Why 2000-2199 OTB ("experts") are weak players

Yeah, I'm calling myself a weak player, but I just realized how bad I and other players (2000-2199) who I've played are in an absolute measure. There are so many things we do wrong, even after years of competitive experience. 

And this isn't a troll thread, it's actually something I realized quite recently. This is from my personal reflections, and reflections from playing players 2000-2200 FIDE/USCF in slow/rapid time controls OTB, mainly through practice games, but also from some tournament experience.

Here's the lengthy list:

*Calculation is pretty poor - often can't sort out complications that well. The last tournament I played, I went 2.5/3 against 3 2000+ FIDEs, when I should have gone like 1/3 if my opponents had just crushed me / swindled a draw through a tactical sequence in a complicated position. This happens very often in many other situations I've seen.

So bottom line - if they get a complicated position / critical move, the chance they'll get the move right is maybe slightly higher than if they just pick a random move from the list of plausible candidates, and that's pretty bad, given all the tactical training.

*They don't know the right ideas in many positions - There are so many positions that I have no clue how to properly proceed in, and so just play "logical" moves, especially if it's not an opening that I like to play, and have played a lot. 

In my post-analysis of games I play and against "experts", they often make wrong plans, and just play "natural", "standard" moves that aren't at all creative or challenging, when a master would find such interesting ideas. This is an elusive secret, it seems. 

*They even make tactical blunders somewhat often in simple-ish positions. In my games vs. 2000+ FIDEs, most don't make simple blunders that often, but a few have, more than I've expected. They won't blunder one simple tactic / game, like 1600s do, but maybe once per 5-6 games or something, which is, in theory, a free win to a much lower rated player who can convert against them. 

*Tactical Pattern recognition is incredibly basic - This is part of the reason they aren't very good at calculating. I've spent a lot of time on chesstempo.com doing pattern recognition training, and the unfortunate thing is that although I sometimes take 30-60 seconds to finally see a glaringly basic 2-move tactic *when I was looking for a tactic*, other experts don't seem to do much better. 

This is so serious because if you can't immediately see 2-3 move tactics, when you're calculating, you will take forever, since you will keep looking at one specific node maybe 4-5 plies deep, and wonder why it's bad/inconclusive, when you should just spot the simple tactic and move on to a different line. 

The thing is, I bet titled players think the same way about players on their level. FMs might say: "We FMs have a lot of flaws, and make a lot of really silly mistakes, lack understanding, etc.". 

TLDR: My conclusion is that although chess is fun, and you can try to "get good" at it, humans just weren't created by nature to play good chess. We can recognize how lost we are in the game, yet can't fix it easily at all. 

Also, personally speaking, my blunder rate is much lower than what I see of other experts - I've never made a simple 2-3 move tactical trick in OTB ever since I was 1600. 

However, my positional understanding is probably a lot worse than that of players around my level, since I get so many positions which I'm not sure what to do at all.

Most/all of them are casuals who've spent less than a few weeks playing seriously, and most haven't ever played seriously. Not much to say.

This accurately describes me except I probably blunder 1000 times more than you 😳

Same here.

After some research, I think the most important concept in chess is Intuition. I guess you study your butt off for months/years until one day you realize everything just "clicks".

You can play thousands of games, but without analysis and truly understanding what we did right/wrong in the game, I think it is little to no benefit.

Cherub_Enjel  wrote:

It's valuable to be able to recognize one's own flaws, and this is a process that doesn't stop at expert level   I'm sure even Magnus feels he's doing some things badly (by his own standard, not by anyone else's).

On the other hand, it's also nice to recognize that you've achieved something serious already - the vast majority of even lifelong serious players don't reach 2000. And obviously many people quit well before that point (or start becoming more casual about the game), recognizing that they aren't likely to reach such a high level.

Yeah, quickly speaking, maybe I'm being overly harsh on myself, maybe due to overly hard training puzzles, etc.

But still, I realize how expansive the game really is now. Much different when I was 1300, and thought I was incredible because I didn't hang pieces and dominated my 9th grade class. 

For two players rated 600 points apart, the lower rated player should, in theory, score around 3-4%. In practice, for OTB play, it's just a tiny bit higher than this (difference in the statistical trends between theory - the results predicted by the rating formula - and practice - actual results - here is another long and separate topic, though ).

This is a thing that should happen from time to time, for many reasons.  Higher rated does not mean strictly better in every possible position with 100% reliability. The higher rated player will make fewer mistakes and play the vast majority of positions better than the lower rated player the vast majority of times, but sometimes things go just right for the lower rated player. You get a game where the higher rated player makes the blunder instead of the lower rated one, or you get one of those rare positions that the lower rated player happens to handle better than the higher rated one.

Well it is obvious that you will never get good at neither calculation or actual logic if you keep praising intuition...

Glad to see you got your account back, C_E. And it's true that the more you learn about a topic (anything, not just chess), the more you realize you don't know. Aside from that, weak and strong is all relative.

Being in that 2000 group, I have to say engines have pretty much made us all look stupid.   How often after a match have you analysed the game with your 2000 rated opponent and then gone home, switched on the engine only to find you were analysing complete rubbish.

I agree, to an extent.

I wouldn't go as far as calling experts "weak"—but I do believe that one doesn't truly start playing sound, decent chess until one reaches the 2200 level.

(For frame of reference, COMP-4 IMPOSSIBLE in Live Chess seems to play at about 2200 strength.)

It's all relative, though. For players like Carlsen, So, Kramnik, etc., anyone below 2600 is probably in the "weak" zone.

It's probably more constructive to think of Experts as having "room for improvement". Next step: find those flaws and turn them into strengths!

The game is too deep for people to be good at it. at a certain point in chess analysis you're trying to figure out which way the wind will blow by tracking individual air particles. 

Did a cockaroach attacked you when you were a kid? Lol

It's some kid who just watched Scarface for the first time and is now obsessed with it and thinks it's cool to pretend to be Tony Montana.