I HATE my Rating

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Pulpofeira

Nice to see bbgum again in the threads.

JavaTigress
mickynj wrote:

If you are not master-strength, worry about your "style" is worse than useless. And if you are under 1400, your "style" is making mistakes. In fact, that's still a major part of my "style."

The OP needs to improve in two areas: 1)Quit dropping material and walking into mate. 2)Start taking the material his opponent leaves hanging, and start mating his opponents when they blunder. There is a method for this, and it's not that hard.

When it's your move, first look at your opponent's last move. What is he threatening? look at every check and capture he could play! Then decide if you are able to handle them. If not, figure out how. Next, consider your move. Look at every check and capture you can play. Very often you will find that your opponent has left something hanging, or left his king exposed. If you find a winning tactic--play it!

Sounds simple, and it is! But you have to do it on every move. If you do, you will find that it quickly becomes a habit and your results will improve dramatically

The thing is typically I am trying to get an attack in on my opponent as quickly as possible. Sometimes I don't SEE what they are doing with a move and I am too focused on my own attack to care. ( I think I could probably find several examples in games of mine where this is what happened if I looked back) Thinking of it, this has gotten me in trouble on occasion. I will ALSO add that there is some merit to your suggestion IN that I notice that WHEN I slow down and focus a bit more,my chess is actually significantly better. Perhaps PART of the explanation for the 'roller coaster ' thing I get going.

MGleason
JavaTigress wrote:
mickynj wrote:

If you are not master-strength, worry about your "style" is worse than useless. And if you are under 1400, your "style" is making mistakes. In fact, that's still a major part of my "style."

The OP needs to improve in two areas: 1)Quit dropping material and walking into mate. 2)Start taking the material his opponent leaves hanging, and start mating his opponents when they blunder. There is a method for this, and it's not that hard.

When it's your move, first look at your opponent's last move. What is he threatening? look at every check and capture he could play! Then decide if you are able to handle them. If not, figure out how. Next, consider your move. Look at every check and capture you can play. Very often you will find that your opponent has left something hanging, or left his king exposed. If you find a winning tactic--play it!

Sounds simple, and it is! But you have to do it on every move. If you do, you will find that it quickly becomes a habit and your results will improve dramatically

The thing is typically I am trying to get an attack in on my opponent as quickly as possible. Sometimes I don't SEE what they are doing with a move and I am too focused on my own attack to care. ( I think I could probably find several examples in games of mine where this is what happened if I looked back) Thinking of it, this has gotten me in trouble on occasion. I will ALSO add that there is some merit to your suggestion IN that I notice that WHEN I slow down and focus a bit more,my chess is actually significantly better. Perhaps PART of the explanation for the 'roller coaster ' thing I get going.

Sounds like you've picked up on the problem right there.  Stop trying to get such a quick attack.  Make sure you're not leaving pieces hanging.  Check to see if your opponent left pieces hanging.  If nothing's hanging, make sure you get your pieces developed - and don't bring the queen out too early.

JavaTigress
bb_gum234 wrote:
JavaTigress wrote:

Why am I so bad at this game.

I'm guessing that the "proper" way of playing is just really boring to you.

I looked at a few of your games. One thing I see often with players at this level (and I'm not really sure why) is when something is attacked, instead of defending or retreating the instinct seems to be to counter attack. So you get a lot of situations like this:

 

A silly opening just to show the idea. Instead of retreating the knight, black plays a check and now has 2 pieces under attack and will have to lose one of them.

This ties in to what I'm guessing is boring for you... "proper" play means you're not allowed to lose any material. Not even a single pawn! Never. Sure GMs can sacrifice, but that stuff comes later. In the beginning, greed is #1. This means if something is under attack, you (almost always) have to retreat. No choice, no deep plans, no creativity, nothing. You just have to retreat because otherwise you lose a piece.

Especially adults I think are attracted to chess as some kind of intellectual, strategic, deep thinking game... but in the beginning it's none of that. It's a game of making sure your move is safe, trying to keep all your pieces defended, and trying to win the opponent's pieces. Not with a grand strategy, just by directly attacking and capturing undefended pieces.

Won't retreating or making some defensive move lose me momentum? And I think a big part of the trouble is that I really want to finish the game before the pieces get too wittled down for me to do much ( IE.... pawns are sort of useless)

MGleason

Momentum is not usually as important as material.  If you focus too much on momentum and not enough on material, you're going to have a big attack that quickly runs out of material, and then you've got nothing left when your opponent launches a counter-attack.  Strong players will sometimes sacrifice material to gain a short-term advantage as they press an attack, but for every game they do that they play a dozen where they don't.  Hang on to your pieces; a dead piece can't help you later.

 

Also, at high levels, games are often won in the endgame.  Pawns are far from useless - each one is a potential queen.  There's no reason to rush to end the game quickly.

JavaTigress
MGleason wrote:

Momentum is not usually as important as material.  If you focus too much on momentum and not enough on material, you're going to have a big attack that quickly runs out of material, and then you've got nothing left when your opponent launches a counter-attack.  Strong players will sometimes sacrifice material to gain a short-term advantage as they press an attack, but for every game they do that they play a dozen where they don't.  Hang on to your pieces; a dead piece can't help you later.

 

Also, at high levels, games are often won in the endgame.  Pawns are far from useless - each one is a potential queen.  There's no reason to rush to end the game quickly.

 mean... yes they are, but TYPICALLY I find that I have noway of getting my pawns to where they need to go by the time that point comes.

titaniumrex

learn positional skills - they help a lot

JustOneUSer
The only games you've played very recently are Rapids, and your rating is improving with them.
SeniorPatzer

I think there's been some really terrific comments in trying to help you, JavaTigress.  

 

I would add that maybe you find the best player you know that's readily available physically (and for free) to talk with you about chess and to talk about getting better.  Show him or her this thread.   I think it helps to talk to people face-to-face.  

 

That's not to put down anything that anyone has written on this thread.  It's only to say that encouragement in real life is a different kind of helpful than encouragement on the internet.

 

Best Regards.

JavaTigress
BobbyTalparov wrote:
JavaTigress wrote:

The thing is typically I am trying to get an attack in on my opponent as quickly as possible. Sometimes I don't SEE what they are doing with a move and I am too focused on my own attack to care. ( I think I could probably find several examples in games of mine where this is what happened if I looked back) Thinking of it, this has gotten me in trouble on occasion. I will ALSO add that there is some merit to your suggestion IN that I notice that WHEN I slow down and focus a bit more,my chess is actually significantly better. Perhaps PART of the explanation for the 'roller coaster ' thing I get going.

 

Here is your first thought process problem!  You cannot launch a successful attack until you have built up an advantage to support that attack.  You would do well to learn the Steinitz Axioms:

 

  1. At the beginning of the game the forces stand in equilibrium.
  2. Correct play on both sides maintains this equilibrium and leads to a drawn game.
  3. Therefore a player can win only as a consequence of an error made by the opponent. (There is no such thing as a winning move.)
  4. As long as the equilibrium is maintained, an attack, however skilful, cannot succeed against correct defence. Such a defence will eventually necessitate the withdrawal and regrouping of the attacking pieces and te attacker will then inevitably suffer disadvantage.
  5. Therefore a player should not attack until he already has an advantage, caused by the opponent's error, that justifies the decision to attack.
  6. At the beginning of the game a player should not at once seek to attack. Instead, a player should seek to disturb the equilibrium in his favour by inducing the opponent to make an error - a preliminary before attacking.
  7. When a sufficient advantage has been obtained, a player must attack or the advantage will be dissipated.

Note the corollary on #3!  Launching an attack that is not properly justified means you are asserting that you can make a "winning move".  The only time that is possible is if your opponent has first played a "losing move" (hence the reason a "winning move" does not exist!)  Only when such a mistake has been made by your opponent can you look to #7.  You are trying to jump down to #7 and ignoring everything before it.

\

Hmmm...and it seems to me that an advantage might take a variety of forms... in material, for instance( One side has significantly;y more pieces left) Or in position ( One side might hold dominant squares that allows they to control large portions of the board)

 

JavaTigress
bb_gum234 wrote:
JavaTigress wrote:
 

Won't retreating or making some defensive move lose me momentum? And I think a big part of the trouble is that I really want to finish the game before the pieces get too wittled down for me to do much ( IE.... pawns are sort of useless)

Yeah, I bet you might even say knights and bishops are mostly useless right? That's a pretty common sentiment 

Sometimes that's the eureka moment, when a player realizes even a pawn is important... why is a pawn important? Because it can turn into a queen! Knights and bishops are useful because lets say you have two knights attacking one of my pawns, and I only have one knight to defend it... you're going to win the pawn.

 

NO,actually... I find knights and bishops to be quite useful. And perhaps that is your point. It is simply a matter of knowing HOW to use them!

JavaTigress
bb_gum234 wrote:

Oh, well that's better than some people who I've talked to, who ask why knights and bishops matter.

And sure momentum is important, but generally you want a superior force. Instead of having more pieces on the board in general, it's localized. You might count 5 pieces on the kingside vs 2 opponent's pieces. So you sacrifice to open up the king, and attack with superior numbers. Momentum is important because given time the opponent will bring more defenders.

Even the most wild attacker (if they're a GM) bases their attack on something logical like this. If there's nothing in the position to make them think an attack might work, they will defend and retreat and play all those boring moves until an opportunity presents itself.

This is what made Paul Morphy's attacks so much better than his peers. Instead of attacking right away, he spent the opening bringing out as many pieces as he could. With more pieces off the back rank than his opponent, he could afford to sacrifice a few.

IF you look at my games, you'll find I am OFTEN trying to back up my queen with them. And an interesting point. So perhaps I try to attack too soon,many times. AND I think I need to learn to slow down and LOOK a bit more instead of making the first move that catches my eye.

MGleason

Yes, that would definitely help.  Making the first move that catches your eye is a sure-fire way to get into trouble, and attacking too soon will also get you in trouble.

Piaten
[COMMENT DELETED]
JavaTigress
BobbyTalparov wrote:
JavaTigress wrote:

Hmmm...and it seems to me that an advantage might take a variety of forms... in material, for instance( One side has significantly;y more pieces left) Or in position ( One side might hold dominant squares that allows they to control large portions of the board)

 

 

Absolutely.  In some cases, material may be completely even, but you have a large positional advantage that would allow you to attack.  For example, suppose the position is completely closed, but you have been able to set up Alekhine's Gun on a semi-open file (where it is open for you).  This type of position forces your opponent to defend the weak pawn.  If you are able to create another threat (say, a knight that can jump over the pawn chain in a threatening way), the opponent may not be able to defend both.  Since material is even, the advantage you have (at the start of the attack) is simply positional in nature.

 

That said, at your level, 95% of the time the advantage you will see is in terms of material.  Typically players below ~1300 rarely get to a point where a positional advantage justifies an attack.  The reason for this is simple:  they usually lose material before such a situation could arise.

The trick either way, as it seems to me, is recognizing when you HAVE the advantage.

SeniorPatzer
BobbyTalparov wrote:
JavaTigress wrote:

The trick either way, as it seems to me, is recognizing when you HAVE the advantage.

 

My rule of thumb:  if I do not see an advantage, I err on the side of caution.  That is, if I feel we are still equal, I continue to improve my pieces (whether that is to continue development, or find a better square for a developed piece).  That is, of course, assuming there are no tactical situations I need to address.  When you review your games (which you should), if you had an advantage and missed it, you have a learning experience.  However, if you didn't have an advantage and simply threw pieces away, while still learning, you are learning less (that is, you are simply re-learning that you should take better care of your pieces).

 

So, after each of your opponent's moves, stop and go through the following thought process (the quick version of it):

 

Pre-Step:  What are my opponent's threats/tactics?  That is, if we were to skip my move and he would go again, what is he trying to accomplish?  The answer to this question can help you identify what you need to do later in the thought process.

 

Step 1:  Do I have any threats/tactics?  Is there a way I can win material/mate in a forcing way?  (Note that if there are, your opponent failed Step 3!  You can shortcut the thought process and play the line to win material/mate without going through the rest of the thought process).  If my opponent had a threat/tactic in Step 1, I must find a way to handle it here!

 

Step 2:  If there are no tactics for either player (i.e. a "quiet" position), What are my worst pieces?  How can I make them better?  What are my opponents best/worst pieces?  Is there a way I can make them worse/keep them bad or (in the case of a good piece), trade it off?  (This is the strategic part of the thought process!  Note that the other 3 steps are all tactical - which is why tactics are so important).

 

Step 3:  If I play my selected move, does my opponent have any tactics?  If he does, I must discard that move and find another by going back to step 2(this could mean a completely different move, or a move that prepares the move you wanted to make).  If he does not, I can play my move.

 

 

That's a great checklist (because it's simple and easy to remember) for any chess novice!

u216751
JavaTigress wrote:

Feeling pretty discouraged just now.I don't think I will ever improve.

 

SOOOOO sick of playing this game and not feeling good at it. About the time my rating starts to improve even a little, it seems like I lose a game or several and.... I just get nowhere. Why am I so bad at this game. takes all of the fun out of playing to be honest. IF I am never going to be any GOOD at this game,maybe there isn't any point.

 

Hey man, you should create your own tactic, it's big time helped me enjoy this great game more.

DontTalkAnymore

If you want sincere advice then...

This game means nothing. You aren't going to make a career out of it most likely. Don't focus so much time and effort on something meaningless. Treat it as a hobby and don't take it too seriously.

u216751

exactly 

Alreadygivenup

 95% of the population are not cutout for chess.Out of the elite 5% as little as 1% are GM's. You,me and most of us out here are in the 95% pool.So where does that leave us.