How to improve at "dull" games

how i try to have a good end game

1.focus your studies on a certain opening move

2.u can read books about the endgame it really helped me out

in the second game, i don't thing it turned boring you simply blundered your knight and rook. of course coming back from such a loss is impossible unless it is calculated. try and play for small advantages and avoid tactics and strategy based on one move threats and rather try and organize your army in such a way that the opponent has to lose.

positional chess is not necessarily boring it gives you the chance to organize and regroup in the best way and to prepare pawn breaks which when effected may open the door to tactics which favor you.

in dynamic situations that is simply not possible.

typical example of a dynamic position is the following!

I found this position in Chess Informant 107. It comes from the Najdorf Sicilian. It is a highly dynamic position with black to move. White has sacrificed his knight for an open file and lead in development. White went on to win the game but there is a lot of analysis involved.

Depends on what you prefer. Houdini gives this position to be dead equal. Personally, I would have a tough time winning with white and would rather be black, defending but havin a slight material advantage.

Edit--there is a pawn on h7

The more you know positionally the less you'll need to calculate.  Try looking at games from famous positional players like Capablanca and taking note of the imbalances, and why you think a certain move is best based off judgment with only the minimum necessary calculation. 

When I started to understand the endgame better the rest of the game began to fall into place.  Granted I'm still a work in progress but I feel as though I'm improving on a more daily level.  

If you can enjoy the endgame, you begin to enjoy all positions and then how can anything be dull?

In my experience "dull" is used to describe games that don't have obvious continuations. These are the games in which you need to force your opponent to make concessions and work for your tactics. That requires work in the middlegame and endgame rather than the opening. In fact if you play the opening badly and get a terrible position but don't blunder you might be able to get out of your bad position because the way to keep the advantage may not be apparent to your opponent. Tactical games may follow the " I go here then he goes there" process that can be more straight-forward to follow and those games tend to not be called dull.

At any rate learning more about the middlegame helps you to be able to play positions where there are no forcing moves better.

I don't believe how persistent chess players are. Even in a drawn game, they move pieces back and forth. No wonder some chess players lose respect for their games.

To improve in endgames, some study is necessary.

To improve in strategic games, you could start by asking your pieces how they feel about the current position - ie. do they have a job or are they unemployed ?

i personally find games to be dull when there are symmetrical pawn structures. the only difference then seems to be tempo but it's hard to unbalance stuff. this is why i hate the exchange variation of the french.

I find out that dull games are tests to chess players to find the right move in a very complicated setup.

I have a very inflated opinion of my chess skill? Based off of what? Seriously, wtf did I say that would make you think that? Was it that I said I think I'm good at tactics? I meant good in relation to the other aspects of the game, such as positional play (I suck at that), and endgame play (I'm even worse at that).

Seriously, I came on these forums looking for advice to improve at chess. The fact that I want to improve implies that I realize I need improvement. But instead of advice, all I get is some snobbish comment from an anonymous internet asshole.

You didn't give tis guy a realistic assessment of his abilities. You basically told him, "You suck, see how low your rating is? Stop acting cocky and shut up." These forums could be a componenet of chess improvement for many players. unfortunately they seem to be dominated by weirdos who are more interested in having their egos stroked than the are in helping anybody.

While there are a lot of these 'players at your level...' posts which seem more about insulting/ego stroking than answering the question, there are a lot of helpful users here too.

Point taken.

1. Forget about "dull", "sharp", "positional", "tactical", "agressive", "passive" and "style" until you start being able to play consistently - eg. until you have some control over making blunders. Hence

2. before you make a move, make sure it won't hang material. And

3. don't expect your opponent to hang material and don't attribute that to your chess skills or to any of the aforementioned words.

Both games were decided by blundering. That has nothing to do with "style" or so, as long as blundering is not a style. What you need to do is improve your calculation. Once you do that, you may find out that some positions have a strategical solution, others - a tactical one, and it's not up to you to force some "style" upon the game but rather to understand what's going on and playing correctly.

Some good information in the previous post, but right back to the demeaning tone. I'd like to thank Kostov for descending from the chess paradise where Topolov dwells so he could enlighten us!

I have decided to play more dull games, since they are good to play.