Learning from your mistakes works. A lot.
So it would be good to just play lots of games, but after the games are finished use the computer analysis and learn.
-3point14times2
LEarning by ONLY playing games?
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Learning from only playing games is the rough equivalent of not having the discipline to study and truly improve. Experience is valuable as long as you don't make the same mistakes twice - but all the patzers who play thousands of blitz games and keep making the same mistakes are going nowhere for a reason. Use tactics trainers, study endgames, and look over games played by great players and try to analyze them. Stay away from engines - analyze your own games and try to figure out where you went wrong, or go over them with a stronger player. Develop comfort with certain positions and practice them by playing games. Don't be like a sports team that never practices and wonders why they're 0-16 with a game plan to just learn from their losses instead of preparing.
The key things are to work on tactics, study endgames, go over games by famous players and your own games, and to NOT USE ENGINES.
Im playing blitz games for the time being until december, I got tired of books and have decided to take a long break from them.
I just started playing this year and I've played at least 3000 games. I did very gradually improve from playing games but after I started doing tactics at chesstempo (prioritizing getting the problems correct instead of speed) is when I saw noticable improvement. In the span of a month I did 150 hours of tactics training and experienced a great jump in rating. Today I beat the highest rated player I've beaten so far, he was in the 1500s. That may not sound that high, but consider a month ago before I did all the tactics training I was getting beaten by people in the 1200s.
Unfortunately there's no magic number of games, hours, or books to read. It's more about thinking about your losses, thinking about your mistakes, and spending a long time on each move during your games (so that most your mistakes are products of misunderstanding instead of time pressure). And then talking to stronger players about positions that confuse you (ideally after a tournament game you just played with them!)
Eventually reading books helps too... not a whole lot in the very beginning though.
Could you be 1600 without reading, coaching (talking to stronger players), or doing puzzles? Sure. But it would take much longer. I don't believe your friends went from learning the moves to 1600 with games only. Certainly not in a few months in any case. I think they're underestimating their time spent with other material.
Also they're overestimating the number of games in that time frame. Playing several thousand games in a few months would take all day unless they were bullet games... in which case they wouldn't help you learn anything.
As a beginner I played a few hours of blitz nearly every day for 3 years. I read maybe a book a year during that time and knew no one else who played chess (no coaching / collaboration of any kind). I progressed very slowly and estimate myself at 1200-1300 USCF at the end of those three years. (I joined a club and within a few months went to some tournaments so that's a good estimate).
I would not suggest this "game plan" from my own experience. For improvement I suggest long OTB tournament games and joining a club to talk with stronger players after games. Books are good but avoid openings completely. Get an endgame book or an annotated game collection. Tactic puzzles are basically free online now so you don't need a book for those.
Hey folks,
I had some interesting discussions lately with a few fellow chess players and they both said that they never did any tactic trainer, read a book or any other chess material but jsut played a LOT of games, several thousands over a few months and learned a lot in that way.
They are rated around 1600.
Is this advisable? Anyone else has the same experience?
I agree that some basic opening knowledge and basic tactics is a good thig to understand and I do but just by playing a lot of games and going over them afterwards will it really be a good "game plan" so to say?
Thanks,
Vivek