help

samob917 wrote:

I'm a young male and I want a more experienced player to somewhat take me under their wing and teach me how to get to the next level, is anyone willing to do that?

Chess.com has a program for you- sign up for the Prodigy program.

http://shop.chess-university.com/collections/frontpage/products/prodigy-program-may-2016

Nothing personal against you samob, but everytime someone posts these types of questions asking for help i offer to help and then after about a week i never hear from them again.  Im beginning to think it might be me...

Take advantage of the tactics trainer, and chess mentor software here, and post your games with your own analysis for review.

And just like spiderman, everyone get one...

One step on the way to getting to the next level is to really concentrate on the opening principles mentioned and truly understand them. This means that for maybe the first dozen or so moves for both sides, you should be able to say how each either fits in with or breaks the principles.

For reference, there is a pretty good opening basics summary video on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP7JFdyxfPM

After awhile, you'll also see that though a move might fit in with the principles, there are still going to be plusses and minuses associated with any move. Chess games are mainly lost rather than won. And losses usually come by simple blunder, or breaking principles which resulted in a busted position, or the accumulation of minuses which put you in a bad position. All of which usually ends up with loss of material and/or mate. Though the speed of destruction can vary by the nature of the mistake.

But one way to improve the fastest is by learning from these mistakes. You may want to keep a notebook and document every lost game. Review the game and try to see where you went wrong and why. At the moment, most may be related to opening principles.

For example, in the amarnik game posted you were checked twice by move 13 and lost the queen by move 15. What principles might've kept that from happening?

I'd guess if you keep expanding your chess principles understanding, keep playing, and keep learning from your mistakes, you'll be pretty happy with your chess a year or so from now. Also, keep posting to this thread if you have any questions.

Just because you have no self control, dont spread lies.  You had your chance to improve and threw it away because you have no self control.

This is something you have to commit to.

Samob917, it seems unusual that you are talking about making a big commitment to studying chess when you have only played 10 games here in the 3 months since you joined.   Half of those games are short time forfeits. It looks like you only have 1 real win in Daily Chess and 1 in blitz.

That's not much to go on. This was your first game:

Im not looking for, nor asking for a HUGE commitment.  All i ask is that if you are serious about chess improvement stick with it.  

 Playing games is a must.  I noticed when I started playing daily on chess.com I started to improve and learn more about the openings I was learning as I was playing them.  I won't get into the nitty gritty of what I am about to say, but, I did write a recent post on how chess is just merely a skill based memory games, and a lot of the mistakes you make, are right under your nose.  A person called these types of mistakes "observational errors," when you simply are not paying attention, or find a new attacking idea and forget about the pieces that where stuck on defense and move them for an attack, leaving behind a mating threat, or gain in material...  In an online game right now I am losing two of my games because of observational errors, and I'm sure I won the others because my opponents made their own observational errors.  At the low end amateur level to about expert you will lose most of your games because of blunders and observational errors.  The two are almost the same, but the blunders I am talking about here are missed tactics, rather than just hanging pieces, which are really observational errors.  Dan Heisman talks about 5 chess fundamentals that one has to get good at before anything else.

They are:

General chess principles

Good chess thought process

Piece activity

Basic tactics and king safety

Time management

Part of good chess thought process is learning to consider more than just one possible candidate move in response to what your opponent did on the board, and coming up with what you think are your opponents best replies to your candidate moves.  A bad habit you learn from playing only blitz is that you often make the first move that comes to your mind.  In order to get really good at chess you must play a lot of slow games in this manner, and it wouldn't hurt to learn more about thought process, which Dan Heisman goes on to talk about in his book, "A Guide to Chess Improvement."  He actually has a good thinking algorithm for coming up with your next chess move.  Anyone that doesn't know this algorithm, should check it out, regardless of how good they are, as it could still help their play.

I personally am taking the scenic route to getting good at chess, as I do not have time to play a 2 hour long game of chess!

Remember, forget about learning a bunch of openings.  You can learn them as you are beginning in chess, but don't just merely go over a bunch of opening books, because you will never remember all of the variations.  It's just TMI.  The best way to learn openings is to look them up when you lose a game in a particular opening you did not know and memorize what you did wrong in the opening.  The theory behind playing a lot of fast games is that you get a lot of opening training when you play game after game, however, I think bad habits are formed when you play only speed chess.  A good balance between the two is a must.

Everything a beginner needs to know to get better at chess is in Dan Heismans book, A guide to chess improvement.  Now the book itself isn't stand a lone.  Dan Heisman also talks about going over books like Logical Chess move by move, or other similar books, and to read "talky" chess stuff from time to time, like Dan Heismans stuff on his website, or his novice nook columns.  It all boils down to finding your best succession of books, based on your current starting level and working from there.  When you get a lot better than you are now you should eventually grab The Amateurs Mind, and go over that book, then read How to Reassess your chess, and then finally the workbook that goes along with it, in that order.  After you go through those three books, you will be a chess calculating machine, but all in due time.  I do not think you are ready for that.  It's up to you to find out what books you should read from here on out, as I've seen many people recommend several different books, excluding or saying bad stuff about the classics.  If you are a chess genius you do not need chess books.  But if you aren't, you do.. That's what it all boils down to.  You and I apparently are not chess genius', so we need to study a lot of books.  I would pick up Dan Heismans guide if I where you, then go your own way from there.