How to improve slightly

Hello everyone,

I was hoping that some of you guys could give me a few pointers. I am playing about 650 and have played about 3000 games in my life. I would like to develop my game as much as I can.

Could you advise what is the most effective way to get a sound understanding of the openings and some of the more obvious instaloss moves? I still fall for simple tricks like scholars mate variations.

Im guessing that practice is the key. Also I play 10 minute games and a lot of people resign when they lose a good peice is this the done thing? Because some of my favourite games have been when I have slogged it out to at least put up a challenge.

I would like to know if it is a matter of memorizing the best counter to every first 2-3 move combo or should I choose one opening and play that to death?

Thanks to anyone who answers

Jobo

"Playing about 650".  I thought you meant that your blitz rating was about 650, but when I looked it was 743. All your other ratings are higher.

What does "playing about 650" mean?

You are right. People at your rating level shouldn't resign when they lose a piece because pieces are given left and right.

Have you ever read a chess book?  There are a million threads here about study plans. Chess.com has a decent one all worked out.

Study Plan Directory  

The lessons on Chess Mentor are very helpful.  

WIth 3000 10 minute games, you have spent 1000 hours playing chess.

With less than 50 hours of study (or even just 5), you could easily raise your rating.

Your rating is all over the place.  Your low was 631. I would guess that your rating will settle around 750 at this point.

One of the prime reasons for stagnation is bad habits in chess. Brooding over your games, I found out that you lacked basic knowledge of tournament openings. I also found out that you played your moves hastily.

I suggest you to aim for consistency in the opening (for example, you can prepare the Scotch for White and the Sicilian for black) and invest some time to proper calculation. For that, I strongly recommend you to play Online Chess.

Best of LUCK!

iplayforsherlock is right, you'll benefit from playing online chess and taking time to think about your moves. You can send me a challenge if you want.

Thanks guys for taking time to reply, I really appreciate it.

I am aware that I play rather poorly and make fairly obvious mistakes, through my unwarranted haste, complete oversite and inability to grasp the further consequences of moves.

The game pictured as an example is a bit of a rarity in my play. I have learned that moving the queen too early is a bad move.

It is an example of poor play; from notmtwains analysis Qxd6 does give some hope to me but half my peices have not developed and I can see this is a result of constantly having to move my reckless queen.

As you can see I play a lot of games to the very end to get a better understanding of endgame. Even if I am on the wrong side of a drubbing.

In my play I feel that at times I can operate one or two of the pieces in tandem but never feel that I am using all the peices together. ie I always find that to win I must capture massive amounts of opposition material and win simply by weight of numbers. I cannot see elegant solutions.

Thanks iplayforsherlock I will focus on one opening for white and one counter opening for black. I will try to play 25-50 games on this line to get a feel for them.

I do not really brood on past games but instead throw myself into new games without understanding what really happened, win or loss.

Thanks for the advice,

Please feel free to offer any thing else you think will help

Jobo

You should analyse games or watch Youtube videos of games being analyse. I remember that during summer holidays back in 2010 (the year I learned chess rules) I was watching Youtube chess all the time (kingscrusher, jrobi mainly) - surely around 5 videos per days. I haven't played a single game during that time. Nevertheless, I improved significantly - from about your level to a 1000-1200 level player.

Tactics Trainer is helping me find better, more elegant moves in the mid- and endgames; Chess Mentor is helping me understand openings better (if you search through and find what you're looking for instead of just doing random lessons).

You could try the study plans they have on chess.com: http://www.chess.com/article/view/study-plan-directory

There are some good ideas at various level of play.

If you want another take on how to approach studying to improve yor game, here is my view:

http://becomingachessmaster.com/study-plan/