Beginner needs a place to start

Hello chess.com,

I've been playing on this website for some time now (176 games). I've been studying what to do in the opening (develop pieces, fight for the center, never develop without a plan, go for a quick castle), I've learned how to defend basic aggressive openings like the scholar's mate, I've learned about forks, skewers and pins, I've watched a few lectures by grandmasters on Youtube and I've solved some tactics online (Chess Tempo and the chess.com app). Whenever I play a move, I look if pieces become exposed, if my move is easily countered or if there are any major weaknesses in any of my pieces. When I really don't know what to do, I develop my least developed pieces.

The point is, I'm losing nearly everything. I started quite well, going up until 850 and having the feeling I belonged in the 1000+ because I rarely lost, and when I started to learn more I started to lose more, and I'm now almost at 650 (of which I understood is terrible). I really don't know where I should learn, how I should analyze my games and so on.

How did everyone else start? Shouldn't I have improved a lot more after 180 games? I often play 10 minute Blitz. Any advice is appreciated, because I don't know where to look.

Edit: I'm sorry if this is in the wrong subforum, I couldn't find another place to post it.

I believe it was Nigel Short who said "too much blitz rots your brain".  There are obviously folks who play mostly blitz and become quite good players but it seems you aren't one of the gifted few.  Time to go old school and play long slow games and review them.  That's how most folks get good.  Maybe use the correspondence games to figure out a good opening repertoire for yourself.  Seems you do pretty well if you have enough time to think so take the time.  Blitz is a great showpiece for folks who have good chess skills but for most of us it's actively counterproductive.  IMHO.

Thank you for the quick reply! I will definitely do that, as I find myself running out of time with the opponent sometimes having 4+ minutes on the clock. Maybe a reason for this is because I'm indecisive, I don't really know how to judge whether a position is good or not. I evaluate a piece on whether it's attacking other piece(s), if it controls a lot of squares or important squares (like the center), but when a commentator says Kasparov (for example) is in a dominating position, I can't really tell why if he's not up in material. I'm trying my best to better my position, but end up being attacked until I eventually collapse. Do you have any comment on that?

One of the great things about correspondence chess (online, daily) is the opportunity to combine study and play.  If you're really researching each move using all the legal tools available, you can easily spend several hours on one move especially if it's an opening you're not familiar with.  You watch videos and research opening books to get the lay of the land and then use a database to see what typically happens in a position. It's more work than most care to do but can really pay off.  It's almost like you are analyzing the game twice; once while playing and then again while reviewing it. I find it helpful to work out possible lines on the analysis board and then copy the lines into the notes, especially if there are several games I'm playing.

Don't get me wrong.  Blitz definitely has value if you are trying to learn a new opening, but only if you force yourself to do a rigorous analysis after each game.  Getting good at chess takes a lot of work.  Hope that helps.

Blitz, in my opinion, developes bad habbits on the chess board; makes you overlook candidate moves. Every now and then, I'll play a 1 or 2 minute game to get a laugh at the number of blunders.

If you want to improve, play a standard game and spen no less than 3 minutes per move. That makes you look for better moves.

some people do better to back into blitz ... play slow, memorize patterns and themes,  use that in the faster games after building up a good amount of experience.   But you need a great memory for that.

The question I have to ask is how many of your nearly 200 games have you done deep analysis of?    Are you losing on time?  Are you losing because you spent a whopping 10 seconds on a position that would have had a grand master looking at it for 20 min?   Are you losing in the opening or endgames? 

Slow down.  Play a 1 move per several days game and spend the same amount of time on that game's 1 move as you would your normal day's chess activities (playing a dozen blitz or whatever you are doing).  See how it goes.

What is a good way to analyse a game? Are there any tools available other than lectures to help me get started? I've seen chess engines and I know I can look for the best move, but I don't know for sure why each move is the best. I see what you all are saying and I feel like it's the correct way to improve, but I'm not sure how I should go about analyzing every game other than pointing out obvious blunders.

Find a good move, then find a better one.

Don't play blitz. play a minimum of 3 days per move.

Ditto to the above comments that you should stop playing blitz, especially if you're learning how to play. First learn how to play good moves and how to refute bad moves, then gradually speed up, then if you still feel compelled to do so, then play blitz, though personally I still hate blitz.

I'd recommend posting a single example of a game of yours, especially one you lost. I did that for you below. Here was your most recent game I found, where you lost as Black...

I'll add comments in a few minutes. I can tell right away, however, that both players were making extremely weak moves all the way through in the above game. As for engines, I don't like engine analysis, either, since it doesn't give reasons, and computers "understand" only tactics, not positions (actually computers don't understand *anything*). I recommend using old-fashioned time-consuming analysis by hand except when looking for possible overlooked tactical shots. As for positional knowledge, I claim that there are many heuristics beyond the few basic ones players always recite, so learning those more detailed or subtle heuristics would be a good next step for positional analysis. That's a huge topic, however.

P.S.--

Comments on the above game:

2. f3. Awful. I recommend reading Pandolfini's book (Pandolfini, Bruce. 1995. The Chess Doctor. New York: Simon & Schuster.) that lists many of those more detailed heuristics I mentioned, including not to move the f-pawn in the opening unless you know what you're doing. The most common way to refute this is to place your bishop to aim along the opened diagonal where White wants to castle, in this case aiming at g1 via the move ...Bc5. I had to learn that generalization on my own, however, through months of studying openings from an unannotated database.

2...Nf6. Not bad, and usually the best default move for when you don't know what to do. 2...Nc6 *may* have been better to prevent White from getting a central pawn duo right away (with d4), but your move looks quite decent, possibly the best, since it threatens a Damiano type attack starting with the sacrifice ...Nxe4 fxe4 ...Qh4+.

3...c6. No! Remember, in classical chess strategy each side is trying to get a central pawn duo as soon as possible. Black is perfectly poised to do this right away with 3...d5! 4. exd5 Nxd5, but instead Black stalls a move, which allows White to beat Black in getting a central pawn duo.

4...d6. No! Watch out for "queen slaps" (here the risk to Black is Qxd8+ ...Kxd8, preventing Black from castling). In open games like this usually Black is forced to play ...exd4 when White plays d4, so I believe 4...exd4 would be better here. How did I learn that heuristic? Again, by months of playing through openings in an unannotated database. Much generalized opening knowledge does not exist in readily available publications. At the current time I don't believe there are any quick ways to learn all this stuff in a hurry, though maybe a good chess coach would help.

6. Qd3?! Misses an opportunity to "queen slap" Black, as mentioned above.

8...b5? You just need to look ahead a couple moves. This loses a pawn to 9. axb5 cxb5 10. Nxb5, with a threat to Black's queen on top of that.

10...g6?! Looks OK at first glance, but normally Black plays this with the intent of playing his bishop to g7 or h6, as you in fact did. But if you played the bishop to either of those squares you'd lose your queen, which is exactly what happened. For this type of error I'd look into recommendations for "blunder checking": there's a decent YouTube video on that, and a lot of other recommendations for that common problem. The use of detailed heuristics is also useful here: Typically neither side fianchettoes kingside in double e-pawn openings like this, so reaching for your g-pawn in this opening should automatically *look* wrong. I learned that partly through one comment in Chess Life magazine, and partly from months of studying an unannotated move database. I've never seen that heuristic in any publication in generalized form.

11...Bh6?? is the continuation of what I already mentioned: the need to blunder check, especially to watch for hanging units.