You can get better, but it will take a whole lifetime of training. You might not ever be able to get past a certain point. But, you still have years and years to get better.
Set an attainable goal. My goal is to someday become a 1600 player. That is considered advanced level and it is possible to reach it over the course of a lifetime.
the problem is your thinking process..
my advice is always LOOK FOR CHECK! CAPTURE! THREAT! of your opponent before making your move! making a mistake is just fine because you will learn from them.. JUST ENJOY THE GAME. OK.
That's a simple clear tip on avoiding blunders. Take note OP.
You are capable of improving Emmet but your stats indicate a player unsuited to bltz/bullet chess? (not really "chess" in any case).
Here are your online stats:
Your glicko Rd = 159 which indicates a player of potential strength 1950?
Obviously in your blitz/bullet games are making time/concentration blunders.
Play longer games and enjoy your chess.
Chess is complicated-game and you wil be entirely unable to assimilate the nuances/subtleties involved unless willing to devote sufficient time to study.
Temetvince! I had that problem -- dropping pieces or blundering or having bad surprises -- and that still happens, but many times less. What I learned having that happen so much is this: the board is there like a book with all the pieces and each move spread out; so read it and check to see what moves your opponent has made (and try to figure out, if possible) why that move was made and then check to see what the next move or moves after that first move might be. Then check EVERY move your opponent can possibly make with each and every piece he has. Finally, before making any move, check to see what each of your pieces can do, separately or in combination. Now that's a lot of work, but chess is not easy and good chess is HARD WORK. You will be seeing lots of surprises you opponent will have planned for you, and you will see how you can SURPRISE your opponent as well. I believe that's what masters of chess do almost all of the time, but in their heads. But we have a right to legally use all that Chess.com offers: analyze board, reversing the board, explore, etc. Also, I would be sure to also use Tactics, Chess Mentor, Chess Videos, etc. Good luck abd drop me a note if all this helps to reduce the blunders, etc. And remember! If you want to be a better chess player, you've got to literally work for it and work hard. Good luck. Aloha, Vince
From your description about playing chess for many years, putting in countless hours of study, application, training, etc, then yes, you are most likely as good as you are ever going to get and cannot expect to improve by any real degree.
The fact is people hit a wall at some point where they are limited by their natural talent for the game. The notion that they can continue to improve on into infinity with more play and study is naive.
Definitely agree with the above posters re. thought process - I think a big part of improving at Chess is training your thought process. Have you read any of Dan Heisman's Novice Nook articles (if not, Google them). Many are about thought process and how to analyze/improve it. There are also quite a few articles about time management. What time control do you usually play? Are you using all your available time?
Btw, I also drop pieces all the time at shorter time controls. I live in constant paranoia of dropping pieces! :-)
i've played every day for the past two years on chess.com and have read more books than i can count. worked on tactics (only thing that seems to help) endlessly, studied openings, played OTB, ect, all the things that you are supposed to do. basically my rating hasn't changed as i'm still just under 1200 or so.
at some point i accepted that i enjoyed the game and studying tactics and that if i improve ratings wise, great, but if not who cares as i'm doing it for fun. also, to be really good at something takes thousands of hours of practice and study i don't want to invest in chess as in the end i don't think it will make a huge difference or give me some sort of spiritual lift (as i could care less what others think of my rating).
perhaps this is too deep for chess.com but let me be the first to say that this is a game and you should play/practice as long as you enjoy it and be in the moment of now, not later should you improve your rating.
My question to the OP: you say that you study tactics, but what do you mean by that? How exactly, have you studied tactics?
Which books have you read?
Do you use software?
etc..
I suspect that part of the issue is understanding that there is a difference in "looking at" and "studying."
In other words, there is a differnece between getting a book such as Susan Polgar's Chess Tactics for Champions and spending one hour each day dilligently working through the problems and solutions rahter than just solving a handful of tactics on tactics trainer each day.
Simple Chess by Michael Stean
tells you about the strategic ideas of chess.
eg the difference between cramped vs compact positions
& space advantage vs overextended.
If you don't know what I'm on about....you DEFINITELY need to read this book (or another equally good book that I don't know about!)
My Dearest temetvince
Everyone goes asymptotic after awhile. Look at the world's best ratings chart and see how they begin to plateau. We'll all begin to level out at some point. I feel good that I've found my skill level to probably 95+% (and the last few % points are the least important !) Are you playing 1600-1700 chess ?...Then you'll beat most players (the % can be quantified), which is quite an accomplishment. Are you trying your hardest every game ? Intensity and a will to win is critical (wish I had more...but I like how the game takes shape over results).
Good Luck My Darling and I love the way you've shared your feelings........
So much good advice! This is a long post, so no need to read it all! If you've posted here since my last post, you have a response below. Just jump to the part that applies to you. Some usernames are grouped by theme instead of explicitely stated, but I've responded to everyone somewhere in this post. Other than right here (Thank you!), I've included some words of gratitude to all of you in the last post to The Ghostess Lola, if you want to read it. It's at the very bottom of this post.
Lou-for-you:
I'll look into them. I had never heard of Yusupov but after looking him up he sounds quite promising.
zborg:
your words have wisdom. Unfortunately, a lot of my blunders don't involve queens or tricky attacks. But your idea has definitely got me to thinking about the way I play, and my style.
To those who talked about thought process:
You know, I've thought about it more since my last post, and I've considered what you've said. I think I was overly critical of myself when I said it wasn't feasible for me to use those techniques. I think perhaps I should focus on long OTB games, rather than short games, where it will be so much easier for me to practice these techniques.
Kevin_Grem, good advice about goals:
My goal isn't really a rating (my dream is, but not my goal). My goal is to improve to the point where I can enjoy the game without the hinderance of constantly making brief tactical errors. I understand tactical errors will never be removed from my games, but at the moment it definitely hinders my game to the point where I don't feel comfortable studying chess because I know I'll just drop pieces. Because I love this game for some unexplicable reason, I just want to get to the point where I can lose because I was outplayed mentally, not because I mentally can't play.
To those who mention perhaps chess isn't for me:
Yes, it's quite possible I may not ever improve. Thankfully, my love for the game means I can never leave it. I made it a year, then pretty much had to start playing again. So I do like it. I'm okay playing the game as a hobby for fun for the rest of my life. And I'm definitely okay losing. I'm just not okay losing for small mental blunders, and winning also doesn't satisfy me. It just seems so cheap an experience playing at this level.
To those who annotated and evaluated my example game:
thank you. That takes a lot of work! And it has really helped me see not just concrete examples of errors I made, but also how I'm missing entire ideas and overall strategies.
netzach:
while I didn't understand any of your methods to reach your conclusions, that information was awesome! It was, however, a super tiny sample size. Would you message me or post here about how you calculated those numbers and what they mean, that way as I continue to play longer games I'll be able to calculate them? If so, I would appreciate it.
VLMJ:
while your comments fall in line with my above response to those who talked to me about thought/move processes, you really made it click when you said, "Then check EVERY move your opponent can possibly make with each and every piece he has". I really need to play games where I have more time!
Dodger111:
thank you for your truthful evalutation of my situation. While I sincerely hope you are wrong, I believe there is wisdom in your words. I must come to terms with the uncomfortable fact that I may play at this level for the rest of my life, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. Even so, I must continue to try to improve, frustrations and all. Posts like yours keeps me in the real world. It is much appreciated.
mmuurrii:
I agree with you that I'm quite special ;), but thankfully my girlfriend hasn't made me propose (yet), so no wife, and I despise cats, so no cats. Perhaps there is another vince out there as awesome as me that you have confused me with?
roscoepwavetrain:
Thanks for sharing your experience with me. And you gave me hope, too, when you said, "...you should play/practice as long as you enjoy it and be in the moment of now, not later should you improve your rating." It made me realize that although I get so frustrated with the level that I am at, I love the game so much that I continue to play regardless, and indeed is ultimately why I am getting frustrated in the first place. As you said, I love it now.
ChrisWainscott:
You inspired me to reread Rapid Chess Improvement. I recognize that it is a controversial, shallow-minded book, and I treat it as such. However, thankfully, the author's tactics drills and seven circles process can't do any harm to my game, other than waste my time. So while I certainly don't expect the results he promises, if anything could help me not blunder as much, I believe you found it with tactics problems. I did improve some doing tactical problems last year, but I didn't focus on them, and since it's been a year I probably should start them up again. This time, however, with gusto!
pbeckett:
None of those terms mean anything to me, which tells me I have a lot to learn yet! I've studied some positional concepts, but not near enough. I'll look into that book!
The_Ghostess_Lola:
thank you for your kind words. I think that I've shared my feelings here because I've reached the point in my game where I need to be honest with myself, and the best way to be honest with myself is to be honest about myself to other people. And the response in this thread has been overwhelmingly amazing. Thank you all.
A Buddhist monk walks into the bar, orders a drink, and pays with a $20 bill. The bartender takes the money and moves on to the next customer.
"Hey!" shouts the monk. "Where's my change?"
"Change," says the bartender, "must come from within."
You seem to be doing fine. You just miss some tactics every now and then. You don't make any mistakes in the opening and get playable middlegames. Sometimes you have a good position, miss a tactic and then your opponent seems to get enough time to solve their problems. If you could learn some new tactics through watching games or doing puzzles you'll probably do better.
[...]
Many suggested a different thinking process or other ways to notice blunders. Unfortunately, this isn't really feasible, or I would be doing it now. This is why I started the thread; I thought perhaps some people just aren't mentally capable of employing these processes.
[...]
Why don't you think this is feasible? You should think of thought process as a skill. Learning how to think in chess is like learning any other skill, such as learning how to play guitar. You can read books about it but you won't actually improve until you start practicing the skill you want to improve at.
Thought process is very important. In Kotov's Think Like a Grandmaster building blocks of the thinking process are calculation, positional imbalances, and planning. You see imbalances, determine who is better, by how much, and why, then formulate a plan based off the center type, piece distrubition and activity, imbalances, etc. Then your plan drives the calculation. Find the best plan, not the best move.
In a position with a lot of contact between pieces calculation comes to the forefront, but even here we calculate until the end of the forcing variations and make assessments at the ends of lines.
You could calculate to a quiet position with 100% accuracy but still not be convinced that it's best due to a gap in one's evaluation knowledge. Happens to me in some exercises and games =(