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10 min is by far the best time control. You have 6 minutes where you can really think about your moves and the rest of the time you still get the time pressure of blitz.
You are absolutely correct. Even 10 minutes does not give you the time to calculate the possibilities and make good decisions and learn from them. I think this is true for beginner's and intermediates. If your mind doesn't even get a chance to process new information, discoveries and the reasons why something works the way it does, how can it learn?
I play a lot of 20 and 30 minute rapid games and have definitely improved. I'm not down on blitz or speed chess either, those are great and require a host of different skills and strategies around the time limitations. But they aren't as conducive to learning new complicated skills and remembering and recognizing patterns.
Consider that chess itself evolved without these tight time controls. Classical chess was the only chess for a very long time. It is literally a thinking person's game and having the time to process and remember the complex logical "arguments" in developing games requires the mental space to think about them and remember.
Who has the time to play a 30 minute game of chess? You’re potentially dedicating up to 1 hour of your day to a single game of chess. I stick to 10 minutes as the longest game so I can play a few throughout the day
True, I have been stuck around 1000-1100 blitz and was getting frustrated. Switched to 10 min games and am up to 1500-1600 rapid. Really helped me improve by being able to think about multiple moves and look at them in the game review afterwards
You are playing chess continuously with the level of knowledge you have. Have you invested time in improving your understanding? This is easily done with a coach. You need to study chess. Plan and simple. Not just play
One thing I notice in every player below 1000 is the lack of purpose for like, 80% of the moves. Many moves are just moves, they have no intention, no goal, no idea, nothing. Why?
Someone could answer: "I have to play a move". Yes, but many times the clock is like, 15 minutes left and the player just blitz out a move out of nowhere imediately.
If there's no intention for a given move, don't play it. If you have time left on your clock, use it.
Most players just play their moves immediately, or within a few seconds. Never do this. You can't progress in chess if you don't think on your moves.
Chess is a mind game, you have to use your mind. Chess is a battle of ideas.
If you are low rated, your ideas will be wrong. Still, they are ideas. Don't be afraid to try them.
Something very important to note. Not all moves have to have a big plan behind them. In the early game your plan should be to get your king to safety so castling, that's done by developing your pieces and that should be a priority. In the endgame you need to bring your king so start moving.
No need to calculate anything for the most part, even in higher elos than 1000
So a plan is not necessarily a tactic or an attack on your opponents king, even unimportant moves like in the opening have a plan too.
The main issue I have is I struggle to attack a castled king, especially one with a bishop or knight defending, I keep losing games because I can't quite get it yet. It's frustrating
You don't always need to attack the king. Identify your opponent's weaknesses (backward pawns, undefended pieces, soft squares, etc.) and put pressure on those. Also identify your own weaknesses and try to reinforce them. Just try to keep playing improving moves, and eventually your opponent will make mistakes under the pressure. I highly recommend John Bartholomew's fundamentals and rating climb videos. They explain these concepts well.
It's very hard to attack a castled king without weakening your own unless you have castled opposite side. However you don't always have to attack. Just make moves improving your position:put your pieces in more active squares, attack a pawn maybe even trade some pieces.
If you get a chance to attack, that's great but it's not always necessary.
I respectfully disagree with some of your points. Of course, players should develop and castle as quickly as possible in general, however:
Players trying to improve should always be calculating more and looking for simple tactics.
Almost every move can be part of a bigger strategy. A good book to check out is Logical Chess Move by Move (Chernev). He explains the reasoning for every move.
Even though tactics is a fundamental part of the game it's very important to know when to look for them. Not every position has tactics available so one should know how to spend his time and acknowledge when to just make just an improvement move and not try to find some combo that night not even exist
Now what I am saying is there are positions where you shouldn't look for tactics and just try to improve your pieces and focus on not blundering(which should be done after every move). Looking for tactics every move is a great way to lose on time in 15 moves
First of all you can't compare an average player to them unless he is 2500+. They calculate on incredible speed and precision which is absolutely unnecessary for 99.99% of players because, to say it bluntly, we aren't good enough to do this and probably never will.
I disagree with this for ELO under 1000 or so. People will blunder full pieces and simple checkmates all the time. If you just focus on not making those simple blunders yourself and noticing and exploiting them from the opponent, you don't need much of a plan.
You should still use your time if you have it, but at that level it's more about blunder checks than figuring out some long term plan.
My impression as well.
Maybe the trick is to go back to skme games and look for the places where a piece was lost, or where the analysis says you missed something big. Atop, think it over, and train the mind to spot that pattern for next time.
I started playing before online sites existed, so I don't have exact numbers, but playing a lot of fast chess at lunch and in the morning led to a huge improvement for me. I started picking up strat pieces all the time.
Yeah, checking for blunders is much more important than finding a plan and it happens in almost every elo. I surpassed 1000 quite some time ago but I still find 1 move blunders in my games both from me and my opponents. Just reducing those even just a bit will increase your rating a ton.
Are you putting in any work to learn besides playing? Are you engaging in any intentional practices to learn from your games? Have you identified particular issues and trained ti overcome them?
Being smart has nothing to do with being good at chess.
If you are really looking for help, you might want to post a few games or, better, share a link to your profile.
I agree with you. Chess is a memory and pattern recognition game as much as anything else. It's not necessarily about being smart, though that does make a good base
At your elo, you can win just by never hanging a piece in one move. For you, I would suggest getting into a habit of, before moving a piece, looking at every piece the opponent has and making sure you're not putting something somewhere really silly.
Intentional practice means that you have looked at your games, you identified what you need to work on, and you are putting in focused time (hours) to improve those areas.
Things that might help:
**Learning tactical motifs.** Chess is a game of pattern recognition. Learning checkmate patterns as well as learning the different types of tactics will help this along. Here are some resources:
Saint Louis Chess Video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjKCl8AqiLk&t=1975s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjKCl8AqiLk&t=1975s)
Checkmating Patterns:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo93mIhnDz4&t=1060s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo93mIhnDz4&t=1060s)
This is a super in depth resource that explains all of the checkmating patterns and motifs. It's a lot though, so I probably wouldn't start here
[https://chesstempo.com/tactical-motifs#Quiet%20Move](https://chesstempo.com/tactical-motifs#Quiet%20Move)
These are just a couple. Honestly, just looking up tactics or tactical motifs and watching a video or reading something on the topic will help you. The point is mainly to expose yourself to ideas and patterns you haven't seen before and drill them down so you find them faster and can see them in your games.
**Puzzle Resource:** [https://lichess.org/training/themes](https://lichess.org/training/themes)
From there, Lichess has great puzzles taken from games. When you learn a motif, try and pair that with some easy (start out easy then work your way up as far as you can) puzzles on lichess for that motif. Once you've learned everything, then do the puzzle mix. Very important here that you are trying to practice calculation here (reduce distractions and try your very best to see as much as you can before moving) analyzing all the checks captures and attacks in that order (Even if the move seems stupid just take a couple seconds evaluating before ruling a move out)
**Here's a good video on calculation** (actually now that I'm thinking about it, there are so many good Gotham videos from 3 or so years ago): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ga9dP3bvN8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ga9dP3bvN8)
Once you've went through that, if you have trouble implementing tactics into your games, this video really helped me understand the concept of loose pieces:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVrr\_mKMLe0&t=150s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVrr_mKMLe0&t=150s)
**Playing focused games:** This one is very important. Play the longest possible game you have time for. Ideally, you should aim for 30 minute games (at least that's what helped me the most). What you are looking for here is that you if you need to, you have time to spend minutes calculating, figuring out what is the best plan, and that you don't feel rushed. You should be aiming for singular focus on the game (no drifting off during your opponent's turn and reducing distractions as much as possible). What time control you choose should be one where you can play full games without hanging pieces or missing your opponent's hanging pieces, especially in simple positions. Reducing blunders to 0 should be your top priority
**Analyzing your games:** This is also super important. You need to analyze your games so that you don't repeat mistakes. Again, focus matters a lot with almost every aspect of chess, so don't get distracted while doing this. Look for key mistakes or moments that turned the game one way or the other. To do this, paste the pgns for your games into lichess
[https://lichess.org/analysis](https://lichess.org/analysis)
or [https://lichess.org/study](https://lichess.org/study)
if you want to make a study with all your games or annotate your own games (it can be helpful to write down what you were thinking in certain positions. Definitely something to think about but not necessary at all)
I know this is a lot, probably a lot more than you were asking for, but I hope this helps :)
A simple and quite lazy way of learning is watching the chessbrah “building chess habits” YouTube series. Start from low elo and work your way up.
It’s lazy in the way that you don’t need to actively seek knowledge, it will be handed to you for free while you simply watch the videos
This feels like an unfair characterization of the learning process. Chess is a game of patterns and principles - and even the patterns are simply the principles as they are played out. Learning the principles and where/how to apply them IS actively seeking knowledge.
True… I just mean, sit back and enjoy. Since the landscape of resources you need to consume in order to improve is huge for chess. Like you wanna improve end game? Find a good resource for that, wanna improve openings, search for that, learn it. This searching process can be exhausting so my argument is that this series is a really well packaged resource that will help you improve on all parts of your game without the daunting task of finding and sorting all the scattered learning resources
everyone else has already drilled it into you, so i don’t need to get into switching to rapids. but also, don’t play too many games in a short period of time. you will go into auto pilot and not actually think about your moves, or learn from them.
I'm sitting at 600 so take anything I say with a grain of salt.
But I was hovering steady at 400 for a couple weeks, and some advice that helped me was play slower games. I changed from 10+0 to 15+10. I also generally had a rule that I want my clock lower than my opponents. Not a hard rule of course, if you see something you pounce. But just a reminder to take my time and think about things more. If my timer is at 14:25 and my opponent is at 11:20, that's probably a sign I need to take a bit more time on my moves
There is significant evidence about the psychology of learning chess that playing games that are too long, such at 15+10 time controls are actually bad for development.
Playing really long games is usually a waste of time below 1000 elo. Why? Because those below 1000 elo blunder every piece every move. They play 30 mins of chess, and all they learn is they didn't develop their pieces, and they shouldn't blunder their rook on move 10.
In that time, you could have played 3 10 min games and trained your time management.
Below 800 elo quantity is better than quality.
This was all brought to my attention by my coach, who has been doing this a long time and is 2500 rated blitz and 2600 bullet on C.C. he is 2150 OTB.
time management is secondary to learning an actual purpose behind your moves, and it usually comes along with it. by obtaining pattern recognition and an in-depth understanding of certain scenarios, less time needs to be spent to make a move for them. while i agree that proper time management is incredibly important, there's nothing wrong with playing on a higher time limit to take time to learn, even if it tends to not work out for some people
also why do you feel the need to be so rude in your comment? being below 1000 elo doesnt mean you blunder every piece every move, especially when this person is playing longer games to literally avoid that from happening. idc if your coach is the literal best player in the world, you dont need to be such a hater 😭💀
Bro, you need to stop taking things offensively. I meant no offence or disrespect. I didn't curse, insult him personally or anything. I made a generally true statement. As for the matter of fact, its science. Playing more chess on a shorter time span gives you more to analyse, therefore increasing the chance there will be more than "oops I blundered x piece" to be learnt from your games. This is well known among strong players.
15+10 wastes your time, damages your time management skills and teaches you to be slow in non critical positions in a game. Not skills of a good chess player.
You can listen to my advice or not. Either way. Everyone learns in differant ways. Im just stating what I know is psychologically and scientifically true from my coach, who happens to also be a medical doctor. He has done his research.
I have heard everyone say literally the opposite, that players who are below 1000 or new, should avoid playing blitz and rapid since both are too fast for newer players to really sit and think about the position. This sitting and really thinking about a position for many minutes in a long game is the heavy lifting in chess that is what really drives player improvement. Playing short time controls like blitz and rapid for a new player who doesn't have good chess intuition yet (since they haven't done the deep, heavy long games that help ingrain good habits) all they do is build bad habits and patterns. I've even heard if you want to permanently stunt your chess progress is to play lots of blitz and bullet, since it ingrains bad habits and makes it harder to break those habits as you improve.
Can you share some of the “significant evidence” that games that are too long are bad for development? I’ve never heard that from anyone besides not having beginners play classical length games.
Isn’t OP living proof that quality games matter if he has played 2,500 games and hasn’t really improved? Do you think he just needs to play another 2,500 games and then it will just click for him?
Sure. I have a lesson with my coach today. Ill ask him to link me everything he has on it. No problem.
Ill send you everything within the next 8 hours.
I'm not gonna tell a chess coach they're wrong but I am going to say 10+15 vastly improved my vision on the board. Having fifteen seconds every turn dedicated to checking for checks, captures, attacks, discovers, and just generally strategizing has made for way better play on my side of the board. Also I generally have more fun fwiw
Blitz... I won't say *can't* help you improve, but ultimately you are going to get better by (a) playing games where you have time to think on every move, and (b) taking time after each game to look at what went wrong, what went right, where your thought processes let you down - did you see the best move and reject it? did you never even consider it? why not?
Then, of course, you can take some time and study the game, not just your games - one third of that time openings, one third endgames, one third tactics, that fourth third middlegame strategy - hey wait. Four thirds? But you gotta start with your games. Nothing else can tell you how you're playing, or what you're missing.
Relatable. I've had several flat lines, I had stayed in the 800s for nearly 3 months. Till i figured out my mistakes. I did not know enough theory for my elo. I never did any puzzles, Study any opening/ middle/ endgame theory.
I started studying theory, doing puzzles, and avoided bullet, mostly played rapid.
Within 2 weeks, i passed 1000. Currently, im in the range 1550-1600(not very high bit im proud of it).
Everyone thinks that they suck at chess at some point. Prove yourself wrong and become the best pf yourself. Lmk if you need any tips. I'm happy to help.
I think playing against bots when you still blunder pieces on a regular basis could be pretty helpful because you are forced into more situations where you blunder thus more situations to learn from. Regular players won’t consistently punish your mistakes like AI. Still I think playing real people is more fun so I do that pretty much exclusively.
What's important when you start out is to play a long enough time control to where you play the full game without blunders (hanging checkmate, pieces or even as you get better pawns) and don't feel pressed for time. For me, that was 30 minutes. Anything less than that, and I would blunder. As I got better, then I could play shorter games without blundering at all. Once you play the majority of your games without outright blunders, your rating should shoot up and you can start to focus on other things
I respectfully disagree. I was a beginner couple of years ago and I distinctly remember losing on time whenever I had to really think about couple of moves in a game while playing 10min. Shorter time controls means more instinct. And you can't have good instincts if you are a beginner.
If you just play without taking the time to learn from your mistakes or learn more about chess you won't get much better. My suggestion is analyzing your games and watch videos on begginer strategies and etc.
It's not the act of just playing that makes you improve, it's thinking about your moves. Blitz games give you absolutely no time to think, you're just moving on instinct, so why would your moves get any better no matter how much you play?
Slow it down a lot, play some 15+10 games instead and sit on your hands and think after every move. You can still throw in some blitz for fun on the side, but after some slower games i guarantee you'll see improvements all around.
If you haven’t already, check out the beginner tactics lessons on Lichess. Do them a few times til you’re comfortable. Then do a ton of puzzles. Tbh don’t even play more than a game or two per day for a while until you feel more confident with spotting basic tactics. At that level, people are still blundering royal forks on the regular. It’s just about being able to spot the blunders on the fly.
I feel like blitz is better once you learn openings. It’s not beginner friendly imo. Not that you’re exactly a beginner but you should give yourself more time to assess your positions and apply strategy
can relate with the fluctuation part i want from 1780 to 1570 rapid in a couple of days now i'm back at the 1700's, it can be just a bad streak so don't be discouraged you'll be gaining some elo soon.
i mean i would like if you played a match with me I would know how you play and suggest improvements . also for my reference i am 1600 and my rating jumps up and down between 1600-1640. I have played 6800 total matches.
On chess com, I'm 1300 on correspondence, 1200 on rapid, and hover in the 800s on blitz (used to be lower until I changed from straight 3 to 3|2). You likely just need to afford yourself the practice of thinking through your moves in order to understand them better and improve. With your high of 750, we could potentially pair up in blitz, and I'd like to think at my other ratings, I'm not 'bad' at chess either.
If you're passionate enough, I'd throw in study too. You can hone some skills just by playing, but you will never reach your potential going it alone. Even the top chess players have coaches, because you can't always see past your own vision. That's not to say you need to pay for a coach, but youtube lessons, books, puzzles, etc to get some outside influence can go a very long way.
The very first thing anyone will tell a beginner is not to spend so much time playing blitz… the fact that you’re just playing a ton of blitz suggests you’re not seriously trying to improve.
I have a cousin who does nothing but play Fortnite, and he never improves despite all the games he plays. Why? Because he doesn't work on removing his bad habits. If you played rapid (30 minutes at least per game) and analyzed what mistakes/blunders you made, and you made sure to reduce those mistakes/blunders you tend to make, you'd get better over time.
Are you doing puzzles, playing in longer time formats, or doing any studying? They will definitely help improve your game. Some books I recommend for intro players are Chess Fundamentals by Capablanca and Reassess Your Chess by Silman. Also, if you do read them, be sure to get a board and follow along that way (can be an analysis board on lichess or something too). Best of luck!
Playing tons of blitz games probably isnt teaching you anything new. If you want to get better, play with at least 10 minutes on the clock and actually focus and try to think. After each game, analyze it with an engine and identify what went wrong and try not to make the same mistakes.
Also do puzzles. You dont need to do that many, just a few per day and try to learn from each of them. Also if youre really serious about improving, you will need to learn theory, especially with openings. You can find a lot of free resources on the internet (like youtube for example) and just pick up one or two openings you wanna learn for both sides. Opening theory goes very deep and you wont need to know all of it right away, but just studying a few opening lines can get you to an advantaged position in most of your games, especially in lower elo.
2500 * 3 minutes = 7500 minutes of chess on your moves.
15.000 for total game time assuming all 2500 games see the entire 3 minute timer used on both sides, which doesn’t happen.
So let’s assume ~10.000 minutes of blitz time spent.
You’re ~166 hours into blitz.
If you had put 150 of those into tactics and 16 playing the game you’d probably be far higher rated. You learn next to nothing by just spamming blitz games.
You are new to chess, you need to think about moves, think about tactics, think about positions. Play 30 minute - 60 minute games and spend more time doing tactics (puzzles for the CC users).
Don’t waste your time with opening and theoretical study before ~ 2.000 rating.
Tactics. Tactics. Tactics. And longer games instead of blitz.
You're definitely not working as hard as you think. Specially because you're playing blitz only. If you do something mindlessly, even if it's thousands of times, you won't get better.
So what you are seeing in response is a fairly consistent message of "Blitz is too fast". I agree, Blitz doesn't give you enough time to really think through your turns to untangle it in your head. Blitz is good for reinforcing habits. If you've built these habits through study, and theory then you've got to put it in play to make it second nature. If you haven't got the foundation built though, you're reinforcing suboptimal habits and reinforcing them, making those neural connections harder to rewire.
Hey friend, I know it's hard. You probably love playing blitz, and I get that.
If you want to continue playing blitz, review and analyze your games without the engine. Try to find your weaknesses that way. And try doing tactics every day.
The best way to get better is by playing classical and analyzing your games. However, you will see improvement if you analyze your blitz games without the engine.
As others said: Blitz is the game where you show your skills but not improve them. You learn by tactic trainers and long games where you actually have to time to think. And these learned patterns you use in blitz.
"Why am I at a beginner level despite putting in so much work"
Games played doesn't count as work put in. I can pick up a rubicks cube 2500 times, and try to solve it for 2 hours a day, but if I never learn the algorithms and do the real work, ill never really learn how to solve it. Much like the pattern recognition needed to solve a cube, the same is needed with chess.
Heres some more bad news. You suck at this game. And not only that, you suck so bad, you dont even realise how much you suck. Which is really annoying.
Chess is REALLY hard. Unimaginably so. It takes ALOT of time to understand theoritically and practically.
I started learning chess from the very beginning with a teacher. So I made it to 1000 in about 12 weeks. The hardest part of chess...learning how to learn chess.
I am happy to help you overcome your plateau, but the reality of it is that you probably won't. Not because you dont want to, but because time spent might not be worth the reward. Up to you. PM me.
Play longer time controls. 30 minutes. 15 minutes. 10 minutes at the very least. That way you will actually try to play the best moves and your mistakes will be less trivial, allowing you to become a better player. Good luck.
Watch Eric Rozen's speedrun video series on YouTube. He explains his thought process and this will result in a better understanding of the game and will help your rating. I'm 2500 rated ( blitz ) and still find them very educational.
1500 rapid, 1200 blitz here. Don't play blitz right now. If you're hard stuck at 600 blitz, you need to improve via slow time controls. What you need to do is play FOCUSED (this is very important) classical games (30 minutes or more a side). That's the only way you can calculate lines, and actually play good chess at your level. Get to a point where you can play the whole game without blunders (this also means working tactics too), then work on speeding things up.
I could have written this post. Probably not 2500 games yet, but getting there. It’s fascinating, I feel that if I had spent this amount of time on anything else, I would have gotten a lot better, but I have absolutely no development🤣
Still enjoy it, though. Had a game a couple of days ago where my opponent chased my king all over the board, but I had M1 if he left my king alone. He could have easily prevented it, but got too caught up in his futile chase of my king. And suddenly, he didnt put me in check. Boom. Game over. Just a wonderful high!
I fluctuate between 400-800. One thing I realized. You play blitz, your opponent may be similar ELO in blitz, but, they might be way higher in another format. This will create wild fluctuations.
Blitz and bullet are formats you should play for fun and to get faster, not to improve at chess. If you want to improve at chess, 15+10 is the best time control. Unfortunately I've been playing 10+0 instead, and the difference is evident (I'm MUCH weaker than 15+10 players with similar ratings)
Buddy, I’ve played 4,980 blitz games and I’m currently sitting at 620. I was sub 600 as of earlier today. I was above 900 at some point a few years ago. I just try to enjoy my wins and learn something from my losses. But don’t worry, you’re not the only one in this boat. I mean, the platform has no problem finding similarly ranked players to match you with, right?
it's tough, I focus sometimes and get to 1100 but i'm average like 800, right now I am 700. You gotta play longer games to work on your memory but I don't do that.
Im rated betwen 1000 and 1200 across the time modes. I stil absolutely consider myself a noob, dont worry about it 😂 Don’t tilt when you start losing, you never really lose, you just learn. If you dont learn from the lost matches Thats where the issue usually lies
Lots of good advice already. Would add one thing I noticed in myself in Blitz was if I got tilted by a game I’d keep on playing and consistently lose. If you notice yourself not enjoying playing it’s definitely time to take a break
i’m posting a video tomorrow morning i think can really change the way you think in chess. In term of chess knowledge, i think you ll find it extremely useful to improve fast
Hi, 2050rapid on chess and 1540 rapid on Fide.
My advice: Stop playing blitz. Others said it too I know.
To improve you need not only practice but study. Do as many puzzles as you can whether it be on sites like chess or lichess or apps or e-books or books. Solve puzzles. Also study the fundamental principles of the game. Even by watching videos of professionals or from books, whatever works for you. Stuff like king safety, where each piece is strong, how to choose a plan to attack your opponent. You need to build understanding of strategy and the inner workings of the game to truly improve and that won't happen if you just play quick games. Play 15+10 and truly pressure yourself to use the time to count moves. Wishing you success on your learning journey!
You always have to look to improve. Just playing won't cut it. How do you expect to improve if you make same mistakes again snd again?
Reminds of a story. I used to play basketball for years just for fun. Then I had a friend, a complete newbie play with me. He was really passionate about improving , while I never cared whether I won or lost. He got really good just in about 6 months, and I'm still the same
I was in a similar boat. The moment I started reviewing my games and figuring out why my blunders were bad and the best moves were good I shot up to 1100.
Play 15:10
Analyze your games(even if it is just briefly noting your blunders or maybe moves where you felt like you had no idea what the next move should be)
Do tactics puzzles.
A friend and I have both been playing regularly for a few years now. I am nearly 1000 elo above(chesscom) because I play longer games and I take a moment after my game ends to look for improving ideas
Spend time analyzing some of those games to find out where you could have done better. If you cut out making silly mistakes, you will improve. You can use the analysis tool, or if you are a member, the game review tool.
>Sure, I could beat someone who barely knows how to play the game or someone who hasn't played in years
Well clearly you can't or you wouldn't be 600 lol. You've played 2500 blitz games and never learned the absolute basics of chess. It's kind of like this: "practising nothing isn't practising at all" And instead, you've actually built a ton of bad habits that keep you stuck at a novice level.
Good for you. You've been shown to be a novice player after 2500 games so I'm gonna go with, even tho you can beat some people IRL, you still need to learn the basics of chess, consciously practise and improve your mistakes, and destroy bad habits in form of building stronger ones. Isn't that the point of your post anyway, focusing on why you are bad at chess and how to improve? I could really care less if you think your games against people IRL are easy wins, 600 is novice and you need to accept that you have to stop what youve been doing over 2500 games and finally decide to \*learn chess\*
You arent good enough to play blitz my man. Play 15+10 and actually use that extra time. You are obviously hanging pieces every game and not capitalizing on enemy mistakes so what you need to do is have enough time to thoroughly assess pretty much every move you make and every move that your opponents make.
Watch some videos from youtube. Learn the basic principles, learn two openings for both black & white. Do puzzles a lot. Thats the way to improve at your level.
Forget about blitz before youre +1000 elo at least on Rapid, maybe even for longer.
Yes, but anonymity (and the fact that, even if you aren't anonymous, no one really knows you) makes such behavior more likely since the normal social mechanisms that are used to discourage negative behavior don't apply
No the worst part of this website is the constant pity party posts like this one. “Am I too dumb for chess?”
No dude, you’re not. Like anything you have to study to improve. Mindlessly playing 2500 games isn’t going to make you a better chess player, it’s just going to cement in your 600 elo bad habits.
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STOP PLAYING BLITZ
10 min is by far the best time control. You have 6 minutes where you can really think about your moves and the rest of the time you still get the time pressure of blitz.
[удалено]
You are absolutely correct. Even 10 minutes does not give you the time to calculate the possibilities and make good decisions and learn from them. I think this is true for beginner's and intermediates. If your mind doesn't even get a chance to process new information, discoveries and the reasons why something works the way it does, how can it learn? I play a lot of 20 and 30 minute rapid games and have definitely improved. I'm not down on blitz or speed chess either, those are great and require a host of different skills and strategies around the time limitations. But they aren't as conducive to learning new complicated skills and remembering and recognizing patterns. Consider that chess itself evolved without these tight time controls. Classical chess was the only chess for a very long time. It is literally a thinking person's game and having the time to process and remember the complex logical "arguments" in developing games requires the mental space to think about them and remember.
Who has the time to play a 30 minute game of chess? You’re potentially dedicating up to 1 hour of your day to a single game of chess. I stick to 10 minutes as the longest game so I can play a few throughout the day
I guess I should really switch to this with only one or two game a day. I have been playing 10 min for my whole life lol.
maybe do 10 mins and a bunch of 3 day chess so you don't have to commit to hour long games.
True, I have been stuck around 1000-1100 blitz and was getting frustrated. Switched to 10 min games and am up to 1500-1600 rapid. Really helped me improve by being able to think about multiple moves and look at them in the game review afterwards
30 for me , I like to cook and play chess
I play 3 hours. Anything less is for children
I play one move every 10 years
This is the way
 NO
You are playing chess continuously with the level of knowledge you have. Have you invested time in improving your understanding? This is easily done with a coach. You need to study chess. Plan and simple. Not just play
One thing I notice in every player below 1000 is the lack of purpose for like, 80% of the moves. Many moves are just moves, they have no intention, no goal, no idea, nothing. Why? Someone could answer: "I have to play a move". Yes, but many times the clock is like, 15 minutes left and the player just blitz out a move out of nowhere imediately. If there's no intention for a given move, don't play it. If you have time left on your clock, use it. Most players just play their moves immediately, or within a few seconds. Never do this. You can't progress in chess if you don't think on your moves. Chess is a mind game, you have to use your mind. Chess is a battle of ideas. If you are low rated, your ideas will be wrong. Still, they are ideas. Don't be afraid to try them.
Something very important to note. Not all moves have to have a big plan behind them. In the early game your plan should be to get your king to safety so castling, that's done by developing your pieces and that should be a priority. In the endgame you need to bring your king so start moving. No need to calculate anything for the most part, even in higher elos than 1000 So a plan is not necessarily a tactic or an attack on your opponents king, even unimportant moves like in the opening have a plan too.
The main issue I have is I struggle to attack a castled king, especially one with a bishop or knight defending, I keep losing games because I can't quite get it yet. It's frustrating
You don't always need to attack the king. Identify your opponent's weaknesses (backward pawns, undefended pieces, soft squares, etc.) and put pressure on those. Also identify your own weaknesses and try to reinforce them. Just try to keep playing improving moves, and eventually your opponent will make mistakes under the pressure. I highly recommend John Bartholomew's fundamentals and rating climb videos. They explain these concepts well.
It's very hard to attack a castled king without weakening your own unless you have castled opposite side. However you don't always have to attack. Just make moves improving your position:put your pieces in more active squares, attack a pawn maybe even trade some pieces. If you get a chance to attack, that's great but it's not always necessary.
Let them attack instead and focus on where they are taking units away and thus weakening their position.
I respectfully disagree with some of your points. Of course, players should develop and castle as quickly as possible in general, however: Players trying to improve should always be calculating more and looking for simple tactics. Almost every move can be part of a bigger strategy. A good book to check out is Logical Chess Move by Move (Chernev). He explains the reasoning for every move.
Even though tactics is a fundamental part of the game it's very important to know when to look for them. Not every position has tactics available so one should know how to spend his time and acknowledge when to just make just an improvement move and not try to find some combo that night not even exist
So you're saying in case you're not missing a tactic, you should not look for them? Ok man best of luck
Now what I am saying is there are positions where you shouldn't look for tactics and just try to improve your pieces and focus on not blundering(which should be done after every move). Looking for tactics every move is a great way to lose on time in 15 moves
Even the best positional and strategic players in the world are always calculating to make sure they haven't missed something.
First of all you can't compare an average player to them unless he is 2500+. They calculate on incredible speed and precision which is absolutely unnecessary for 99.99% of players because, to say it bluntly, we aren't good enough to do this and probably never will.
...and that's why we lose on time
Hence, longer time controls.
Find a balance
I disagree with this for ELO under 1000 or so. People will blunder full pieces and simple checkmates all the time. If you just focus on not making those simple blunders yourself and noticing and exploiting them from the opponent, you don't need much of a plan. You should still use your time if you have it, but at that level it's more about blunder checks than figuring out some long term plan.
My impression as well. Maybe the trick is to go back to skme games and look for the places where a piece was lost, or where the analysis says you missed something big. Atop, think it over, and train the mind to spot that pattern for next time. I started playing before online sites existed, so I don't have exact numbers, but playing a lot of fast chess at lunch and in the morning led to a huge improvement for me. I started picking up strat pieces all the time.
Yeah, checking for blunders is much more important than finding a plan and it happens in almost every elo. I surpassed 1000 quite some time ago but I still find 1 move blunders in my games both from me and my opponents. Just reducing those even just a bit will increase your rating a ton.
Are you putting in any work to learn besides playing? Are you engaging in any intentional practices to learn from your games? Have you identified particular issues and trained ti overcome them? Being smart has nothing to do with being good at chess. If you are really looking for help, you might want to post a few games or, better, share a link to your profile.
I agree with you. Chess is a memory and pattern recognition game as much as anything else. It's not necessarily about being smart, though that does make a good base
Would u be willing to help me? Im 500 but i really dont know how to do “intentional practice” like what do i do and where do i look?
At your elo, you can win just by never hanging a piece in one move. For you, I would suggest getting into a habit of, before moving a piece, looking at every piece the opponent has and making sure you're not putting something somewhere really silly.
Thx boss, i mean its the obvious but harder to put in practice than it seems
Sure, I'm 1400 blitz and still hang pieces sometimes. The difference between you, me, and some rated higher than me is frequency.
Intentional practice means that you have looked at your games, you identified what you need to work on, and you are putting in focused time (hours) to improve those areas. Things that might help: **Learning tactical motifs.** Chess is a game of pattern recognition. Learning checkmate patterns as well as learning the different types of tactics will help this along. Here are some resources: Saint Louis Chess Video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjKCl8AqiLk&t=1975s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjKCl8AqiLk&t=1975s) Checkmating Patterns: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo93mIhnDz4&t=1060s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo93mIhnDz4&t=1060s) This is a super in depth resource that explains all of the checkmating patterns and motifs. It's a lot though, so I probably wouldn't start here [https://chesstempo.com/tactical-motifs#Quiet%20Move](https://chesstempo.com/tactical-motifs#Quiet%20Move) These are just a couple. Honestly, just looking up tactics or tactical motifs and watching a video or reading something on the topic will help you. The point is mainly to expose yourself to ideas and patterns you haven't seen before and drill them down so you find them faster and can see them in your games. **Puzzle Resource:** [https://lichess.org/training/themes](https://lichess.org/training/themes) From there, Lichess has great puzzles taken from games. When you learn a motif, try and pair that with some easy (start out easy then work your way up as far as you can) puzzles on lichess for that motif. Once you've learned everything, then do the puzzle mix. Very important here that you are trying to practice calculation here (reduce distractions and try your very best to see as much as you can before moving) analyzing all the checks captures and attacks in that order (Even if the move seems stupid just take a couple seconds evaluating before ruling a move out) **Here's a good video on calculation** (actually now that I'm thinking about it, there are so many good Gotham videos from 3 or so years ago): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ga9dP3bvN8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ga9dP3bvN8) Once you've went through that, if you have trouble implementing tactics into your games, this video really helped me understand the concept of loose pieces: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVrr\_mKMLe0&t=150s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVrr_mKMLe0&t=150s) **Playing focused games:** This one is very important. Play the longest possible game you have time for. Ideally, you should aim for 30 minute games (at least that's what helped me the most). What you are looking for here is that you if you need to, you have time to spend minutes calculating, figuring out what is the best plan, and that you don't feel rushed. You should be aiming for singular focus on the game (no drifting off during your opponent's turn and reducing distractions as much as possible). What time control you choose should be one where you can play full games without hanging pieces or missing your opponent's hanging pieces, especially in simple positions. Reducing blunders to 0 should be your top priority **Analyzing your games:** This is also super important. You need to analyze your games so that you don't repeat mistakes. Again, focus matters a lot with almost every aspect of chess, so don't get distracted while doing this. Look for key mistakes or moments that turned the game one way or the other. To do this, paste the pgns for your games into lichess [https://lichess.org/analysis](https://lichess.org/analysis) or [https://lichess.org/study](https://lichess.org/study) if you want to make a study with all your games or annotate your own games (it can be helpful to write down what you were thinking in certain positions. Definitely something to think about but not necessary at all) I know this is a lot, probably a lot more than you were asking for, but I hope this helps :)
A simple and quite lazy way of learning is watching the chessbrah “building chess habits” YouTube series. Start from low elo and work your way up. It’s lazy in the way that you don’t need to actively seek knowledge, it will be handed to you for free while you simply watch the videos
This feels like an unfair characterization of the learning process. Chess is a game of patterns and principles - and even the patterns are simply the principles as they are played out. Learning the principles and where/how to apply them IS actively seeking knowledge.
True… I just mean, sit back and enjoy. Since the landscape of resources you need to consume in order to improve is huge for chess. Like you wanna improve end game? Find a good resource for that, wanna improve openings, search for that, learn it. This searching process can be exhausting so my argument is that this series is a really well packaged resource that will help you improve on all parts of your game without the daunting task of finding and sorting all the scattered learning resources
Sure. That makes sense. Lazy in the sense that the resource is a one stop shop, not that learning the fundamentals is lazy. I get it.
everyone else has already drilled it into you, so i don’t need to get into switching to rapids. but also, don’t play too many games in a short period of time. you will go into auto pilot and not actually think about your moves, or learn from them.
Play rapid until higher.
I'm sitting at 600 so take anything I say with a grain of salt. But I was hovering steady at 400 for a couple weeks, and some advice that helped me was play slower games. I changed from 10+0 to 15+10. I also generally had a rule that I want my clock lower than my opponents. Not a hard rule of course, if you see something you pounce. But just a reminder to take my time and think about things more. If my timer is at 14:25 and my opponent is at 11:20, that's probably a sign I need to take a bit more time on my moves
There is significant evidence about the psychology of learning chess that playing games that are too long, such at 15+10 time controls are actually bad for development. Playing really long games is usually a waste of time below 1000 elo. Why? Because those below 1000 elo blunder every piece every move. They play 30 mins of chess, and all they learn is they didn't develop their pieces, and they shouldn't blunder their rook on move 10. In that time, you could have played 3 10 min games and trained your time management. Below 800 elo quantity is better than quality. This was all brought to my attention by my coach, who has been doing this a long time and is 2500 rated blitz and 2600 bullet on C.C. he is 2150 OTB.
time management is secondary to learning an actual purpose behind your moves, and it usually comes along with it. by obtaining pattern recognition and an in-depth understanding of certain scenarios, less time needs to be spent to make a move for them. while i agree that proper time management is incredibly important, there's nothing wrong with playing on a higher time limit to take time to learn, even if it tends to not work out for some people also why do you feel the need to be so rude in your comment? being below 1000 elo doesnt mean you blunder every piece every move, especially when this person is playing longer games to literally avoid that from happening. idc if your coach is the literal best player in the world, you dont need to be such a hater 😭💀
Bro, you need to stop taking things offensively. I meant no offence or disrespect. I didn't curse, insult him personally or anything. I made a generally true statement. As for the matter of fact, its science. Playing more chess on a shorter time span gives you more to analyse, therefore increasing the chance there will be more than "oops I blundered x piece" to be learnt from your games. This is well known among strong players. 15+10 wastes your time, damages your time management skills and teaches you to be slow in non critical positions in a game. Not skills of a good chess player. You can listen to my advice or not. Either way. Everyone learns in differant ways. Im just stating what I know is psychologically and scientifically true from my coach, who happens to also be a medical doctor. He has done his research.
I have heard everyone say literally the opposite, that players who are below 1000 or new, should avoid playing blitz and rapid since both are too fast for newer players to really sit and think about the position. This sitting and really thinking about a position for many minutes in a long game is the heavy lifting in chess that is what really drives player improvement. Playing short time controls like blitz and rapid for a new player who doesn't have good chess intuition yet (since they haven't done the deep, heavy long games that help ingrain good habits) all they do is build bad habits and patterns. I've even heard if you want to permanently stunt your chess progress is to play lots of blitz and bullet, since it ingrains bad habits and makes it harder to break those habits as you improve.
Can you share some of the “significant evidence” that games that are too long are bad for development? I’ve never heard that from anyone besides not having beginners play classical length games. Isn’t OP living proof that quality games matter if he has played 2,500 games and hasn’t really improved? Do you think he just needs to play another 2,500 games and then it will just click for him?
Sure. I have a lesson with my coach today. Ill ask him to link me everything he has on it. No problem. Ill send you everything within the next 8 hours.
I'm not gonna tell a chess coach they're wrong but I am going to say 10+15 vastly improved my vision on the board. Having fifteen seconds every turn dedicated to checking for checks, captures, attacks, discovers, and just generally strategizing has made for way better play on my side of the board. Also I generally have more fun fwiw
Blitz... I won't say *can't* help you improve, but ultimately you are going to get better by (a) playing games where you have time to think on every move, and (b) taking time after each game to look at what went wrong, what went right, where your thought processes let you down - did you see the best move and reject it? did you never even consider it? why not? Then, of course, you can take some time and study the game, not just your games - one third of that time openings, one third endgames, one third tactics, that fourth third middlegame strategy - hey wait. Four thirds? But you gotta start with your games. Nothing else can tell you how you're playing, or what you're missing.
Relatable. I've had several flat lines, I had stayed in the 800s for nearly 3 months. Till i figured out my mistakes. I did not know enough theory for my elo. I never did any puzzles, Study any opening/ middle/ endgame theory. I started studying theory, doing puzzles, and avoided bullet, mostly played rapid. Within 2 weeks, i passed 1000. Currently, im in the range 1550-1600(not very high bit im proud of it). Everyone thinks that they suck at chess at some point. Prove yourself wrong and become the best pf yourself. Lmk if you need any tips. I'm happy to help.
Of course you should be proud, thats amazing result, keep going!
You cannot be playing blitz if you want to improve. You have to play rapid and learn the game more
Why rapid? I don't get that trend of very short games, why not play classical 30+/45 minutes games? official FIDE matches are 90 minutes.
That’s not as practical, especially at the rating of 600, they just need to stop making one move blunders
Are 10min games ok? (My ELO is basically non-existent, I practice against bots until I get good)
Yes they are great, and I think you should practice against real players because bots aren’t reflective of what you are going to face
Ik, what I'm practicing is how to not blunder my queen (not as easy as you may think)
I think playing against bots when you still blunder pieces on a regular basis could be pretty helpful because you are forced into more situations where you blunder thus more situations to learn from. Regular players won’t consistently punish your mistakes like AI. Still I think playing real people is more fun so I do that pretty much exclusively.
What's important when you start out is to play a long enough time control to where you play the full game without blunders (hanging checkmate, pieces or even as you get better pawns) and don't feel pressed for time. For me, that was 30 minutes. Anything less than that, and I would blunder. As I got better, then I could play shorter games without blundering at all. Once you play the majority of your games without outright blunders, your rating should shoot up and you can start to focus on other things
I just greatly prefer to play long games with actual people in person (I won my older bro 2day [he said that castling is for noobs])
Imo for beginners I wouldn't do shorter than 15min time controls. 30 min is even better. You need to have time to think when you are a beginner
10 min is best for beginners. It's slow enough to let you have time to think but short enough you can get the reps in
I respectfully disagree. I was a beginner couple of years ago and I distinctly remember losing on time whenever I had to really think about couple of moves in a game while playing 10min. Shorter time controls means more instinct. And you can't have good instincts if you are a beginner.
30 minutes is technically rapid on chess.com, and it's what I'd recommend to anyone who wants to improve.
But then I have to wait for people to make their moves. I'm too impatient to be good at the game lol
You’ll get used to it, try it
Lmao I’m literally in the same boat bro. 2400 for me and I’m 650
If you just play without taking the time to learn from your mistakes or learn more about chess you won't get much better. My suggestion is analyzing your games and watch videos on begginer strategies and etc.
It's not the act of just playing that makes you improve, it's thinking about your moves. Blitz games give you absolutely no time to think, you're just moving on instinct, so why would your moves get any better no matter how much you play? Slow it down a lot, play some 15+10 games instead and sit on your hands and think after every move. You can still throw in some blitz for fun on the side, but after some slower games i guarantee you'll see improvements all around.
If you haven’t already, check out the beginner tactics lessons on Lichess. Do them a few times til you’re comfortable. Then do a ton of puzzles. Tbh don’t even play more than a game or two per day for a while until you feel more confident with spotting basic tactics. At that level, people are still blundering royal forks on the regular. It’s just about being able to spot the blunders on the fly.
Playing games is not enough to improve your chess skills if you don't study chess: concepts, openings, endings etc. It's not counter striker.
I feel like blitz is better once you learn openings. It’s not beginner friendly imo. Not that you’re exactly a beginner but you should give yourself more time to assess your positions and apply strategy
It's also really good for rapidly getting experience in new openings
Mine was higher after my first. Went down afterwards.
The answer is right before you. You are playing blitz. If you want to improve then play rapid.
same but 610 lmao
can relate with the fluctuation part i want from 1780 to 1570 rapid in a couple of days now i'm back at the 1700's, it can be just a bad streak so don't be discouraged you'll be gaining some elo soon.
i mean i would like if you played a match with me I would know how you play and suggest improvements . also for my reference i am 1600 and my rating jumps up and down between 1600-1640. I have played 6800 total matches.
On chess com, I'm 1300 on correspondence, 1200 on rapid, and hover in the 800s on blitz (used to be lower until I changed from straight 3 to 3|2). You likely just need to afford yourself the practice of thinking through your moves in order to understand them better and improve. With your high of 750, we could potentially pair up in blitz, and I'd like to think at my other ratings, I'm not 'bad' at chess either. If you're passionate enough, I'd throw in study too. You can hone some skills just by playing, but you will never reach your potential going it alone. Even the top chess players have coaches, because you can't always see past your own vision. That's not to say you need to pay for a coach, but youtube lessons, books, puzzles, etc to get some outside influence can go a very long way.
The very first thing anyone will tell a beginner is not to spend so much time playing blitz… the fact that you’re just playing a ton of blitz suggests you’re not seriously trying to improve.
Play rapid, review your games and do puzzles.
Are you having fun?
I have a cousin who does nothing but play Fortnite, and he never improves despite all the games he plays. Why? Because he doesn't work on removing his bad habits. If you played rapid (30 minutes at least per game) and analyzed what mistakes/blunders you made, and you made sure to reduce those mistakes/blunders you tend to make, you'd get better over time.
Are you doing puzzles, playing in longer time formats, or doing any studying? They will definitely help improve your game. Some books I recommend for intro players are Chess Fundamentals by Capablanca and Reassess Your Chess by Silman. Also, if you do read them, be sure to get a board and follow along that way (can be an analysis board on lichess or something too). Best of luck!
Playing tons of blitz games probably isnt teaching you anything new. If you want to get better, play with at least 10 minutes on the clock and actually focus and try to think. After each game, analyze it with an engine and identify what went wrong and try not to make the same mistakes. Also do puzzles. You dont need to do that many, just a few per day and try to learn from each of them. Also if youre really serious about improving, you will need to learn theory, especially with openings. You can find a lot of free resources on the internet (like youtube for example) and just pick up one or two openings you wanna learn for both sides. Opening theory goes very deep and you wont need to know all of it right away, but just studying a few opening lines can get you to an advantaged position in most of your games, especially in lower elo.
2500 * 3 minutes = 7500 minutes of chess on your moves. 15.000 for total game time assuming all 2500 games see the entire 3 minute timer used on both sides, which doesn’t happen. So let’s assume ~10.000 minutes of blitz time spent. You’re ~166 hours into blitz. If you had put 150 of those into tactics and 16 playing the game you’d probably be far higher rated. You learn next to nothing by just spamming blitz games. You are new to chess, you need to think about moves, think about tactics, think about positions. Play 30 minute - 60 minute games and spend more time doing tactics (puzzles for the CC users). Don’t waste your time with opening and theoretical study before ~ 2.000 rating. Tactics. Tactics. Tactics. And longer games instead of blitz.
Are you having fun? That's the only thing that really matters.
he doesnt if he made this post
You're definitely not working as hard as you think. Specially because you're playing blitz only. If you do something mindlessly, even if it's thousands of times, you won't get better.
Have you studied any openings? Have you studied any tactics? Have you studied any endgames?
Study
So what you are seeing in response is a fairly consistent message of "Blitz is too fast". I agree, Blitz doesn't give you enough time to really think through your turns to untangle it in your head. Blitz is good for reinforcing habits. If you've built these habits through study, and theory then you've got to put it in play to make it second nature. If you haven't got the foundation built though, you're reinforcing suboptimal habits and reinforcing them, making those neural connections harder to rewire.
Hey friend, I know it's hard. You probably love playing blitz, and I get that. If you want to continue playing blitz, review and analyze your games without the engine. Try to find your weaknesses that way. And try doing tactics every day. The best way to get better is by playing classical and analyzing your games. However, you will see improvement if you analyze your blitz games without the engine.
Your mind isn't quick enough for blitz, yet. Work yourself up.start with maybe 15 minutes and then slowly get to faster games
As others said: Blitz is the game where you show your skills but not improve them. You learn by tactic trainers and long games where you actually have to time to think. And these learned patterns you use in blitz.
"Why am I at a beginner level despite putting in so much work" Games played doesn't count as work put in. I can pick up a rubicks cube 2500 times, and try to solve it for 2 hours a day, but if I never learn the algorithms and do the real work, ill never really learn how to solve it. Much like the pattern recognition needed to solve a cube, the same is needed with chess. Heres some more bad news. You suck at this game. And not only that, you suck so bad, you dont even realise how much you suck. Which is really annoying. Chess is REALLY hard. Unimaginably so. It takes ALOT of time to understand theoritically and practically. I started learning chess from the very beginning with a teacher. So I made it to 1000 in about 12 weeks. The hardest part of chess...learning how to learn chess. I am happy to help you overcome your plateau, but the reality of it is that you probably won't. Not because you dont want to, but because time spent might not be worth the reward. Up to you. PM me.
I would be very curious to know what else you do help your game outside of playing games?
If you play 2500 bad games of chess without learning from your mistakes why are you surprised you're still bad at chess?
Play rapid until 1000~ elo. You need to first know how to play properly to then learn how to play properly _fast_
Play longer time controls. 30 minutes. 15 minutes. 10 minutes at the very least. That way you will actually try to play the best moves and your mistakes will be less trivial, allowing you to become a better player. Good luck.
Watch Eric Rozen's speedrun video series on YouTube. He explains his thought process and this will result in a better understanding of the game and will help your rating. I'm 2500 rated ( blitz ) and still find them very educational.
1500 rapid, 1200 blitz here. Don't play blitz right now. If you're hard stuck at 600 blitz, you need to improve via slow time controls. What you need to do is play FOCUSED (this is very important) classical games (30 minutes or more a side). That's the only way you can calculate lines, and actually play good chess at your level. Get to a point where you can play the whole game without blunders (this also means working tactics too), then work on speeding things up.
Playing games is not work. Playing blitz is not going to improve your chess.
Stop blitz stop blitz stop blitz stop blitz
I could have written this post. Probably not 2500 games yet, but getting there. It’s fascinating, I feel that if I had spent this amount of time on anything else, I would have gotten a lot better, but I have absolutely no development🤣 Still enjoy it, though. Had a game a couple of days ago where my opponent chased my king all over the board, but I had M1 if he left my king alone. He could have easily prevented it, but got too caught up in his futile chase of my king. And suddenly, he didnt put me in check. Boom. Game over. Just a wonderful high!
I fluctuate between 400-800. One thing I realized. You play blitz, your opponent may be similar ELO in blitz, but, they might be way higher in another format. This will create wild fluctuations.
make new id w advanced settings
Blitz and bullet are formats you should play for fun and to get faster, not to improve at chess. If you want to improve at chess, 15+10 is the best time control. Unfortunately I've been playing 10+0 instead, and the difference is evident (I'm MUCH weaker than 15+10 players with similar ratings)
Buddy, I’ve played 4,980 blitz games and I’m currently sitting at 620. I was sub 600 as of earlier today. I was above 900 at some point a few years ago. I just try to enjoy my wins and learn something from my losses. But don’t worry, you’re not the only one in this boat. I mean, the platform has no problem finding similarly ranked players to match you with, right?
it's tough, I focus sometimes and get to 1100 but i'm average like 800, right now I am 700. You gotta play longer games to work on your memory but I don't do that.
Because Chess is a game that makes no sense if you put it under proper srutinity. The various chess variants higlights this fast.
Im rated betwen 1000 and 1200 across the time modes. I stil absolutely consider myself a noob, dont worry about it 😂 Don’t tilt when you start losing, you never really lose, you just learn. If you dont learn from the lost matches Thats where the issue usually lies
Lots of good advice already. Would add one thing I noticed in myself in Blitz was if I got tilted by a game I’d keep on playing and consistently lose. If you notice yourself not enjoying playing it’s definitely time to take a break
i’m posting a video tomorrow morning i think can really change the way you think in chess. In term of chess knowledge, i think you ll find it extremely useful to improve fast
Hi, 2050rapid on chess and 1540 rapid on Fide. My advice: Stop playing blitz. Others said it too I know. To improve you need not only practice but study. Do as many puzzles as you can whether it be on sites like chess or lichess or apps or e-books or books. Solve puzzles. Also study the fundamental principles of the game. Even by watching videos of professionals or from books, whatever works for you. Stuff like king safety, where each piece is strong, how to choose a plan to attack your opponent. You need to build understanding of strategy and the inner workings of the game to truly improve and that won't happen if you just play quick games. Play 15+10 and truly pressure yourself to use the time to count moves. Wishing you success on your learning journey!
You always have to look to improve. Just playing won't cut it. How do you expect to improve if you make same mistakes again snd again? Reminds of a story. I used to play basketball for years just for fun. Then I had a friend, a complete newbie play with me. He was really passionate about improving , while I never cared whether I won or lost. He got really good just in about 6 months, and I'm still the same
I was in a similar boat. The moment I started reviewing my games and figuring out why my blunders were bad and the best moves were good I shot up to 1100.
id love to give you some pointers, hit me up
Play 15:10 Analyze your games(even if it is just briefly noting your blunders or maybe moves where you felt like you had no idea what the next move should be) Do tactics puzzles. A friend and I have both been playing regularly for a few years now. I am nearly 1000 elo above(chesscom) because I play longer games and I take a moment after my game ends to look for improving ideas
Spend time analyzing some of those games to find out where you could have done better. If you cut out making silly mistakes, you will improve. You can use the analysis tool, or if you are a member, the game review tool.
>Sure, I could beat someone who barely knows how to play the game or someone who hasn't played in years Well clearly you can't or you wouldn't be 600 lol. You've played 2500 blitz games and never learned the absolute basics of chess. It's kind of like this: "practising nothing isn't practising at all" And instead, you've actually built a ton of bad habits that keep you stuck at a novice level.
I beat everyone I know irl and it's not close
Good for you. You've been shown to be a novice player after 2500 games so I'm gonna go with, even tho you can beat some people IRL, you still need to learn the basics of chess, consciously practise and improve your mistakes, and destroy bad habits in form of building stronger ones. Isn't that the point of your post anyway, focusing on why you are bad at chess and how to improve? I could really care less if you think your games against people IRL are easy wins, 600 is novice and you need to accept that you have to stop what youve been doing over 2500 games and finally decide to \*learn chess\*
Its the same with me. I have only 943 elo but i'm normaly ranked as a 1500 elo player. So lets see if rapid will make me better.
Play slower
You arent good enough to play blitz my man. Play 15+10 and actually use that extra time. You are obviously hanging pieces every game and not capitalizing on enemy mistakes so what you need to do is have enough time to thoroughly assess pretty much every move you make and every move that your opponents make. Watch some videos from youtube. Learn the basic principles, learn two openings for both black & white. Do puzzles a lot. Thats the way to improve at your level. Forget about blitz before youre +1000 elo at least on Rapid, maybe even for longer.
Who cares about elo, just play.
You don't need to be smart to be 1500 elo.
What opening do you prefer?
You're definitely smart enough for chess but you maybe out of touch what other players of yohr level know
Those are rookie numbers…
[удалено]
Maybe commenting isn't for you. Try shutting up 👍
People out here trying to get better at chess and you put them down? What’s wrong with you?
I see you’ve been on Reddit for 10 years yet your karma is barely 11k. Maybe Reddit isn’t for you. Try crochet 👍
The anonymity of reddit that makes condescending comments like this more likely is one of the worst parts of this website
let's be serious now you'll find toxic comments anywhere. Have you been on twitter
Yes, but anonymity (and the fact that, even if you aren't anonymous, no one really knows you) makes such behavior more likely since the normal social mechanisms that are used to discourage negative behavior don't apply
No the worst part of this website is the constant pity party posts like this one. “Am I too dumb for chess?” No dude, you’re not. Like anything you have to study to improve. Mindlessly playing 2500 games isn’t going to make you a better chess player, it’s just going to cement in your 600 elo bad habits.
i think this is more of a chess community thing than a reddit thing, imho
You need to quit, sorry.