Players 100- 2000 - what do you think your biggest weakness in Chess is?

Hi all, 

The title pretty much explains it, but I'm curious - what do you think your biggest chess weakness is? I'd be interested to see if, for example, there is one most common answer in a particular rating group.

If you want to leave an illustrative game that would be helpful  

Cheers,

~ Jack 

100

100 to 600 : Too many blunder, so many missed tactics. So many hanging pieces, dont know how to play opening, missing opening traps, dont have strategy, dont know the purpose of the many move he played.

Of course tactics. Although my tactic rating is quite good but sometimes i cannot see the obvious move. Probably it is lack of pattern recognition.

Being too eager to attack.

Depending on the time control, like 1800 on here but have been on a hot streak as of late. Relative to players around my rating range, I think I am pretty poor at:

1) Long-term planning

2) Playing against a space advantage

3) Converting and defending small material advantages/disadvantages

4) Reacting automatically to threats ("seeing ghosts")

5) Openings

On the flip side, I think relative to people in my rating range I am generally better at endgames, more tactically aware, and more judicious about launching unsound attacks

Yep, I can relate haha

It's good to keep an eye on your 'pressure points' so to speak - areas where your opponent's pieces are exerting pressure on either a piece or a square. 

Usually, these things are manageable as long as you are conscious of them  
Thanks for your comment. 

Yep, these things are basic but players of probably all levels below master struggle with them in some way or another. You would be surprised the number of pieces I still receive (and donate!) at the 2050 - 2100 rapid level!  

Thanks for your input!

2100 - 2200 here

My weakness is piece positioning

Mid 3100 is pretty impressive! 

To be honest, I stopped trying super hard at tactics when I reached 3100 (I've since gone back under) because I realised that they weren't helping me get better at actually playing. I do think that exclusively training tactics leaves some deficits that start to show around the 1800 level. 

That said, I still get enjoyment and a certain amount of reward out of doing some whenever I feel like it. 

Considering your username it is no wonder  

To be honest I think playing aggressively is great, as long as you don't try to start attacking too early. 

Pretty well developed answer, I can tell you've put some thought into this question already  
I know you didn't ask for advice per se, but one part of your answer stands out to me: 

1) Long term plans
I wouldn't say long term plans are really that common - I'm not the first to say this but as long as you have an idea of how to improve your position over the next 5 moves or so, most of the time this is enough. Exceptions might be very closed or cramped positions where everything revolves around the success or failure of one pawn break. 

Much more common for me is the identification of a long term weakness, which you do not have to take advantage of immediately to reap the benefits of, such as weaknesses in pawn structure, the absence of one colour bishop (which predisposes the player to a weakness on the colour complex of the missing bishop), etc. 

Calculating in blitz is hard - blitz is much more just about picking the move that feels right, and troubleshooting it: "Ok, I want to play this move - does it hang anything or is there a better move?" and that's about all you have time for. 

If you want to take your time and assess your candidate moves rapid's the way to go. 

Piece positioning could mean a lot of things - what do you mean specifically?

I mostly play correspondence chess and am 1400.

According to Insights, my biggest weakness is endgames.

I wont tell or it reveals hehe

My biggest weakness is frustation and not looking at the board carefully

Speaking about OTB I have 3 main weaknesses:

Having mental health problems sometimes I would turn up for a game either unfocused, underconfident or anxious and lose to players with less overall understanding than me.

Second is board vision. It's fairly rare I would be outplayed positionally but for my overall level I throw in too many beginner level tactical oversights. If I'm not vigilant I can make a simple mistake out of nowhere.

Third is that I'm often concentrated up until I gain a big advantage but then once attained it's difficult for me not to automatically completely relax as if the game is already over.

My last rating was a Scottish federation rating from a couple of years ago of I think 1799, but based on only about 12 games before covid hit. I'm sure if I was to play more games now I'd be more like 1900s.