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Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months

mbuffett.com

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Re: Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months

#41

Post by spywaregorilla »

freewilly1040 wrote: post #16
DelightOne wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Improvement may also matter a bit more. With ELO you always lose half the time because when you improve you get a higher ELO and get to your half-lose rate again. With anonymous, I assume the pool is stable so with getting better you win more. Though your enemies may outclass you sometimes, especially when your prior ELO is too low.

I don’t really get this. Chess isn’t fun if your opponent is much worse or much better than you. My suggestion is to take advantage of LiChess Zen mode, which hides the ranking of both you and your opponent. This orients me more towards the game rather than rank, while also providing evenly matched opponents.

I find crushing people consistently in any competition to be immensely entertaining.

Re: Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months

#42

Post by gpm »

greenail wrote: post #33

I think the author is underappreciating end game. Understanding how drive winning pawn promotions informs much of the other strategy. This sort of thing informs when to make a trade or a sacrifice. If you don't understand it you aren't likely making good trades. The other simple idea is control of the center and evaluating your play to ask yourself how much control did you have?

I'm 1878 on lichess rapid, so slightly better than the author.

At this level (at least with my play style) the end game rarely decides games, usually one side or the other will gain a decisive advantage earlier than that.

It's obvious to me that there will become a point where I need to start really studying endgames if I want to improve forever, but it's not yet. Moreover my opponents also don't understand engames well, and engines don't play them in a human fashion, so it isn't easy to get useful practice in them.

Re: Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months

#43

Post by seanwessmith »

macrael wrote: post #23

I’ve been watching this YouTube “speed run” by a GM who is a great teacher and have gone from 1000 to 1300 so far. He does a great job explaining some basic theory and giving advice for newcomers. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytkf3qZTj74

I was thinking of developing a website that helps you analyze your games vs naroditsky's games. let me know if you have any ideas on what would be useful.

Re: Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months

#44

Post by SamBam »

anandoza wrote: post #27
kthejoker2 wrote: post #15

Pedantry alert: As ELO ratings follow a logarithmic curve, "gaining 600 points" is a dimensionless metric. These are good tips for beginner to intermediate growth. The things that definitely help the most are: * Pattern recognition - the best courses for this level are things like "Common traps in ", applied with Woodpecker method. Once you've memorized all the mistakes in the Scandi or London system, you can really…

Doesn't gaining 600 points mean that you are able to beat the "old you" (or more precisely, people who you used to be even with) with 99% probability? (Or perhaps more meaningfully, you can now beat someone who could beat someone who could beat someone who could beat someone who can beat the old you, all with 80% probability?) (I made up the exact numbers, but the idea is there.) That seems like a meaningful interpre…

> That seems like a meaningful interpretation of "600 points" that applies to anyone

It does apply to anyone, but it is more or less meaningful depending on where you start, so the meaningfulness isn't equivalent.

It's as if you say you can double your money, but it only works once and with a value The idea that, say, Magnus could increase his chess playing abilities in 6 months (or even 6 years) to be able to beat the current version of himself 99% of the time would be insane.

Re: Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months

#45

Post by Townsendin »

marcusbuffett wrote: post #32
Townsendin wrote: post #29

Not every meaningless achievement needs a retrospective blog post. The article starts out: "For some background: I played chess briefly with my friends in high school," No one knows who you are or cares. What kind of person has the time to read that?

Not every meaningless achievement with an unnecessary retrospective blog post needs a derisive comment about its existence, and yet here we are. Some people are interested in the content, you’re obviously not, just ignore it.

Take your own advice and ignore my comment then, idiot.

Re: Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months

#46

Post by kthejoker2 »

marcusbuffett wrote: post #30
kthejoker2 wrote: post #15

Pedantry alert: As ELO ratings follow a logarithmic curve, "gaining 600 points" is a dimensionless metric. These are good tips for beginner to intermediate growth. The things that definitely help the most are: * Pattern recognition - the best courses for this level are things like "Common traps in ", applied with Woodpecker method. Once you've memorized all the mistakes in the Scandi or London system, you can really…

Extra pedantry: you’re of course right that 600 points is somewhat meaningless, given that it’s harder to improve in the higher ratings, but there’s nothing logarithmic about elo. A 1500 playing a 500 has the same odds as winning as a 2500 playing a 1500, mathematically. You earn the same # of points at higher elo too.

No, its scale is directly based on log odds - 10 times more likely to win = 400 points higher on ELO.

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1731991/why-does-th...

Re: Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months

#47

Post by kthejoker2 »

msluyter wrote: post #36
kthejoker2 wrote: post #15

Pedantry alert: As ELO ratings follow a logarithmic curve, "gaining 600 points" is a dimensionless metric. These are good tips for beginner to intermediate growth. The things that definitely help the most are: * Pattern recognition - the best courses for this level are things like "Common traps in ", applied with Woodpecker method. Once you've memorized all the mistakes in the Scandi or London system, you can really…

By "Woodpecker method" do you mean this: https://www.amazon.com/Woodpecker-Method-Axel-Smith-Tikkanen... ? This is why HN is great -- appears to be an amazing book.

Yeah, and you can take an interactive course version of it on Chessable

https://www.chessable.com/the-woodpecker-method/course/10582...

And most of the Chessable courses can be "woodpeckered" through the interface.

Re: Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months

#48

Post by bluGill »

freewilly1040 wrote: post #16
DelightOne wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Improvement may also matter a bit more. With ELO you always lose half the time because when you improve you get a higher ELO and get to your half-lose rate again. With anonymous, I assume the pool is stable so with getting better you win more. Though your enemies may outclass you sometimes, especially when your prior ELO is too low.

I don’t really get this. Chess isn’t fun if your opponent is much worse or much better than you. My suggestion is to take advantage of LiChess Zen mode, which hides the ranking of both you and your opponent. This orients me more towards the game rather than rank, while also providing evenly matched opponents.

If you know your opponent is much worse than you, then chess can still be fun because you dare to play stupid moves. Open with Nh3 and then continue stupid development (don't leave obvious blunders). Or otherwise don't make your known best move until the game is more even. Or spot your opponent the queen from the start. Lots of ways to even out a game when you are better.

When you are worse though, you have to depend on your opponent doing the above. And then you have to depend on the continuing until finally you are so much better than even you can win.

Re: Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months

#49

Post by dragon96 »

One piece of advice I hear a lot is "review your games", but how do you actually do that without a stronger player? I'd sometimes use an engine and it'll point out moves I hadn't considered before, but without understanding the plan or positional ideas behind them, I often find this pretty opaque.

Re: Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months

#50

Post by mrtranscendence »

Anyone have any tips for someone who's a bit interested in chess but is a complete beginner? As in, I know how the pieces move but I couldn't win a game against a blindfolded dachshund puppy. My ELO would be negative (I'd be so improbably bad that it breaks mathematics). It's just not clear where to start.
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