Been Stuck At 700 For A Decade - Tips To Improve?

Thank you everyone. This is not a troll thread. I swear. I have been sitting in a hospital bed for two months after ten plus years of unchecked depression, self medications, addictions, overeating, and weight gain, coupled with ever worsening circulation related infections, led me to becoming 600 pounds plus riddled with infections, too scared / ashamed of my body / hopeless / uncaring to see a doctor and take my clothes off and get fully checked out.

My blood went septic, I was rushed to hospital, I almost died, pulled through after 4 intense days of struggle and medical attention, and since then have been almost two months pot, drug, alcohol, and junk food free, as I recover from the severe cellulitis infection that developed in my right leg that developed as a result of the sepsis and several leg surgeries that followed.

I have lost 111 pounds since then (697 down to 496) and have finally been thinking about my life and the things I enjoy with clarity and a clear head and much less depression.

I realized I was treating chess the same as the rest Of my life; I simply didn’t care enough to do what I needed to do to improve it. I was in a haze of booze and pot and other substances and, like the other bad lifestyle choices I was making, I was having fun with how I played. Now I’m super annoyed at myself for wasting so much time and for being so...bad...it’s hard to admit that...after more than ten years. If there’s ever a time to start getting good, as well as finally starting to live healthy and maintain the lifestyle and diet this hospital stay has forced upon me once I’m out of hospital, it’s now.

True story.

Name’s Dave.

I’m in Alberta Canada.

Feel free to challenge or message me anytime.

I’d love to play, and learn from, any of you.

Maybe I can even pick up a Mentor / Coach along the way.

My best friend (online, but hey, I can tell him stuff I can’t even tell my family and I’ve never had many real friends) I started “teaching” to play chess over this app, and he matched me in a year and now is about to surpass me. He watches videos. He plays a ton. Speed Chess. 10 minute games. But he’s done over a 1000 these past few weeks and he’s really gotten much better. And I love him to death, but it saddens / annoys me as well to watch him surpass me.

Thank you all, truly, for your kind and helpful posts and replies!

Weight correction from above post since I can’t figure out how to edit posts - 607 pounds down to 496 pounds and dropping.

Well yeah, I imagine being depressed and self medicating and sick enough to go to the hospital would definitely hurt you chess

I play worse just because I slept 6 hours instead of 8.

Sometimes I just play worse for seemingly no reason at all.

Anyway, glad you're doing better.

upper right portion is an edit tab (small box with pencil).  click on it and your post appears at the bottom in a new box - where it can be edited. Click on the orange post box below to resubmit.

Study Tactics. Winning Chess Tactics by Seirawan would be a very good First book. After reading it, expect a 200 ratings increase.

guys i played 249 moves with a draw and this guy didnt know how to get checkmate with a king and rook.... and it was a BOT.....

Lots of stuff for improving your chess here....

Improving Your Chess - Resources for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/improving-your-chess-resources-for-beginners-and-beyond

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell

Glad to hear that you're trying to do the right things for yourself.  You can do it.

yeesh.... try some tactics. do some (or a lot) of chess puzzles. do the online lessons here! they help. Came up to 1100 from 300ish by learning here!

you can do it!

 

Live and learn. There are many here shouting tactics. They are clueless about the necessary steps. 

For the 700 rated - puzzles and tactics is a waste of study time. This is true regardless of what these wanna be experts think. They're just repeating what all these lazy coaches nowadays are practicing with students.

Why can I state this with confidence? I taught beginning chess for 10's of thousands of students grades 1-12.  Full classrooms. For years I've observed what works or does not.

Before 5 years ago - were coaches spouting "tactics" as primary study? No. It remains true today what the old masters advised for 100 years. Puzzles are actually an inferior method for learning tactics.

If puzzles are entertaining - have fun ! Surely something will be gained. Realize, you're never reaching any of the positions given in the puzzles. It's necessary to learn how the positions are reached in the 1st place.

Although you have been playing for a long time, reading a few good books would be a much needed review and would likely help you a lot. I would recommend 3 books by GM Yasser Seirawan: Play Winning Chess, Winning Chess Tactics, and Winning Chess Strategies. Easy to read and covering all of the basics for beginners and intermediate players, I think they would be a great help. Winning Chess Openings and Winning Chess Endings are also great books by Yasser.

Play much slower games (Daily 2 or 3 days per move). Start each game with a plan, but be ready to adjust it. Take the time to review each position, to really see how contemplated moves would help or hurt your position. Are you hanging a piece? Leaving yourself open to a fork or pin? Can you take advantage of a weak move by your opponent? These books show you how to look out for these situations and also how to set them up.

Good luck with your chess and good luck with your recovery

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fff

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OP - you can block these kids from posting useless pics/posts.

Sounds like you prefer playing to studying. This is all fine and good. Progress can be had either way. You may never pick up a chess book for study but find chess to be a life time hobby. My only suggestion would be to review some of your games. Understand where your mistakes were. Many of them will be realized - you don't need someone pointing fingers. You've got the most important thing right - having fun. You must enjoy the game and are not overly put out with losing. Far too many quit in less than a year because their rating does not match expectations. Well, they'd never reach their ballooned thoughts of being a master in the 1st place.  

 

An exercise for improvement -

Solve The N by N Queens problem

Place 8 Queens on the chessboard such that no Queen can capture any other Queen.

Tip. Clear the board and use 8 pawns as Queens.

There is much to be learned/gained by this simple problem in design but not so easy to solve.

Thanks all.

I do not see the “pencil box” edit thing in the top right. Is it because I am mobile? iPhone, specifically. I am no stranger to online forums or post editing. I literally cannot find the edit option. For those who have edited posts, are you on mobile or a laptop / PC / Mac?

Also what is “hanging a piece”? Leaving a piece alone, unsupported?

And again, thank you everyone.

I certainly was not expecting this humble post of mine to get almost 40 replies.

It certainly seems like I may (but hopefully not, hopefully maybe going home soon) have a lot more time here with which to actually start LEARNING chess.

And also, thank you for not judging / mocking me after I opened up about my life / circumstances.

You all are good people.

Ah ha!

 

im now logged in to chess dot com via my phone web app rather than the forums section on the app and I now I have full post edit, etc, functionality! Excellent! Buh bye forums on the app!

 

App for play, web for reading / discussion!

If you keep these forums apprised of your journey of improvement, both personally and in chess, you will be surprised how many people will be interested in following and pulling for you.   Perhaps the chess.com community can help to keep your spirits and motivation up.

That’s a wonderful and encouraging idea thank you. 

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/been-stuck-at-700-for-a-decade-tips-to-improve?page=1#comment-47292524

I sent you a 7 day per move game challenge 

Food for thought here.  Basically recommending to strike a healthy balance between speed chess and slow chess....

Play Longer Time Controls...

For many at the beginner-novice level, speed chess tends to be primarily an exercise in moving pieces around faster than your opponent while avoiding checkmate, in hopes that his/her clock runs out sooner than yours.  Or being fortunate enough to be able to exploit your opponent’s blunders before they exploit yours.

There is little time to think about what you should be doing.

It makes sense that taking more time to think about what you should be doing would promote improvement in your chess skills.

An effective way to improve your chess is therefore to play mostly longer time controls, including "daily" chess, so you have time to think about what you should be doing.

This is not to suggest that you should necessarily play exclusively slow time controls or daily games, but they should be a significant percentage of your games, at least as much, if not more so than speed games which do almost nothing to promote an understanding of how to play the game well.

Here's what IM Jeremy Silman, well-known chess book author, has to say on the topic...
https://www.chess.com/article/view/longer-time-controls-are-more-instructive

And Dan Heisman, well-known chess teacher and chess book author…
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627052239/http:/www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman16.pdf

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/dan-heisman-resources

and the experience of a FIDE Master...
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/how-blitz-and-bullet-rotted-my-brain-don-t-let-it-rot-yours

Finally, rely on your own common sense when it comes to the advice you will receive here on the forums.  There are a lot of conflicting opinions expressed here.  For example, if for every 20 people who recommend to work on tactics (I do), there is one person saying that doing so is useless, I think you can come to a proper conclusion regarding which is closer to the truth.  I don't think the motivation of the many highly respected IM's and GM's who have authored books on tactics is for you to waste your time.  I recommend to simply ignore those who espouse nonsense.  No matter how loudly they bray.  Debating or otherwise engaging them IS a waste of time.  Save your energy and your emotions for positive experiences.