My Puzzle Score Is Proof That I Am A HORRENDOUS Player

My puzzle score is about 2600.  It fluctuates a lot because I do a lot of puzzles, but even for the sake of argument, let's place it at 2550.

According to the Chess Ratings Comparison website, with a 2550 puzzle score, these would be my expected ratings on chess.com and USCF, as well as what my ratings actually are.

Bullet should be 1519.  It's 1103
Blitz should be 1541.  It's 1041
Rapid should be 1704.  It's 1314
Daily should be 1659.  It's 1337
USCF (regular) should be 1498.  It's 740

So even though I am pretty adept at "tactics", I am absolutely brutal at playing chess.  No matter what the time control, I underperform in games by a ridiculous amount.  My OTB rating is less than half of what it "should be" according to these figures.

I should probably just do puzzles and forget about ever trying to be even a halfway decent chess player.  I'm in a lot of clubs, but am reluctant to participate in any of the club matches because I am basically a guaranteed 0-2, and I know I have cost my clubs several matches as a result of this.

Tips

For someone roughly 1300s or 1400s chess.com rating, you have a really nice puzzle rating. Congratulations! I can tell you work hard on your puzzles. You are not a bad chess player (certainly not horrendous in all capital letters). It is just that you've illustrated that a chess game is MUCH more than just tactics and puzzle ability.

This video might help you and especially the Jeremy Silman puzzle I go over here; it might get you thinking in a new direction

6:21 is the YT chapter with that Silman puzzle, but of course I recommend watching the rest of the video to help you navigate away from those common pieces of bad chess advice too:

Nice one KeSetoKaiba... Do you play yugioh too?

Thanks

Yes, I used to play Yugioh and that is where I got my chess.com username from. It was my username on a Yugioh site I used to play at before I started playing on chess.com. I still have some Yugioh cards, but I stopped playing basically since Link Monsters came out and changed the style of gameplay too much. I don't really play Yugioh much anymore, but on rare occasion I'll play on Yugioh Duel Links or Yugioh Master Duel.

https://www.chess.com/blog/KeSetoKaiba/kesetokaiba-username-meaning

Nice KeSetoKaiba

I love Yugioh too... My favorite deck is Ninja Deck... My favorite card is Goe Goe the Gallant Ninja... Even though it's weak, it's effect is overpowered...

90% of your games aren't determined by tactics. On puzzles you're only looking for one correct tactic while on a real chess game you gotta take in multiple factors at once instead of looking for cool combinations. So just play solidly and use your above average tactic skills too. But remember to double check first. Maybe play 15 or 30 min games

You have more wins than losses, if draws are included you avoid defeat on close to a 2 to 1 ratio. You're better than you think.

That website compares you to typical chess.com players. Typical chess.com players barely use the puzzle function, so it's not too much of surprise that you, as someone who uses it extensively, is better at puzzles for your rating.

It's pretty much the same for all of us, because puzzle score is not a rating but a score. You just accumulate points. You could reach 8000 if you tried.

If it was a rating, which is a calculation based on win-expectations, at a certain level you would get no points at all for a correct solution (because you are already to good for this puzzle🙂) , while you would lose tremendously, when you give a wrong solution (because it is expected, that you make no mistakes at all).