i am stuck at 250 elo any advice?

Stop watching videos while playing chess

BEST BOOK FOR Bbeginners . Only $10.00 . . .

Dont teach chess and name your club superblundermasters. Hope this helps

Learn chess as a whole bruh.

can i get it for free? (not the first time i got a $10 book for free)

As a Christmas present from a friend or family member? Or birthday or anything? All they need is a small hint.

That's how I got my first chess book back in the day.

play wayward and nepolean. Lol

So why can't you get past 1200 elo rating?

As a long-time chess player(please don’t look at my ratings and comment), I have these tip for you, step-by-step:

1. Learn simple checkmatesAlways learn this first. Start with 2 rooks, then a queen, then a rook. Just it, don’t learn advanced checkmates already because it’s rarely occurs in your games and you need to learn the basics first.

2. Learn mate-in-1 and mate-in-2 checkmate patterns

These checkmates will happens in your games really fast. It’s very humiliating when you know it’s a mate-in-1 but can’t find the moves.

3. Learn King and Pawn vs King(KP vs K) endgame

This also happens very commonly. So you need to learn it. After learning, try to find the winning moves for White in this position:

4. Learn basic openings

Opening is the first phase of a game of chess, you want to learn it. I have some recommendations for you: (Please don’t learn Wayward Queen attack)

1. Italian game
2. London System
3. Queen’s Gambit

5. Learn basic tactics

Tactic is super important. You need to learn it. Start with basic tactics like Pin or Fork, then learn more advance things.

6. Learn opening principle

Opening principles is your chess opening mentor. I have some posts for you:

1. https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-principles-of-the-opening

7. Learn Middlegame

The 2nd phase of a game of chess. This is mainly about attack/defense. You should read this post: https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-64-commandments

8. Learn checkmate patterns

Sometimes, you get a position that has a mate-in-5 but you said, hmm I don’t see any checkmate so I will play normally. Then you realized it’s a smothered mate 💀 so learn it

9. Learn advanced endgames

After learning some basic checkmate and endgames, you can move to more advance one. You can start with Queen and Rook endgames, then checkmates like 2 bishop mate and Knight+Bishop(be patient because this is painful).

10. Learn advanced opening lines and pick your favorite opening

Learning openings is good, but sometimes you encountered a popular lines but you don’t know how to defend it. That’s why you need to learn advanced lines.

You also need to pick your favorite opening, learn hardly about it. If you learn each one a little bit then it won’t work.

11. Be patient

Learning above things is painful, but if you success, you can be better at chess. Be patient, learn each one hardly.

12. Do puzzles

Puzzles is the best way to practice what you’ve just learned. I suggest make a Lichess account, pick puzzle theme and do it.

Above is all 12 tips from my experience. Hope this can help you to get higher ratings. Feel free to message me if you don’t understand somewhere.

Hi mando_guy67,

A while ago I've done an experiment by checking if I could potentially go down to 0 Elo points and become the worst rated chess.com player of all time. I've realized that 100 Elo points was the lowest level possible. Once I've reached it and became officially lowest rated player on this site (there where a few others rated 100 too at the time) I decided to see how quickly I would be able to go back up to my old rating level of around 1011 rating points.

While doing so I've realized that many players MUST be cheating as I've struggled to breach through specific rating level barriers for a while before reaching further highs again.

• I believe on your level are many very young players and they are not grown up enough being able to go through a losing streak. So they are cheating (a lot). On your level are many players who will either cheat constantly or sporadically. This will make it difficult (much more time consuming for you to raise your rating to higher level as these cheaters keep you down). You must win or at least not lose twice as many games.

Another level where I believe cheating is very common was the 400 - 500 rating level and then again around 700- 900 where I am stuck right now. If you take a look at my rapid stats you will see that I actually haven't been able to go back up to my old level of 1000 ever again so far. I mean I came close with about 960 rating points but currently I am going down again as my opponents are so strong.

• This is the second point I want to mention. I believe despite cheating the opponents also as a whole simply became stronger. Which means this will also hinder you to get to a top level as there is much more competition. We all read the same books, watch the same Youtube videos and learn from the same online course materials. Keep that in mind. In the past it was difficult or at least expensive to get all the material needed to become a very good chess player. Today it's (at least in comparison) pretty affordable. So pretty much everyone who has some interest or is being encouraged by their parents will do it.

Despite all these things that I mentioned above I think you do have in fact a really good chance to move further up the leader. My predecessors have already mentioned the majority of really helpful things that will have probably the most profound impact on your immediate improvement. So what will help are among other things:

• Doing a lot of Tactic workouts, especially Mating patterns at the beginning (read tactic books) very useful!
• Your level is really low so you'll have to learn about the basics of chess. (the absolute basic "chess fundamentals") in order to do this you could for example read the book "Chess for Dummies". Otherwise you could do those trainings here on chess.com or on lichess.org where they are offered for free.
• The book "Bobby Fisher teaches chess" that has been suggested by someone else here is actually really pretty good. A lightly light in terms of content unfortunately but what it teaches you it does teach you in fact very well! You will mainly learn how to calculate properly with your pieces. If they are defended well or not and if you would be able to take the opponents pieces or not. This is very basic but extremely useful to know as it will free your mind to take the time to spot other stuff on the board as well.
• With these things you should already at least double your rating.
• From level 700 onward, pretty much everyone will know at least 1 or 2 openings that they play well so you should too! By playing well I mean you don't have to memorize every single variation of these openings but you should be able to play it well enough to know how to develop your pieces in the potentially quickest way possible. Learning and understanding "General Opening Principles" will help you here. Watch a couple of videos on one or two simple openings. Don't go down the rabbit hole just yet trying learn the entire opening theory it's going to be way too much stuff and will take up the time you need to study other areas of the game.
• Study endgame patterns and basic (typical) endgames like Queen and King vs. King, Rook and King vs. King etc. this can be done extremely well using the "Learn" section here on chess.com or again Lichess.org where all this stuff is free.

Reaching a 250 Elo rating in chess can be challenging, but with targeted improvement, you can progress. Focus on mastering the basics, including opening principles, basic tactics, and endgames. Practice regularly and review your games to identify and learn from mistakes. Utilize chess puzzles and training resources to sharpen your skills. Consider studying famous games and analyzing common strategies. Joining a chess club or finding a mentor can also provide valuable feedback and motivation to help you advance beyond your current rating.

Hwo to improve? Just win.

It's a bit abstract to be terribly useful I think since it requires that "evaluating a current position" skill is remotely in place! Just not giving away a piece for free at lower levels is a worthy goal, since a "blunder" is level dependent. Picking candidate moves may also be mysterious. Each step in your procedure assumes prior skills they probably don't yet have. These are all useful skills and many are interdependent. I heard people say... but I followed it and it didn't work, or I still suck etc. The trick is how to pick candidate moves. The trick is how to visualize the board. The trick is how to evaluate a position, and so on. Obviously, many volumes have been written trying to address these things.
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I thought Iman Hambleton's (Chess Brah) "chess habits" videos an interesting sort of recipe way to get started grappling with the solid chess principles by demonstration in live games (with low level opponents). It's a way to bypass some of the overwhelm of "what to do next" showing that by keeping things simple process wise, you can make rating progress. He layers the habits by rating (i.e. elo) levels and shows how they won't always find good moves in some positions, and sometimes even loosing moves when followed faithfully, but the approach won't have to be unlearned as you improve (i.e. no trappy tricky bs in memorized opening lines to get wins at lower levels). It still requires study/knowledge of basic tactics and such, but the process at least is spelled out with recommendations for what knowledge is required for each range, without pulling rabbits out of hats during his demo games.

For someone in the 250 Elo: Do you guys recommend 10min rapid or 15/10 is better to take more time thinking etc.. Relatively new to it (played sporadically but now trying to be more consistent).

Honestly, @fermvm these are the typical questions that have been answered already at least a 1000 times in all kind of different forum threads here on chess.com. To give you an answer to your question... In general it's considered to be better if you have more time available to think properly. Therefore, the time controls considered best for learning chess are actually classical time controls or to play daily games. The goal is for you to get really immersed and analyze the complete game "move by move" through, completely on your own. You shouldn't use an engine to do that for you but to use the time and try (without moving the pieces) to see what would happen if you do x y or z. I am aware that these time controls are really extremely slow and in today's online playing world I would probably suggest you rapid time controls. Everything from 10min. or more should be fine as you also learn to play under timed conditions and it will bring you personally a little more joy I guess since only playing games for improving only is also no fun. Often the middle ground might be the best way of doing so.