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

Honestly I’ve been playing “defend everything” for a couple days now and it’s boring as hell. One of the things I enjoyed most about chess pre-this-post was just doing crazy creative experimental damn the torpedoes attacks and gambits (my own gambits not studied ones) that would catch my opponents off guard! I have moments of, if not brilliance, at least damn higher than 700 skill rating!  But I realize now I do need to pay attention to my fundamentals and stop hanging pieces, missing free piece grabs of opponents hanging piece, not casting until it’s too late, etc. 

Thanks again for all the advice, folks!

I wouldn't give that advice to many beginners, and I didn't give it to him because I thought defending pieces is good. I thought trying to would help him practice useful skills.

I actually think about my posts

1. llama44 wrote:
   kindaspongey wrote:

   OP already has too much advice as it is.

Impossible!

i will devour all advices!

😂😂😂😎😎😎

If advice is not "good", I think it should be clearly flagged as such. I'm sure you meant well, but weren't you, in effect, adopting a "you can't handle the truth" attitude?

I’m now going for creative spur of the moment mixed with improved fundamentals and trying to never hang pieces.

Hehe

Poor moves seem to me to be the likely result of a belief that it is "useful" to attempt to "defend every piece at every moment". I think that you might find that many beginner books do not "start" with such a statement.

If teaching were nothing more than speaking properly about chess, without any care for how or what the student is learning, then any idiot could be a good teacher.

It's like when you're a little kid and they say you can't subtract negative numbers, but then next year you do. Then they tell you not to divide by zero, but you get to college and dividing by zero is fine. But multiplying or dividing by infinity is nonsense, until you take more classes and you work with different orders of infinity.

There's a certain order to things. You don't explain multiplication to a 10 year old by talking about the cardinality of infinite sets, and if you did, he wouldn't appreciate it.

You say my advice was not good, but it was good advice for him and good for him at that moment. You certainly don't have to agree with what I say, but if your argument was that I was careless you haven't understood my approach.

No one in this topic (to the best of my memory) has given the advice to defend every piece at every moment.

Yeah, I did mention from the beginning that the downside is it makes chess really tedious.

And before spongey jumps on me again, I said trying not to lose even a single pawn for free is tedious, not defending every piece at every moment is tedious.

 To be fair, my attempts to defend every piece at all times led to some losses since my opponents were developing attack plans while I was wasting time and moves trying to painstakingly defend every piece.

However, while I was doing that, I have also been teaching myself to slow way the hell down before every move, look at each of my pieces, each of my opponents pieces, look for undefended pieces or hanging pieces by either of us, etc, etc, etc, basically teaching myself to do the “before every move checklist” which I had never been doing before.

So I do feel like it has helped me solidly improve my fundamentals and situational awareness.

Poor moves seem to me to be the likely result of an early belief that it is "useful" to attempt to "defend every piece at every moment".

Glad to hear it.

Sure, taken out of context I completely agree with that assessment.

I suppose that we will never be in a position to really know since wheelsofconfusion has become aware at an early stage that it is perhaps not "useful" to attempt to "defend every piece at every moment". Again, I think that you might find that many beginner books do not give that advice. Wheelsofconfusion has referred to learning "to slow way the hell down before every move, look at each of my pieces, each of my opponents pieces, look for undefended pieces or hanging pieces by either of us, etc, etc, etc, basically teaching myself to do the 'before every move checklist' which I had never been doing before", but I think that beginner books have managed to encourage that without telling readers that it is "useful" to attempt to "defend every piece at every moment".

You guys are cute.

😂🙈✌️😝😍😎

EDIT: I’ve honestly enjoyed reading every single reply, argument, debate, point & counterpoint in this thread!

As I read it, you described it as "useful" to attempt to "defend every piece at every moment".

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/been-stuck-at-700-for-a-decade-tips-to-improve?page=4

I find it funny that after I claim you're taking it out of context you persist in editing my quotes to show a single sentence.

You did a lot better this time though. You were actually having a conversation instead of endlessly asking questions and posting links.