HEY NOOBS! Forget Openings, Study Tactics (The right way)

The average devoted adult chess student improves around 100 points OTB per year or less.  So no, it is not slow, it is over twice the average.  You are supposed to double your skill/strength every 130 pts as per the ELO system so 1000 points is 7.5 of these doubles 2^7.5 I am almost 200x stronger than I was 5 years ago   

I see you in every thread spongey promoting literature and books, but really your audience should be ignoring you, getting off the forums and spending that time on the tactics trainer for fast tangible results.  

Some corrections first , I am not anti-immigrant but I am anti-illegal immigrant and especially anti-illegal-criminal immigrant , and since this would include any race I dont see the charge of racism as valid . 

Personally I began working on openings before I was even 1500 , but not deeply . I would say I started working on openings more seriously after reaching 1800 because at that time I was " thrown to the wolves . "  I had to start playing in Open sections of the swiss events I was playing which meant I was playing masters and experts consistently .  I was being slaughtered in the openings , often being lost before move 20 because they knew the openings much better than me .  One of the biggest upsets I have ever seen was when a friend of mine that was only a B class player beat a 2300 master ( also a friend ) in a very sharp gambit line that the B class player knew much better than the master did . Its a wild gambit line called the icelandic gambit . The master wasnt familiar with it and the B class player was . I myself lost badly to a player 2 classes under me when he played a latvian gambit against me because I was completely unprepared for this opening that he had a lot of experience in and I lost .  Chess has 3 phases and to be a strong player one must work on all 3 phases , I dont believe its good to ignore any phase . The middlegame is my favorite phase and I have spent more study time there than on either the openings or endings but I didnt ignore them either . 

Ok REB, there is also variance in chess, you understand this I am sure?  I doubt the class B player was more booked up than the 2300 in every opening that the 2300 had in his repertoire.. so the class B player got lucky by which opening the master wandered down.  Maybe if he had spent all that energy on tactics he would have been a class A player    I've been smashed out of the opening too, it's not pleasant, It makes you want to study openings, but studying them at 1200 is almost a complete waste of time.  Also you probably agree with me that it is much easier to learn openings as a 2000 than a 1200 as you can learn/absorb variations and refutations to deviations from mainlines much much faster

I was going to ask this in a new thread, but as there actually seems to be useful, respectful discourse here...I struggle badly with the tactics trainer, 1 pt forward then 13 back. And I know, I really don't care at all about my rating, but I WOULD like to see some evidence of progress as in mastering the low level puzzles and moving forward to more difficult problems, o/w what have I spent all this time doing? My question is- the puzzle always starts by giving you the prior move. Is this move a clue to the solution? Should I be looking first for opportunity created specifically by this move? A piece hanged or a mating combo that wasn't there before? If a piece looks hung, but it was similarly hung before the move, is there meaning to that? The solution always requires the computer makes the best response, does it help to start by assuming that the move before was also the best and not a blunder?

If a 1700 OTB wants to spend all his time on openings, that is his choice, I am not going to argue with him, but when a 1200 player is on here spamming to the masses to study openings and read opening literature, I am going to have a slight problem with it.  There are far too many beginners on here that don't understand that they are completely trash at tactics, and they don't understand how to use the tactics trainer correctly, they get puzzle wrong and they don't even analyze it they pull up a blitz game and try to forget about the pattern they could have just analyzed and absorbed.  This is who I am talking to, not the 1800s who know what they need to improve already.

@shock_me that is a good question.  If the puzzle is pulled from a real game then yes looking at the last move would be a good hint. But I don't think you can tell  Here is a good tip, any time your opponent makes a move, evaluate everything on the board that was affected, any pawn move (besides a or h pawn) weakens two squares on the board and when a piece moves you should be in the habit of seeing what squares it WAS defending, and look for tactical opportunities there.  Also look at the list of tactical themes and become very familiar with the names of the 38+ basic tactical themes, assigning language to chess patterns helps the solidification process in your brain! https://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-tactics--definitions-and-examples

That's exactly my question. Obviously, at every move in a real game I look first to see what that move changes.  If there is no significance to the preceding move, why include it? Why not just present the position like in the old fashioned newspaper puzzles?

"... Morphy possessed the most profound book knowledge of any master of his time, ..." - Steinitz (1886)

Which openings did he study?  Which chess literature did he study?  Thanks for proving my point.  He was so strong tactically he could blast through hundreds of variations in very little time with his elaborate database of patterns and "chunking"   I think the main reason why it is extremely pointless for a 1200 to study openings extensively is, a 1200 wouldn't know how to punish his opponent for deviating from the mainline anyway so what is the point in memorizing the main lines..  Even IF the opening went perfectly for the 1200, he wouldn't know what to do with his .3 pawn advantage once the phase is over..

I wouldn't make a habit of trying to look at the last move in a tactics puzzle though.  Try to just absorb the position as it is and look for tactical themes that way, look at the geometry of the position and the relationship of all of the pieces, look at all the ranks, files, and diagonals, even the ones that are closed, check how they could become open.

Another tip for tactics puzzles, but it is kind of an advanced one.. if you are really stuck in a position, try to think about not just all the legal moves, but all the moves your pieces could do if you were given 2 moves in a row, this can sometimes uncover powerful potentials.  Also always try switching up the move order in your variations to see what is the best order, this is 1/2 of tactics.

"... everyone is different, so what works for one person may likely fail with another ..." - NM Dan Heisman (2002)

"... Review each of your games, identifying opening (and other) mistakes with the goal of not repeatedly making the same mistake. ... It is especially critical not to continually fall into opening traps – or even lines that result in difficult positions ..." - NM Dan Heisman (2007)

https://web.archive.org/web/20140627062646/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman81.pdf

Kindaspongey I think I have had enough Dan Heisman quotes for the day, can you please stop, lol.  We already went over this, everyone is different but everyone has the same type of neural network pattern-based learning mechanisms in their brain.  Nobody is going to be a master level player while they are 1200 in tactics, it just doesn't work that way. 

Studying openings does pay off I will admit that. I recently smashed a NM in 5:0 otb at the local chess Meetup in the Smith morra. I bought Essermans book book but I only got through 10-15%of it. but if I had tried to learn the Smith morra as a 1200 or even 1500 the lines would have been a lot harder to learn as the tactics aren't simple, plus I would have likely failed at converting even a piece up advantage vs a NM as a 1500. also I would have been a fish out of water if for example they declined c3 and all of a sudden I'm in the alapin

Is it perhaps easier to win on tactics if a player has managed to avoid a difficult position?

"... Review each of your games, identifying opening (and other) mistakes with the goal of not repeatedly making the same mistake. ... It is especially critical not to continually fall into opening traps – or even lines that result in difficult positions ..." - NM Dan Heisman (2007)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627062646/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman81.pdf

Hey bud! I'm hesitant to make this post because I do believe you should be proud of making it to 1800. But you've mentioned many times that you did it in under 5 years, while there is nothing wrong with that, it is not fast enough to impress anyone. The problem with this map is that the difference between ratings is not evenly spread, i.e. it is easier to go from 800-900 than it is to go from 1100 to 1200, which in turn is easier than 1500 to 1600. If you get to a higher rating than, yes, 100 points is a good goal, and at some point event that becomes unreasonable (if Magnus Carlsen went up 100 points each year...well, you get the point).

I would expect the average player to go from 800 to at least 1300 in a year, and then make it to 1600ish the next. It might take another 2 years to go to 1800, but that's still at about 4 years. 

I personally went from a beginner to 1800 USCF in a little under 2 years but I know many people who were much faster than that. 

However, I will agree with you about tactics-- I basically focused 100% on tactics (with some endgames) and next to nothing on openings until 1800. However, I would have had a lot of difficultly getting to 2000 or beyond without doing any opening research.

Keep up the good work, and I do agree that tactics are key. 

"... nobody can wholly escape the dire necessity of compiling variations and of examining and memorizing them. And therefore such a compilation is correctly included in a manual of chess." - Lasker's Manual of Chess (algebraic edition)

Most of my decisive games are decided in the middlegame , because of the openings I play . I play both 1e4  and 1 d4 as white and as black I play sharp openings like sicilians , winawer french , kid , gruenfeld and even modern benoni sometimes .