One thing that is very helpful, but also hard work, is playing through master tournament games. This will let you start learning the basic opening set ups, and what the good players do with them to play a complete game. You will become familiar with all phases of Chess by doing this. Opening, mid game, and endings. Endless, free tactic puzzles are available on Lichess, if you want to practice tactics.
How to get better.
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Ok thanks. So I analyse master class games?
ito_san4 wrote:
I currently watch YouTube videos about tactics and practice them, but I have trouble finding them. Don’t reccommend me coaches or books on openings.
Some me tell me to analyse my games and I do, the problem is my games are pretty obvious to find the mistake. Since I keep rushing and blundering, how should I stop that?
Just quoting the parts of your post that stood out to me as the most important.
You say that you're having trouble finding tactics when practicing. What tactics are you doing? They're not all equal, and trying to do tactics that are too hard for your level isn't going to be useful. Start with books of easy tactics for beginners, and go through tons of those. Once you get good at those, move on to intermediate level tactics puzzles. I highly recommend Dan Heisman's "Back to Basics: Tactics" as a great first book of tactics. It has over 400 puzzles, along with plenty of explanations to teach you what to look for, and a few other hints and tips about improving overall as a player. A good second choice would be "Chess Tactics for Students" by John Bain.
You say that you're rushing and blundering. The key there is to play slow games, and take the time to look at all of your opponent's possible moves. Look for checks, captures, and threats on every move. During a slow game, spend your opponent's turn looking at every possible legal move that they could make, just to get used to looking. On your turn, make sure to look for all possible responses to the moves you're considering. I don't know what speed you normally play, but stop playing fast games altogether, until you've done enough slow games to make this instinctive. This comes from experience, and you just have to play a ton of slow games to get into that habit.
If you're blundering a lot, these are the two most important things you can do to overcome it. Once you stop blundering so much, your rating will jump to at least 1200, and you can worry about how to get better positions, and what to do with them once you have them. Keep up the tactics study, but that would be the time to pick up something like Chernev's "Logical Chess: Move by Move", which will help you learn to develop with a plan. Also, I always recommend Silman's Complete Endgame Course, since the first chapter will teach you how to finish any game that gets that far at low levels of chess, when you usually end up with one player having a huge material advantage.
At first, you don't want to spend a lot of time on one single game. You just spend a few minutes, and play through a complete game. Then, play through another one. Of course, you will have many questions about all the 'what if' moves. But the main thing, at first, is to become familiar with the various patterns, pawn set ups, pawn breaks, coordinating multiple pieces toward a single goal, etc. As you gain a deeper knowledge of the positions, you can start to spend more time looking at 'what if' moves. One thing you will find is that, often, there are at least a few good, or ok moves in a given position. You decide which route you want to take, based on your ability with certain set ups, or maybe even just your mood, to try something different, and see how well you can handle it. ALWAYS, review your own games. Once you get familiar enough with various set ups, and follow through plans, you will begin to better appreciate what commentators are talking about when they are presenting and analyzing a game. You Tube has a lot of great videos, but there's also a lot of time wasting junk. You will need to sift through several commentators to see what speaks best to you at your current ability. Hope this all helps.
"..., you have to make a decision: have tons of fun playing blitz (without learning much), or be serious and play with longer time controls so you can actually think.
One isn’t better than another. Having fun playing bullet is great stuff, while 3-0 and 5-0 are also ways to get your pulse pounding and blood pressure leaping off the charts. But will you become a good player? Most likely not.
Of course, you can do both (long and fast games), ..." - IM Jeremy Silman (June 9, 2016)
https://www.chess.com/article/view/longer-time-controls-are-more-instructive
"... tournament play offers that rich, 'all-weekend' chess experience where you congregate with other players, eat and talk chess during meals and in-between games, and benefit from the entire ambiance. ..." - Dan Heisman (2013)
Possibly of interest:
Simple Attacking Plans by Fred Wilson (2012)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708090402/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review874.pdf
http://dev.jeremysilman.com/shop/pc/Simple-Attacking-Plans-77p3731.htm
Logical Chess: Move by Move by Irving Chernev (1957)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708104437/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/logichess.pdf
The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played by Irving Chernev (1965)
https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/tag/most-instructive-games-of-chess-ever-played/
Winning Chess by Irving Chernev and Fred Reinfeld (1948)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708093415/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review919.pdf
Back to Basics: Tactics by Dan Heisman (2007)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708233537/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review585.pdf
https://www.chess.com/article/view/book-review-back-to-basics-tactics
Discovering Chess Openings by GM John Emms (2006)
"... For beginning players, [Discovering Chess Openings] will offer an opportunity to start out on the right foot and really get a feel for what is happening on the board. ..." - FM Carsten Hansen (2006)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627114655/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen91.pdf
Openings for Amateurs by Pete Tamburro (2014)
http://kenilworthian.blogspot.com/2014/05/review-of-pete-tamburros-openings-for.html
https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/tag/openings-for-amateurs/
https://www.mongoosepress.com/catalog/excerpts/openings_amateurs.pdf
Chess Endgames for Kids by Karsten Müller (2015)
https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/tag/chess-endgames-for-kids/
http://www.gambitbooks.com/pdfs/Chess_Endgames_for_Kids.pdf
A Guide to Chess Improvement by Dan Heisman (2010)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708105628/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review781.pdf
Studying Chess Made Easy by Andrew Soltis
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708090448/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review750.pdf
Seirawan stuff:
http://seagaard.dk/review/eng/bo_beginner/ev_winning_chess.asp?KATID=BO&ID=BO-Beginner
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708092617/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review560.pdf
https://www.chess.com/article/view/book-review-winning-chess-endings
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627132508/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen173.pdf
http://www.nystar.com/tamarkin/review1.htm
I know lots of people have asked this question. I am pathetically sitting around 800-900.
I have ave a few questions
How do I get better?
I currently watch YouTube videos about tactics and practice them, but I have trouble finding them. Don’t reccommend me coaches or books on openings.
Some me tell me to analyse my games and I do, the problem is my games are pretty obvious to find the mistake. Since I keep rushing and blundering, how should I stop that?
In order to win a game you have to do lots of things.
You have to win material in order to checkmate most of the time or get a better position then there’s.
How do you get a better position then them?
What is the rank that I should consider to be good enough to take nationals. I am currently 15.