny and silly games :)

Congrats on passing 1000 I suppose. It's a long way from 1000 to 1600 though - probably a far longer way than from 400 to 1000! :)

In chess and some other abstract strategy games, the threefold repetition rule (also known as repetition of position) states that a player can claim a draw if the same position occurs three times, or will occur after their next move, with the same player to move. The repeated positions need not occur in succession. The idea behind the rule is that if the position is repeated three times, no progress is being made.

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Interesting.

Well, the point of my topic was to simply alert my chess.com friends that I had finally broken 1000, win-lose-draw, it doesn't matter.

I started, like everyone, at 1200, then went all the way down to my true beginning strength of 650, and now I am at 1005. A big jump in points and cause for celebration.

Some of my games have ended in a draw due to insufficient material, but neither player needed to click on a button to end the game. Chess.com ends the game. 

The repeated positions need not occur in succession.

I was not aware of this detail, and understood the rule to only mean this: that the moves must repeat three times for the rule to apply, not that a position repeats in or out of succession three times. That's confusing, so I still don't get it. Please type the moves where this happened in my game. Thanks.

Perhaps, in the future, Live Chess could catch three fold repetition, just as it catches checkmate, out of time and insufficient material.

Example of my understanding of the threefold repetition rule.

Here's an example.

Thank you.

No arguments regarding the difference between 650 to 1000 and 1000 to 1600. It took about 2 1/2  years for me to get from 650 to 1000 in Live Chess Blitz, and I was a complete beginner.

I've been told that it gets exponentially harder with each jump in class. So, for sake of understanding, let's say that my 1000 rating here is a real USCF 1000, or Class E. I feel that I can gain 200 points in one year, or Class D (1200). To go from Class D to Class C (1400) will take, maybe 2 years, IF I put in a lot of time and effort. At my age and place in life, I kinda doubt it.

At 1005, I'm pretty happy with my percentile rank of 33.1%. That's pretty cool, in that I can beat about 1/3 of the players on this site in Blitz games. That's a lot of progress, especially not knowing such basics as how to castle long or en passant, for example, when I first started playing here. No complaints now.

I don't even want to think about how long it takes most players, not counting the brilliant ones under 20 years of age, to advance from Expert to Master.

I'm just too old to ever become an Expert, no matter how hard I work at the game.

Thanks for the moving diagram. That helped a lot. In your example, the starting position in chess was repeated twice, and the position itself happened three times in the game. Threefold repetition.

I would be happy if my opponents could claim a draw, as you say. The next time I play Live Chess, I'll keep an eye out for this "Claim Draw" button. As I've said before, I have only seen the "Offer Draw" button, and sometimes I accept, and sometimes I don't, especially for really silly offers, when I am winning both in material and time. It sounds strange, but it does happen pretty often at my level.

One of the most upbeat, happy party tunes of all times. Thanks. 

Kool and the Gang - Celebration

Moves 44,46,48, and 50 were Kf2,Kf5. So was 56, and 58, 60, and 62.

Good work. Thanks.

Great Job! I've been to afraid to play ranked games yet and my live record is hovering around .500

Great job my friend. Its always good to see players improve through hard work.

There's no need to be afraid of rated games.  Rated games are exactly the same as unrated ones, except, you know, they're rated.  If you improve later, your rating gets in line with your new ability fairly quickly.

I agree.

I think it is best to play rated games in order to find players +/- 100 points of your true playing strength. If you have been playing chess for a while, you may be pleasantly surprised that your true strength is greater than the rating you are first given, which is 1200.

I started playing chess pretty late in life (my late 40's), with a wife and kids, a job and bills to pay. Long before those responsibilities, I would spend 4 hours a day practicing and playing my guitar at college, both jazz and classical, as I had nothing else to worry about except getting decent grades.

If I were spending that much time practicing and playing chess in college, good grief, I would definitely be a strong club player in my early 50's, I would hope.

I can spend an hour a day with this new hobby, but not much more, so I don't see any rapid improvement down the road. With my recent focus on tactics and checkmates, gaining 50 to 100 points a year seems realistic.

In my first year and a half, I wasted time on opening theory. It got me nowhere, as almost no one under 1000 plays book lines. I would have won more games  by being able to spot just one tactic, the fork.

A tactic that I am studying right now, which Dan Heisman sees most often in amateur games, is the removal of the guard. One reader of his gained 200 points by pouring most of his practice time into just this one tactic. That's a lot of bang for one buck.

i dont think so

Try reading this page:  http://support.chess.com/Knowledgebase/Article/View/40/0/how-do-i-claim-a-draw-in-live-chess