Help, I can't improve. Any tips? - Chess Forums - Page 2

Pimapom · 2014-07-26T00:14:09-07:00

I started playing chess 4 years ago on chess.com and I am not improving. In the last 3 months I have made a more concerted effort but if anything I am getting worse. I am writing about this recent quest to improve my chess at my chess blog www.chessluddite.com and I would love suggestions about what

TROLL_account_05

Jul 28, 2014

0

#21

USE TEH POWER OF HOUDINI, KOMODO AND STOCKFISH TO BEAT PLAYERS. COPY FEN OR PGN. ANALISE FOR A MIN, STOP, THEN PLAY THE MAIN LINE REKOMENDED TO BEAT OTHERS AT FAST CHESS.

azziralc

Jul 28, 2014

0

#22

RG1951 wrote:

nyLsel wrote:

You should work on your games by analyzing it afterwards. There you can point out your weakness, the mistakes have been made and to never repeat them again. Look on the things that make you overestimate your attack and underestimate on your opponents. Then you can vastly increase your playing strength as it helps you know deep of your strength.

Many training methods are possible, but I suggest the most basic and effective way of improving your game.

Seeing and realising one's mistakes is no guarantee that they will not be repeated.

But then helps you play better in next games as your intuition might be well aware on situation where you make mistakes. We can't play a mistake-free game in chess but we can atleast lessen it.

casper_van_eersel

Jul 28, 2014

0

#23

I think Till's offer is amazing and you should accept it with both hands. Just see what he has to offer. The problem with analysing your own games by yourself is the same problem that occurs when programmers debug their own code. It reminds me of the quote by the famous programmer Brian Kernighan: "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it."

Properly analysing a chess match is tough, since it requires a fairly deep knowledge of positional play, strategy, tactics, principles of attack etc. IMHO without outside help, analysing your matches is a waste of time. Apart from the obvious blunders that you can most likely spot yourself, you will only sporadically come up with new insights that are solid enough to be applied in every match. And it is exactly that which makes you a stronger player. If you were able to improve in a self-contained way, you would somehow access latent chess knowledge you already had in you, all by yourself, which I think is very difficult, also given the plateau you can't seem to get off of.

I notice it in my play as well. Sometimes positions come up that I can't analyse myself due to lack of chess knowledge. Turning to outside help, e.g. instructional videos here on chess.com or asking an instructor, suddenly make it clear what I had to do. I wouldn't have come up with those structural improvements all by myself.

To make a (way too) long story short: grab every opportunity for free lessons. Grab a hold of the basics (as mentioned above) and expand your knowledge with the help of (much) stronger players that you feel comfortable with instructing you. Find your favorite teacher and see if he has posted free lectures on Youtube. Good luck!

Pimapom

Jul 29, 2014

0

#24

Old Chess Dog, thank you. I am sure it is something to do with the way older people think and I am interested in this process. I watch my own son and other kids, 6, 7, 8.. yrs old and I am amazed by how quickly and well they learn. knowing that Magnus Carlsen at 13 was a grandmaster (and seeing these games online) shows how well young minds adapt. I am interested in how this method of thinking works and whether there are ways adults can learn in such a way so I'll check out your videos.

Batman thank you for your analysis. You'll see that I did identify 18.Nd5 as my biggest mistake. I gues what I should do is look at alternatives and FOLLOW THEM THROUGH with calculation to see what might have been better. Casper is right though, sometimes it does take an outside eye - a skilled one - to see where problems are. It is difficult analysing positions when my positional understanding isn't developed.

x-1198923638

May 17, 2022

0

#25

AKAL1 wrote:

Thetrouncer, the easy way of blunderchecking is tactics. They are essentially two sides of the same coin -finding tactics and stopping them. Sadly, the only way to get better at Tactics is Tactics Trainer, chesstempo, tactics books - practice over and over and over. It is just pattern recognition. (Try to ignore the time limit!)

Not for some. Getting to 1900 or so tactics apparently made my game worse.

1900 tactics, can't break 350-400 elo in blitz on this site.     Yes I know "blitz bad", but this is brain-damaged monkey elo. It seems some people have mental deficiencies that make them totally unable to improve, despite thousands of games and years of trying, hours of study, etc, etc. I am one of them.   Same thing with longer time controls, just slightly more able to compensate.

Computer programmer, degrees in math and CS, etc... not a "stupid" guy - but there's 100% some kind of visual / spatial memory thing that I cannot do, and it 100% means I'll never play chess at even 15_th percentile.       You can't train a goat to play chess, and some people are just as good as goats for this purpose.

This is backed up by the fact that the skill at the lowest rating level is strongly bimodal - Given any game I know immediately that either I will be crushed or win easily, just based on the "feel". I'm not imagining it, because basic statistical analysis bears out my feeling based on others' game history. For awhile I thought this was fakes/cheaters, but now I realize that a lot of people just don't have the hardware, and I can tell when I'm playing another like myself.