How to improve without puzzles, bots, chess analysis?

I had one game recently where it is > 80% according to the game review. It is because I used a chess gui program called Arena.

I tend to play better when I am half asleep

 

Dunno man. It took me quite a lot of time to get out of 1000 zone. All I did was stick to one opening, learn all traps and counterplays of it on youtube, and play crazy moves which don't really mean anything. While playing black, I always try to play something unexpected, which throws em off. Boring games are no fun. from 1200 to 1300 is surprisingly hard. From 1300 to 1500 took me just 1 day lol

Hi,

I get being busy, I’ve got a full time job, three boys, other life obligations, along with working with various players on chess during the evenings and weekends as I’m able. I’m a big advocate in consistency and quality over quantity. I’d be happy to review your study plan too- but game analysis isn’t throwing an engine on and having it list your mistakes, it’s helpful but reviewing your games takes time and effort on your part to understand why you made the wrong move, categorize it, then understand what is the right move was and how you should have found it. This reinforces better habits, sheds light on concepts/themes/ areas to work on in the future, and prevents repeatedly failing to see the right ideas to find the correct continuations. You can improve more playing a rapid game a day, properly analyzing it, solve some puzzles and then be done with chess for the day  than spending several hours playing games, watching a YouTube chess video, and messing around with opening explorer. The fact you feel you can’t reliably play against 2.Qh5 as black in the king pawn opening tells me you’ve missed some critical ideas that once solved should make you a much more confident, capable player. You should be happy to have opponents play 2. Qh5 and be confident you’ll have an opening advantage every time. I’m not advocating playing 1. e5 here, but rather in concept you should feel that way, bad opening ideas shouldn’t concern you if you understand opening principles well. 

I feel your frustration with your progress. I see it a lot with players around your level, and I get it, chess can be confusing to learn at times and frustrating when you don’t feel your efforts are paying off. Here’s my offer. Let’s find a time to meet once a week for 1-2 hours or so. We’ll set you up with a study program that’ll take around an hour a day. You can do nothing with chess outside of that if you want to focus on your school work and life. After the semester ends you can decide if you want to work on chess more, but just give me those 4-6 weeks here before your semester ends with 8-9 hours a week working on chess and let’s see if we can’t get you moving in a positive direction and you feeling good about your chess trajectory. It’s a free, no risk offer, worse case you end up right where you’re at now in 6 weeks time back on these forums asking for better ideas to improve. What do you say? 

-Jordan

Chuck639's analysis is complete nonsense from start to finish. Games lost below the 1000 level have absolutely nothing to do with openings. Openings don't matter at all. The only thing that matters is one move blunders.

Here is the last game:

https://www.chess.com/game/live/42016783693?username=cybermanking

The opening is absolutely fine, then on move 7 black attacks CybermanKing's bishop, and he does not move it away, just makes a random legal move. Blundering a bishop for nothing in a rapid game, with more than the starting 15 minutes on the clock (due to increment), "thinking" for 4 seconds.

Changing the opening does not help with this at all. Nothing else helps either... except paying attention to the game and calculating things.

caffeine, lots of caffeine

Books! 

There are some realy good chess books witch are like private chess tutors explaining everything step by step and giving a lot of exercises to practice the learned. 

If you understand german I highly recommend the book "Schach Zug um Zug"

Sadly there is no Englisch translation for it. Otherwise just search the internet for recommended chess books.

 

Also you can´t improve without analysing every game you play. You have to be disciplined. Discipline is the key to success.

Building off- I would recommend Logical Chess by Chernev. The “every move explained” part helped me a lot personally. Especially since most of the explaining is about good thinking and calculation habits.

Doing anything for “several days” isn’t going to improve your performance. If you play a lot of slow games and analyze them for several months, you’ll see signs of improvement.

dont_eat_apple I got from 1200 to 1300 pretty fast I didn’t think it was so difficult. 1300’s were depressing though

I think you misunderstood me? My point was the OP should stop experimenting with openings and narrow it down to one or two. 

May be the game has changed since I was taught 25 years ago, which starts with an opening, achieve a playable middle game, work on a strong end game and apply tactics. I’ll stick to a CM’s advice over yours all day.

With regards to blunders, it happens on all level:

https://www.chess.com/game/live/35102401785?username=magipi

 

 

 

Thanks for the offer, Jordan. I’m not sure how you want to meet but Saturdays are generally my free day. What time would you like to meet on Saturday and how?

I don’t want to be unrealistic with my goals but I consistently played above the 1,000 level for several games within the first few months of playing rapid and would like to regain about 200 ELO that I lost within four months or so. Since May of last year, all my progress sort of disappeared. Maybe because I didn’t touch chess at all last summer but it’s the worst feeling in the world when not only are you not progressing, but any and all progress you have made is lost.

Hi,

I’ll send you a message and we’ll get a time set up. Look forward to it!

-Jordan

Have you (OP) spent 1-2 hours per day for at least 1-2 years consistently doing a combo of the following: puzzles (and analyzing your errors, not just moving quickly to the next puzzle); sticking to a sound repertoire consistently; and analyzing 1-2 serious games of yours each week? You ought to make drastic improvement if you do (I need to play and analyze more myself, and do more puzzles), but you have to give yourself a good deal of time of doing that, 1-2 years and 100-200 serious slow games at a minimum, before you can judge that somehow that time-tested advice doesn’t work.

You will always be limited by the simplest mistakes, and those should improve with puzzle (tactics) training and analyzing your game for your early mistakes.

Within the past 16 months, I have completed 415 puzzles, 153 games, have analyzed most of them, and most days I complete the daily puzzle. I have lost over a fifth of my ELO and as I see others on here who were at my level a year ago do these exact same things as I do most days and make progress while I only drop, I can confidently say that all of those things alone are not helping me.

I’m not a new player. I’m 24 years old and have played chess since I was 6 and was in chess club during my time in elementary school. I’ve taught other kids how to play chess and took a class for the chess merit badge in Boy Scouts. It was one of the best things I could do until late spring of last year. I don’t know what happened then. If anything, that’s when I did even more puzzles.

153 games in 16 months is nothing

try playing blitz, come back to this forum and thank me after a year of consistent playing, atleast 1000 games in the year

>try playing blitz

“Hey man, you’ve made no progress in chess for the past 11 to 12 months. Let’s continue to do the exact same thing you’re doing now except give you even less time so you’re forced to make mistakes faster!”

I’m sorry, but if I’m making multiple blunders on any given game with 15 minutes on the clock, I fail to see how giving myself only a third of the time to make a move helps me improve.

puzzles, lessons & 1 day daily games.

I saw you started playing blitz. Trust the process!