Frustrated Beginner!

The obligatory "I can't figure this game out!" post.

Here's where I'm at: I started playing two weeks ago. I knew how chess worked and that's about it, no prior experience besides grade school play. I bought "Basic Chess" by Levens and "Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess". I've gone through all the problems in Fischer and thought it was outstanding and really helped me see mating positions on the board. Levens isn't that good, but it has a lot of usefull information nonetheless (not enough hand-holding for a novice).

I started playing games against the computer but soon switched to playing 30 | 0 and 15 | 10 games here (much more fun and unpredictable!). And this is where the frustration begins. I've won enough games to get around the 1000 level. I call it a lucky streak because now I seem to be losing every game, even when I have an obvious advantage in position and material. Doesn't matter if they're at my level, +100 points, or -200 points.

I seem to keep making stupid mistakes and no matter how many games I play or what I study I keep making the same stupid mistakes. I'm sure other people have gone through this before, so if someone could share with me how they got over that hump I'd really appreciate it. More games? Less games more studying? More tactics training? I really enjoy the game but losing all these games where I feel like I have it in the bag is really killing my playing confidence.

The best advise i can give you is: first, and most importantly calm down; second, calm down; third, look back at your games and see where you went wrong. Study what your weaknesses are and improve upon them.

Every game is a learning experience, you will find that you improve much faster when you really start enjoying the game. Don't try to win every game just make sure that when you do lose you understand why you lost and when you win you understand why you won. If you make a bad move go back and figure out what the best move would have been.

I started at around 800 and now I just hit 1218. I feel good about it, I'm no GM but i'll be pretty pumped when I make it to 1300.

Good luck and have fun!

There's a saying in chess, "The hardest thing to do is win a won game" so you're not alone.

We all have ups and downs, 2 weeks is nothing

When you feel like you're winning sometimes it's tempting to relax.  After all you worked so hard to get ahead, and now your opponent should roll over for you right?  But wounded opponents are playing double tough because they don't want to lose.  So don't let your guard down and remember to look closely at their move before rushing in for the kill... they may have a nasty threat.

Welcome to the club! All I can say is that I was the same when I started - the 950 computer player in Chessmaster mopped the floor with me regularly in the beginning. And a losing streak doesn't mean much - I find some days I "click" and find good moves out of nowhere, other days I'm a dud and I should just stay away from the board to avoid losing all my active correpondence games! 

Truthfully, the biggest things that helped were playing, analysing my games, and studying. But it takes time. To pick two of the biggest things that helped me - probably doing a lot of Tactics Trainer here, and reading over and studying some well annotated higher level games. TT - it helps you recognize some of the common patterns that show up. When you start chess, it can take you a long time to see them; the TT practice both teaches you new set-ups as well as speeding up your reflexes and you start to just sense something that looks fishy. Reading over some well annotated master games and actually having a board set up to play out each and every variation helped me see beyond the obvious "I take him he takes me" kind of mindset I started with. Good annotations explain why the obvious moves might sometimes be awful, or the wierd looking ones actually make sense! The real fun starts to come when you can avoid the obvious beginner mistakes (like hanging pieces) and start to concoct evil plans. I'm certainly not there yet myself but I'm beginning to see over the horizon after a year and a bit of playing.

Studying your own games is helpful too, and you will see, after reviewing many of them, what it is that you are most vulnerable to - leaving somebody hanging, missing that rook-king knight fork on c2, leaving your minor pieces two squares apart in the middle where they get pawn forked, etc. Then you can focus on watching for these specifically as you play.

When I first started playing, I thought this game would be cool to master and I figured I would be pretty good at it since I'm good with math and logic. I've learned that it's actually pretty damn tricky :-) But stick at it and train as much as you play, and you will get better!

Hi you touched a very good point at every level chess players need to learn form their games -so try to play easy openings and dont rush at learning instead enjoy it by motivating yourself like saying I will double my rooks in this game or fork two pieces with the knight, slowly you will build your perception by connecting these small victories.. after all winning is only achived by a good play or a bad play of your opponent. If you can predict your opponent you can make traps if you have plans and your opponent do not let you, time to time you can be in defence and even frustrate weak attacks remember if there is  an absolute answer to ultime winnings chess will not be fun. So forget to winning all the  games instead concatrate to play according to your plan even  surprise your oponnent with brilliant defense or unexpected moves. I hope you will continue to enjoy chess, best.

I've been playing for the past four years and I still make mistakes. Then again I have religiously avoided study, practice or effort of any kind.

Thanks very much guys, great responses. It seems like these are the main things I need to work on:

• Have fun!
• Patience
• Patience!
• PATIENCE!
• Analyze my own games, won or lost, to see what I did right/wrong.
• Tactics trainer
• Analyze higher level games

If there's anything I left out, let me know. This is a great community here, I'm glad I decided to join it.

The frustration is natural. Having been on something of a losing streak lately, I get it.

Some decent advice has been dispensed in this thread, but my main suggestion would be to keep enjoying the game as much as you can. Having some fun with it can do much to keep your chin up during the rough streak, and I bet you'll come out of the streak playing even better.

It's like the brain has to catch up to the new level of play. And that... can take a minute.

Paul - Thanks! Glad I'm not a totally failure haha. I really struggle with these aspects because it is extremely mentally taxing for me to work out all of the possible checks/moves and I'm naturally an impatient person. I end up losing focus for one second and that's when the hung piece or sneaky mate comes up on my doorstep. I would greatly appreciate any comments on my games, but please don't feel obligated.

Gnostic - You're right about the enjoyment part. If you aren't having fun, it isn't really worth it to play. Hard to forget that when you're on a downer. I had a winning streak of 6 games once I started getting a hang of the basic concepts, so I get what you mean. Everything just seemed to fall into place for those games. Now I'm wondering what happened... but it's probably just bad luck.

One more question: when you guys say "analyze games", what exactly do you mean? Should I take notes? What things should I look for? Or is analysis a much more subjective and freeform kind of thing where you can't say "look for this"? Once again thank you all for your advice, it's helping me greatly and giving me confidence to stick with it.

I'm on a HORRID losing streak... I've gone down almost 200 points in a few months... so I know what it's like... but I also know that I'll come back stronger... this always happens when I study hard.  The more I study, the worse it seems to get, sometimes, because new info DOES take time to sink in.  Always remember to HAVE FUN. 

i have the same issuse buddy. good luck

I can't speak for what analysis means to a really good player :-)  But for me, I can sometimes look at a game or watch a chess video and not really do anything except watch it for entertainment, with no more brainpower expended than, say, to watch The Simpsons. But to analyse it, I will spend a lot more time at each move, trying to second guess the master, trying to see why the move I would have played myself will lead to distaster, messing around with variations, and so on. It's nice when you have some else's analysis to work from so you start to get a feel for the kinds of things that good player watches out for and thinks about.  For my own games, I usually use the computer analysis as a guideline, and that helps me to see "while I was thinking X during the game, the *real* threat (or tactical opportunity) was Y" and so on. It's not so much about doing one specific thing as it is a way to force myself to really think about the position, and get the chess brain cells to form a few new connections.

I was about a 1100 rating like 14 weeks ago, so about 400 pts improvement in that time working at it fulltime, which for a normal person like myself is very fast, so although I'm low rated compared to some of these players, I think I have a method of quick improvement for you if you choose to follow it. 

First, use that diamond membership of yours and watch videos on here. Rensch and Pruess have some awesome ones, such as Rensch's all you need to know about chess 45 min vid.  I've watched so many videos about chess these months it's not funny, but just watching a couple hours of these will give you an idea of how to approach the game. The more you watch of course, the better, provided you're actively listening. Don't worry about learning openings, traps or endings much.

Then, train the crap outta that tactics trainer. Don't play games until you've noticed a significant increase in your ability to pick up on tactics.

By far, most of your improvement will come from studying, not from playing games.  You can play games until you're blue in the face and not improve AT ALL if you don't analyze them occasionally afterwards, either by sending them to the computer for analysis or at least going to the Game Explorer and checking out if you're doing your openings decently.  Most losses at your level are due to blunders, handing pieces away, and tactics trainer will significantly reduce that. I'd say start with 10-20 hours on the tactics trainer at the least.

When you do get into playing games, restrict yourself to playing just a few openings and master those and just try not to make blunders. Maintaining concentration for every move was a huge issue for me and I'd blunder--find what your major issues are and try to work on them. Play around with the Game Explorer whenever you have a question about the first 10-20 moves and look for differences. 

Basically, I try to learn all I can wherever I can, and chess vids and tactics trainer have been huge for those first few hundred points. Now I'm getting more into the Chess Mentor courses, but I don't know how helpful they would be for a 1k player. Personally, I find them quite frustrating, but helpful.  I learned a ton from Pruess's mentor course that focused on exploiting opposite colors for example. Articles help too, of course, and books, coaches, and self-analysis would.   I don't think extensive self-analysis will do much for you at the 1k range since you're still floundering for concepts, but it certainly won't hurt.  At the very least spend a minute or two looking over the moves of the game before going to the next. Never just play and click rematch/newgame automatically! 

Anyway, I hope some of that helps you or someone! Good luck studying!

I wanted to comment again after rereading the above: patience I don't think is key. I would say, in fact, don't relax. Without frustration you won't have that drive to keep getting better. Get frustrated at your mistakes, because the more it bothers you, the harder you'll try to avoid making that mistake next time. So don't relax your expectations for yourself as long as they're keeping you working. I never had a rating goal and don't believe in it: make your goal to improve and the rating will come. If you do relax, relax only in the sense that it's okay to click resign/lose games as long as you've tried. Learn and move on. Embrace your losses and learn from them. Don't fear opponents rated higher than you.  And relax the idea, if you have it, that you know anything about this game.  Think of your mind as a blank slate.  For this reason, if you're simply after improving I would say stop playing games for the moment and just study, since you'll only be making moves you'll have to unlearn later.  In other words, rather than play-->make mistakes-->analyse+study, switch it to study and analyze first to reduce the number of mistakes you're making-->play-->study some more. Peace!

I think by patience he means being less impulsive with move selection i.e. the good advice  "when you see a good move look for a better one"

You're already doing the best thing you can to learn: you're throwing yourself at the game and are admitting that you have a lot to learn.  Games at our levels are pretty much always decided by tactics.  So as other posters have mentioned, get good at recognizing your opponents threats, and make sure you try to take advantage of tactical opportunities of your own. 

And the truth is, even when you start to get much better at it (and reach, let's say, the 1500 level), you'll realize once again, how little you really know about Chess.  But that's part of the fun. Chess will always be challenging for us mere mortals. 

I've been playing for a pretty long time, and the truth is that I still feel like I know so little about the game. 

So we all were where you are at one point in time. Understand that chess is not a simple game...and it will take years to become good at it.

The best advise I can provide for you would be-

- Study-Openings, Middle Games, and End Games. Strategy and Tactics.

-Practice, practice and more practice.

-Analyse your own games as well as masters games. The most important question here would be "why". Why was that move made...and not this one?

...of course each area goes into a number of issues, but as you read you will learn more and more.

...and the advice on "patience" is a good one...there are no short cuts to becoming better at this game...you will have to pay the piper eventually.

...and the best advice would be to have fun...don't dwell too much on the loses...it is only a game.

1. Have patience

2. Accept that you will win some and lose some

3. Analyse your games

4. Learn basic openings

5. Develop confidence in your use of pieces in different situations e.g. in one game use the Bishops to attack and the Knights to defend, in the next game vice versa

6. Respect you opponent, but don't fear them

Am sure there are many other good tips.

Basically, learn and improve and enjoy but don't kill yourself trying. It's your hobby, after all. :)

For beginners, #2 should be "Accept that you will win a few but lose many."  The upside of this is that most people can learn more from their losses than from their wins if they spend the time analyzing the game.

Frittles - Thanks for that response. Your advice seems to make the most sense to me out of everything posted here, although all the advice has been great. Off to the tactics trainer!