losing games to my own bad play

i would love to learn from anyone , besides i am now more than 40 % of his rating closing on a third less than his rating soon -- so an old sick dog never begrudges his next meal in this case lesson or advice -- waiting to start -- maybe extreme2020 could give a advice tip or two on a game i could all the help you know -- even if its basic -- just don't tell me to open with e4 instead of g3--- thats been drummed into me from others-- but all other advice is truly welcomed

gg

true, just play like different things every other game so you get more positions and more ways to practice, this makes you stronger. I'm not telling you to memorize 10 openings, but think of some opening moves that you find cool.

My advice might not be so good since I haven't been playing long, am not high rated or anything, but some things that have resonated with me and helped me play more confidently:
1. Don't worry too much about openings, yet. Pick something that's solid that you like and get into the habit of following good opening principles, like controlling the center, developing minor pieces first, moving pieces just the once where possible, castling, and making sure pieces are protected. Right now, all you should need to memorise is what to do in very specific situations like Scholar's Mate and Fried Liver. And just learn the basics, don't go down a rabbit hole with counterattacks and the like, just learn enough to get out of trouble. At higher ELO people are unlikely to try these moves, so you're not gonna want to spend more time on them than you have to.

2. Play slower games, if it helps you think through moves. You can always speed up once you have more confidence. If you need the extra time to be sure about the consequences of each move, that's fine. Eventually you'll get used to positions and spot things faster, or maybe you'll even find that you just enjoy a slower game more. That's fine, too.

3. If you are playing a slower game, use the time. I've played a lot of 15+10 games where I ended up winning because the other player was playing like they had 5 minutes and I was playing like I had 15+. Sure, sometimes you'll get into time trouble using more time than the other player if they prove to be a tough opponent who's making you use time thinking, but a lot of times you won't.

4. Don't make risky moves just in the hope that the player will respond how you want them to. Early on I lost lots of games because I had some plan which wasn't actually any good and easy to spot, and I'd worsen my position just in the wild hope that they wouldn't spot. Always have a plan B (which usually means stuff like overprotecting pieces on important squares so that you are more likely able to course correct if the opponent comes up with an unexpected move)

5. Try not to get tunnel vision. This remains my #1 thing to work on and the main reason I still blunder, because I play a move thinking it's safe because I forgot what was happening on the side of the board. If you need an extra 5 seconds just to go 'wait, IS this safe?' take it. It's better to lose those 5 seconds than the game. It's very easy to forget this in an excited moment, and I still do, but by trying not to, it's happening less often.

6. Don't play tilted is another thing I'm working on. I lose a game, play again because I want a win, lose another game, play again because I promised myself a win, lose again... by this time I'm feeling really bummed out, and desperate for a win from anywhere - and I'm playing worse as a result. So now I try to ask myself 'am I playing again because I want to or because I'm annoyed?' If it's the latter... eh, maybe call it a night, do some puzzles, watch some videos or someone else playing perhaps, come back rested and more positive.

your rule #4 --is my biggest one i have to lose i do that all the time and i also think #5 is another one i have to work on --- i rush to fast to make what i think is a good move only to find out it was falling into the trap the other set --- thanks of your input i read all your comments and they where very helpful -- some i already do some i need to work on doing more

TUESDAY was not a good day for me playing chess

most games i got myself into being boxed in -- losta queen in one - but on a good note three more games went over the 30 moves per game zone - so its gravey from here on in for those games

I had a look at your profile and maybe part of it is that you're playing like 20 games at once. At your level, that's a lot of games to keep in your head at once. Probably every time you look at a board you have to refamiliarise yourself with the position and what was going on in the game, and it would be very easy to miss something important.

I also had a look at your most recent loss and noticed a few things about your game.
Your opening move, e3 is fairly timid while your opponent is making pawn moves into the center to to control it and is taking up a lot of space on the board by move 4. Your bishop on d3 is hindering your development by blocking your d pawn, and also leaves your bishop and knight vulnerable to being forked by a pawn.

Kicking the bishop with h3 was good, but your opponent responded well by maintaining the pin of your knight to your queen. On Turn 9 you hang your knight, possibly because you were worried about moving it to e4, because of the threat of black's knight. But after capture on e4, you could have captured back with your bishop and been fine. Their d4 move was actually a miss, because moving their pawn to e4 would have given you more problems and had been there for several moves.

But because you blundered your knight, you enabled them to play the e4 move later anyway.
They get your other knight, and you capture the pawn but in doing so expose your king on the G file. That's okay, because I don't think there were great options here, but the only threatened piece at the moment was your queen so you could have moved it in that situation. It'd mean youd be down an extra point of material, but king safety is more important than material. And in not so many moves it is your downfall, as the Queen is free to take your H pawn undefended and then deliver mate.

Also at one point you moved your queen out of the way of the bishop that would eventually help deliver mate, because presumably you were rightly worried about capturing it because of the knight. But you moved it to a square that was still attacked by that knight. It didn't matter much, the engine didn't even call it a blunder because the position was already lost, but it suggest that you made the move quickly, without thinking it over much. It was a daily game, and you had lots of time.

On the positive side, you were much more accurate after the opening, and played some good moves here, but your timid opening allowed your opponent so much space that you'd created problems for yourself out of the gate.

From this game, I would say your main things to work on are opening principles and development (not specific openings, just the main ideas of good openings. There's a book called Discovering Chess Openings which is aimed at beginners and is a good introduction to openings and why certain things do and don't work from the perspective of principles, rather than lots of lines to learn), spotting and guarding against threats from pawns, and spotting checkmate threats.

There are some things to work on, and I would just say stop playing 20 games at once. Maybe do... 3? And if you really want to play more, make those rapid 15+10 games. I'm *sure* that will have some effect on your level of success in games.

the idea started out to play a defensive game but then when i lost my queen probality because i was playing too many games and didn't see that set up also i moves my queen to soon i guess -- and from there on it was all down hill -- i knew i would not reach my goal of 30 moves so i lost interest a bit -- blunders galore for me i guess -- thanks for the input it was very very helpful -- i think i will a stop using e3 and go back to e4 as mnay here have said i should do -- it was a trial run and it didn't do any better than e4 so back to e4 i will go -- again thanks for the input and help

Dropped to 480 now so even though I still have a couple of games just reached 30 plus moves -- started two new ones back to e4 and start again emc2_physics 24 hrs

No problem! So, people play e4 all the time. It's the most common opening move and people win with it a lot. Other opening moves are available, but with a lot of them you sort of need to know the opening theory really well to make the most of them, so if you want just a solid opening move which gives you a lot of ways to go e4 is hard to beat. It's good you're going back to it.

The thing to examine here is why you experimented with e3 in the first place, because I think it might say something about how you're trying to address problems in your game. Based on what you said, my suggestion would be to simplify your thinking. We know e4 is fine, so there's no reason to go experimenting with weirder opening moves in the hope it might fix your game, there was never any realistic chance that e3 was going to be the thing that did it. Analyse each game and figure out what the thing is that's getting you into the bad position in the opening, and how you are getting mated, and work to address those things directly.

Here's a game you just lost which you didn't play terribly inaccurately, but was probably still full of teachable moments.

On move 5, you blunder your bishop during the opening (like the last game I looked at, you seem to have some trouble noticing threats by pawns). You are playing 20 daily games at once, so it's maybe not surprising that you forgot about this thread and saw an opportunity to castle and played it instead of dealing with the threat.

On move 13, you recapture with the pawn which is probably the right move here since recapturing with the Queen can get your Rook and Queen forked by the knight. But it was probably a small mistake to offer this bishop trade up in the first place, in move 12 because they are up on material, and they will happily take a trade that will result in a fork if you recapture with the wrong piece and a weakened pawn structure near your king if you recapture with the right piece. It's win-win for them.

Next they actually blunder their bishop on move 13, and the eval bar swings back to equal. You should have captured with your knight, but instead you threaten the queen with your rook. That would probably be an okay in-between move if your plan was to force them to move their queen then capture the bishop on the next turn. But they had bd7 which would have got them out of trouble again, so it's a bit of a pointless move. You got lucky here, because they missed bd7, moved their queen and so you still had a free bishop on a4, but you missed the capture again and still went at it with your pawn. They move it away and your brief evening of the odds has disappeared. It's an unfortunate moment because they basically hung a piece for two moves.

Because they made a mistake during those last moves, you now control the open file with your rook. It's not a big advantage as they could easily remove your control by moving their own rooks, but it does mean that temporarily you have kicked their queen from that open file. But now you move the rook out the way, and it's not clear what you are accomplishing with that move - you now have the queen and rook on the same file which can be powerful, but not when there are two pawns ahead of them, with no prospect of pushing them.

In the next parts of the game, because you are down in material, your opponent essentially forces you into a series of trades where you aren't making bad moves, really, but they're helping them more than you because of the material advantage. At this part of the game, it's not even really your fault, your position was losing after the initial bishop blunder, and again after missing your opponent's bishop blunder.

At the end of the game they are up a rook, and it's enough of an overwhelming advantage that your extra pawn doesn't matter and you recognise it and resign.
You played okay in this game, you made it to an endgame but I think it's instructive that this whole game was decided by essentially two moments. After you blunder your bishop the opponent is happy to just trade trade trade until the material advantage becomes too much to handle, and you missed two chances in a row to even the odds with their own blunder.
If not for those two moments, you basically played almost as well as a player nearly double your ELO. But those moments were everything. It's easy to say "don't hang pieces" and "take hanging pieces" and I know from experience that it's not always easy to spot these in the moment, but in daily games you have a lot of time to consider (or at least you do if you're not trying to play 20 of them at once!), and so far I have seen you blunder your pieces to pawns on a couple of occasions, so maybe there's a pattern there.

Maybe you see a pawn move and think 'oh, that's probably not important' and keep doing what you're doing, when it's actually threatening a piece. And remember, that because pawns can take two ways, they can fork.

you're forgetting a basic rule, develop towards the center not your own territory. This will help get space and win more games.

Yes, this is a big one

but everytime i go out to get the centre four squares i lose pieces or someone comes in with their bishop and queen and puts a pinch on me ,,,seems like it anyways- so thats why iam playing defensive -- also i seem to lose my queen more when i leave my last rack and try to go on the offensive -- something a miss - couple more moves for the night--- thanks for all the input and time taken to write it --

after taking time re reading KestrelPi posts on my play--- it is quite good -- yes i see exactly after the fact what you say is so true its just that during the game is the problem not after i made anothe blundering move after another vivid mistake after another bigger blunder etc etc etc etc -- maybe i will try another approach to this whole mess

now down to 455 maybe now they will pair with somebody under 500 so i have a chance

god this sound like whinning again- so i will stop it off to play another game of sorts to reliew my mind of chess stress --- again thanks all for the input i do love reading this stuff

I've suggested playing fewer daily games at once, which I think is important - it's really difficult to play so many simultaneous games well. Think of it this way: if I've looked at a dozen other games before I get back to one, there's no way I'll clearly remember what's going on. I might help myself by making notes on the game, but I might not think to write down absolutely everything I notice and that would take some time in a complicated position.

So by the time I get back to the game after thinking about so many others it's like I'm jumping into it completely from scratch. There's no guarantee that the things I was thinking about last time will occur to me this time, and that's a recipe for not noticing problems. It can work the other way too... looking at a game with fresh eyes, you might notice things you didn't before. But it's an unreliable way to play, at best, unless you are so good you can hold many games in your head at once.

But the other part that I can't say enough is not to play tilted. Over the last day you lost 10 times in a row. That's got to be frustrating, but because you play so many games at once, you're sort of stuck playing them. They are daily games, though. You don't need to play them so fast. If things aren't feeling good, sleep on it. It genuinely is a phenomenon that if you are losing, and getting frustrated and second guessing yourself you will be more prone to making a mistake, more prone to rushing into moves instead of checking it carefully. When I get annoyed by a loss and play again out of frustration and wanting a win to wash the bad taste out, I would say I end up regretting it 75% of the time. Now when I lose my rule I try to stick to is: analyse the game, and then if I'm still in a chess mood, just do something else. Puzzles, tutorials, whatever. Consider playing again later, or even the next day. When I do that, playing the game feels much more comfortable.

i have no expectations to win any games -- i have long given up on that notion just isn't going to happen playing against 1000 1200 even 800 players -- i just have smaller goals in mind for now ,like getting to 30 plus moves in a game that for me is a win--- soon i will be pushing that to 35 moves as i have seemed to have reach that goal in most games -- i say most not all yet i still lose before moves 12 alot -and around 22 moves seems to come up alot so till i get to say 80 % at 30 moves i will stick to 30 moves going to 35 moves when it happens but thats coming soon i hope

i play about 5/6 times during the day as time permits usally about 15 mintues to 20 each session each time going through the games that have come up--- that is between doctor visits and the things that need to do when you are a old sick man sorry about my spelling my grammerly isn't working and i have delexical problem with my eyes the type always is so small and hands don't work like they used to -- thanks again for the input i will read you post again to get the most out of it

doker bohm

That's fair. But I don't think looking at some of these games there's any reason you ought to give up on expecting to win. Many of them you play with good accuracy for your level, somewhere around the 70 mark. And what that says is that you're losing less because you're generally not making sound moves, and more because you are making critical blunders at specific points, which is something that in some ways is easier to fix. Take a moment before picking any move to run through a checklist:

* Are any of my pieces being attacked by a pawn or a piece? If so, can I move them away safely? If not, can I safely create an equivalent or worse threat on one of their own pieces?
If you can create an equivalent threat, that effectively turns it into a trade if they take. If it's a worse threat then they have to deal with that threat first which might get you into a position where you can wriggle out of the original threat.

* Can I safely take any of my opponent's pieces? If you're equal or (especially) up on material, consider trades, too. Just take a moment to look at every piece in relation to yours and see if it can be captured. You might not want to capture because you like the capturing piece where it was, but 90% of the time it's a good idea to capture hanging pieces. Basically the only times it isn't at this level is if you actually have an even better winning tactic available to you (I maybe wouldn't capture a hanging knight if I spotted a Queen/King fork), if you actually have a forced checkmate (and even then, if you don't spot the checkmate, capturing the hanging piece is still winning) or if the move exposes you to some kind of sneaky tactic.

That last one is the hardest to see, but at this level it won't lose you games often. Still, consider adding to your checklist: if I make that move, does it allow a follow on tactic?
As an example take a look at this position at move 14 from my game yesterday.

You'll notice I'm not a high level player, and make some mistakes during this game. A stronger player may well have crushed me, but at our level these are practical things to think about.
Thankfully I noticed that on Move 14, my opponent threatened to play checkmate by capturing the g7 pawn with the queen, defended by the bishop.

I decide to nudge the pawn up to defend this. It's not the best move, and I actually missed that I can block the bishop with my knight and also attacks the queen so is a good move in this position, but my move it gets out of the mate and I'm happy to survive.

My opponent now sees I've left my knight hanging and does what probably 90% of players would do at this level. I'll be honest, I might have done it. I might also have seen the trap though if I'd taken a minute to think "what might happen after that capture"

My opponent captures the Knight on turn 15. It's a blunder - because once I attack the queen on the e-file with my rook, it's pinned. 15... Re8! They can't take my rook without me recapturing the queen, and they can't move their queen off the e file. They try to block the attack with their rook, but it's safe to take, because now my rook will be defended by the pawn on d6. At this point they decided to cut their losses and take the rook and let their queen get captured by my pawn. From there I'm more than happy to trade a rook with them as I'm well up on material, and I soon deliver mate.

I'm not showing you this game to boast. Well, okay, maybe a little. I was pretty happy with how this one went. But the main reason is that you see how specific that scenario was? So many things had to go right for me for my hanging piece to be dangerous for them to take:

* Their king had to be behind their queen.
* My rook had to be defended by my queen
* Their only blocking piece, the bishop? That would have been an okay move perhaps, if that square wasn't attacked by my pawn, allowing my rook to safely capture. (I'll be honest, I didn't calculate this bit when I made the rook move, and thought I'd messed up for a moment)

That move was only possible because the queen was completely trapped with no escape, despite being in a space that looked totally open. That doesn't happen a ton at this level. 90% of the time a hanging piece is exactly what it looks like, so take it if you're reasonably sure. Not many people will be able to get you this way.

The other thing I want to point out is that there are a couple of points where my opponent makes mistakes because of not seeing how mobile my queen can be when supported by pawns. Pawns are dangerous, don't ignore them! On Turn 27 he moves his king to a position which attacks my pawn. But he doesn't realise that allows me to attack the king directly because the square is defended by that pawn. Now the king has to move away and only has two squares and they're both bad. One moves away from the rook and lets me capture it safely with my Queen, so I bet he dismissed that right away, and played the other one automatically. But again, I can now just play checkmate, the queen is defended by the pawn. The reason I think this is potentially useful for you to look at is that in both of the games I've seen, you've lost material because of underestimating what pawns can do. I hope this helps