I would say you could have a similar issue to me. Bad in game habits. You have all the techniques and knowledge, but fail to make the application stick. When to think, what sort of moves to consider, playing over reactive or with tunnel vision, lack of plans for openings you will face. If you are regressing back to 800 after being 1100 then you are still making the same mistakes and that means habitual thinking. Every time I go on a regression it is because of old bad chess habits and not good chess habits. Things like failing to complete development before launching an attack, failing to condider the moves made by the other player and what they do, neglecting blunder checking, neglecting calculation, not improving my position, hanging pieces and pawns, Good habits are is there a threat, can I go forward, can I respond with an improving move like control open file, create a threat, find a safe square, make luft for the king, is anything hanging, can I continue with my plan, have I identified the other player's plan? You already know this, but just are not doing it. Not resigning is also good and helps conserve rating when you get unexpected draws and wins in lost games.
ELO Plateau at Low Levels
I think like you said, I have a bad engrained thinking process, and honestly - after 30 years, I don't feel that there is a capability to change due to that process. I also think there is an inherent disadvantage for people that learned incorrectly and stayed in that process of thinking for more than a specific amount of time - now, how long that is I have no clue. That could actually be calculated in 2 ways, by time or by number of games played.
What was the quality of your coaching? While they were strong players, rating is not all. A good teacher must be patient and passionate in their student's progress. That's what we try to replicate in our staff training.
What was the quality of your coaching? While they were strong players, rating is not all. A good teacher must be patient and passionate in their student's progress. That's what we try to replicate in our staff training.
I feel the quality was very good with all but one, and that one was more due to a language barrier, more broken language - but I felt they were top 3 because they were very innovative with ideas and non traditional coaching.
That's pretty interesting, I don't think of heard of a case like this before. Maybe it's just too hard to be an adult learner. I will say that the pattern I've seen before is that periods of work and frustration are usually followed by a jump in elo. For me this made sense because when I was actively studying the months would go by so slowly as I didn't see any progress. But for most of my chess life I haven't been too active and the years just fly by. Maybe because I'm not expecting anything. I noticed the one thing you didn't list was reading books, maybe that would help. I imagine if you stay the course then you will eventually level up. Also chess is 99% tactics.
That's pretty interesting,
I left the book part out because it seems that a lot of people don't value them as much, but when I was studying I generally read a handful of books per month (4-5) in the down time - so I looked at the books as passive learning at pace rather than the stringent part of the studying. On a side note, I'm only in my early 40's so not all of this time would have been considered adult learning.
Curious as to any others thoughts as well.
My thought is that something is very wrong here. All those lessons and coaches an analyzing games and whatnot should have produced something. What I am absolutely sure of: nobody has a natural plateau at the 800 level.
I took a look at your last game, and what I can see is a combination of making random moves, playing on autopilot, and a premature resignation for no real reason.
https://www.chess.com/game/live/139507008712?username=azraelldec
My thought is that something is very wrong here. All those lessons and coaches an
On the last game, I felt like the game was essentially lost - my only idea was to push the 3 kingside pawns but that would have been just a trade off; also, I didn't feel I could deal with the passed pawns.
I think analyzing games at lower levels can be somewhat counterproductive. Its sorta like leaving an airplane mechanic that knows what the tools are too fix the engine by himself without diagnostics and saying have a good day.
Even if you didn't know what exact plan to follow, that doesn't mean you should resign. Your opponent can blunder at any moment. Where is the fighting spirit?
If you want to know what went wrong in this particular game, just look at move 13 and 14.
Even if you didn't know what exact plan to follow, that doesn't mean you should resign. Your opponent can blunder at any moment. Where is the fighting spirit?
If you want to know what went wrong in this particular game, just look at move 13 and 14.
Yeah, I went back and looked and saw that when I was going back through the game. In my mind, I thought the game was completely lost.
I have sent the same scenario to a few different people and am wondering what others think.
I have been playing chess on and off for 30 years. Generally, 1-2 years at a time and then would take a break (6mths/yr) due to lack of improvement/frustration. The results are always the same (rapid 10 min), peak somewhere in the 1050-1100 ELO and then plateau back ~800. My theory, some people just have a very low ELO ceiling regardless of training/education in chess - which I think applies to me. My question, can some stay at this level regardless of significant work put in to chess.
Some background on what I’ve done:
Chess Seminars
Coaches - 4-6 that have all made IM, I think except one just because they have no desire. Lessons were 1-2 times a week.
Training Guides/Videos
Tactics/Puzzles - too many to count
Reviewing Games - which is theoretically pointless because unless you understand the theory behind why you lost, most can understand you lost because you blundered a rook and a queen, but realizing it happened because of a move you made 6 moves back is why you are subpar.
Reviewing Games PT 2 - Higher rated players reviewing games with me.
Reviewing Games PT3 - Annotating high level games.
Playing Higher TF - 90M - Daily, results have always been I pretty much make same or similar mistakes.
I’ve also done both sides of the spectrum as far as games, 2-4 games per day and then reviewing/studying ~4 hours per day. Also have done 15-30 games a day, with reviewing studying ~2 hours per day.
Thanks for the input.