I give up on this game of insanity!

No need to be sorry, i think most of us have or are feeling the same!

I was told smart people play this game and after 12 years I realized that I just got dumber

No contradiction. They just start out smart. But not smart enough not to start.

Its a amazing game, and I envy those who can just say you know what I screwed up and just get better and better. I do try to take responsibility as some put it. Which is 100 % correct I just wonder how to keep doing this with very little improvement. I feel like no matter what amount of practice I will never be even good at this game...

@Duncan-Mcloud43

Just realize that losing is just as a part of this game as winning, maybe more so. Look for the joy in simply playing an incredibly challenging game. Enjoy the journey. Also, you're at the 85% level so, you're actually doing better than many others.

Yeah, but when you start out dumb, you never get undumb enough to stop.

I also feel really discouraged from time to time with Chess.

Kasparov "Chess is mental torture"

NO KIDDING??!!

chesscom should have a mandatory disclosure quoting Kasparov that we have to sign while creating a username

I think everyone who tries at chess is capable of making really good moves, even at very low ELO. We are all trying hard and want that triple fork and if you aren't defending against it when we spot it, we'll always try to play the best move.

There is something to be said for giving up on chess though, especially if you're an adult who has almost literally no chance of becoming a master. Better for us to think of chess as just a brain training puzzle.

Chess cause insanity??? Only if you ignore duties and needs.

He is right. If players at 1200 play that good, what happens at 2000? They play chess using half of their brain capacity and simultaneously develop a cure for cancer with the other half?

No, as I've stated, if one looks at his games, he will notice a bunch of opponents playing around 1 200 level. Just a bunch of inaccurate, slow moves in the opening with not so great play afterwards. Far from the near perfect play he describes. The problem is chess.com changing the way accuracy works in order for beginners to feel good about themselves and now everyone is getting some inflated numbers.

When someone sees sees 80+ from opponent, he is already slightly suspicious, if he is around 1 200 level, but realistically there are some games where it is not at all difficult to score that or even much more because of how chess.com calculates it today. I will give you some examples, and update the post a few times.

First look at this one. A short game. The opponent plays a bunch of not so optimal moves in the opening that gives white an edge, then they play more or less logical opening moves afterwards increasing accuracy, and then white blunders, the game gets sharper, both play far from optimal moves, some really bad as well, and the game ends in 19 moves. Both have over 70 accuracy, which seems reasonable, and the winner is on 79.9 even though he played realistically a bad game, considering how short it was and how many bad or at least inaccurate moves he made.

And yet, when you see basically 80 accuracy, you have this sensation that he played well. He didn't, he played in accordance with his 1 100 - 1 200 rating. In my opinion his accuracy is way too high, and it is too high because even not so great, inaccurate moves don't lower the accuracy as they should. And those 2 bad misses by him towards the end should as well bring his accuracy more down.
And imagine now that he played the most natural capture of a piece - with the knight. He would be close to 90 probably and that would spark some suspicion even though it would be very plausible for someone at this rating level to find that move.

I will do one more. Bear in mind that you have some games where both players play on a low level there are a lot of shifts in evaluation and they get 60 or a bit more accuracy. These games are either very sharp or players just play badly, i will not even take them in consideration, and you have those kind of games, as is expected.

A game where one might be suspicious, but only if he looks things superficially. Now I am not saying that I am sure every such game is clean, there are bound to be some dishonest people. But this is a textbook game where one will get a high accuracy. A bunch of exchanges, and none of those are terrible, so the accuracy will remain high, some not great moves but still ok, and then one player goes astray.

And still you get 85 accuracy. A joke. One would think that black played a reasonable game, and yet he made a mistake on the first real decision and blundered a piece on the next move. This is not a critique, this is an observation, and many people on this level will do this. Your opponent in this game is likely doing the same from time to time. And after all this, you get 85.
This is how accusations are made. You get a bunch of inflated accuracy scores with the intent for people to feel good, stroking egos of novice players in the process, but you get an acusationfest where everyone thinks everyone else is a cheater.

This was a very simple game for the winner. He was winning just after the opening that was played reasonably by both, and it was simple because almost everything was exchanged by the time blunder happened. Then he even gets to exchange queens, and gets an even simpler game.

I have similar games where both of us get like 90-95 because the game is simplified early on. Basically the only games where you can get a really low accuracy is a game where it is very sharp and there is a narrow path to safety. This one is an opposite of that.

To conclude. Most people like the guy in the second game are not cheating, but of course there will be opposite examples.

Every time you are suspicious, report, sometimes you will be right, sometimes not. In many cases you will not be, if you just look at the accuracy and not at the game's actual moves. After all, improvement is in your hands, if you want to go for it. And try not to allow some dishonest people to destroy the experience of playing, and improving. If you make real progress, they can't stop you.

Thanks for the analysis, as you can clearly see I am a very bad player. I am starting to try to accept that I don't have any talent for this game and focus on my other hobbies. But back to the topic: I export most of the games to an external app and the accuracy results are almost the same as chess.com. So I find the hypothesis that chess.com inflates the accuracy so that players feel good about themselves a little bit stretched out

@nkrlistic - Great post!

It is inflated compared to how it was back till 2021 or so. Before, till I think 2021. I had bad games where I had like 20 accuracy. I looked at some of those, and it showed me like 50-60 or so. You have to play really really bad to get 20 accuracy since the change.

Then:

And now when I run it:

So basically it was 15 then, now it is 56. They did it in order for weaker players to see higher scores, it is good for business. But when one plays some reasonable game, he will get suspicious (sometimes it will be justified, but in many cases it will not be). I can only imagine the amount of reports for cheating they get.

As for saying that you are a really bad player, how good we are is a matter of perspective. An average rapid rating here is around 630, and you are far far above it. The truth is, there are a lot of novice players and this is why the average is so low.

And a lot of people are way too hard on themselves. You can enjoy your games with any rating level. If you like chess, why would some number tell you should you play it or not. When I was a kid, I enjoyed playing and we were having fun while playing 1.a4 a5, 2.b4 b5, 3. c4 c5, etc.
You can do much to improve, if that is your wish. You are already doing some things right.
First, you should use the time you have. The added benefit is that you might even enjoy the games more, because you will be somewhat more invested while playing them. Try not to be lost with almost the same time. Aim to finish tge game with less than half your time left on the clock.

I am unhappy when I lose on time, but still I gain more by playing slowly and losing on time than losing with almost all my time left. Those are the games where you can be unhappy because you realize you were kind of lazy, you didn't put in the effort, instead going for some quick moves. If you lose on time, at least you did the best you could.

In both of those games, I am sure you could figure out the way not to lose pieces the way you did. And in some cases, that is enough to turn the game around. Not always of course, you will be outplayed as well.

Thank you for the kind words.

It'a not that I dont' like it, it's that I' ve been playing for about 3 years (I deleted my old account due to frustration) and I' m still stuck at 1000 and I read here all the time that people reach 1200 in 3 months, so how I am supposed not to feel disappointed.

Understandable, but comparing yourself to others in this way is not productive. And whatever hobby you have, there will be a bunch of people better than you at it. My other hobby is long distance running. If I was comparing myself to others too much, I would quit in misery long time ago.

I mean when I was fitter than now, there were marathon runners almost as fast as my half marathon result. And when I finished my marathon race, I was around 900+ place just over 5:30. I was happy just to do it, just as I am happy even just playing games. Arguably I enjoyed some insane 1 200+ level games I played even more than most of the games now.

As for 1 200 in 3 months... some children do it (far from the majority), most people will not get to that rating since learning how to move the pieces.

And most people taking up the game will never get to that rating. Most people will play for years and be below 1 000.

The truth is, when I restarted playing chess, I discovered a bunch of online resources and I discovered engines, and took the opportunity to spend sometimes multiple hours after the games, until I figured out why something was good or bad. Sometimes I didn't gain much, but sometimes I figured stuff out that way. And all that made me enjoy chess more.

Analysis, but the real one, not 5 minute analysis, is something that force you to improve the most in my opinion. One could argue that analysis of games is even more important than playing. Of course, those two work in pairs but you get what I am saying. And some passive learning is needed from time to time, in order to get what the engine is saying. But you realistically have the basis and can understand a lot more than let's say 400 level player.

There's millions of users here. You will hear from the ones who progress well - others not so much. Also many of these will be people who played before, perhaps adults who played as a child etc.

Exactly. For instance when I restarted playing chess in 2020. after not playing for 20+ years, I got to 1 500 in around 7 months. But realistically I didn't do it completely from scratch, I was probably equivalent to 1 000 - 1 200 level today when I stopped playing.