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

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

#111

Post by xyzelement »

mrbungie wrote: post #75
xyzelement wrote: post #73

A bit of an aside, I love chess because it forces you to think several moves ahead including game-theorizing what your opponent will do. I want to teach it to my kid for this reason. I never got into timed chess but I can see it be valuable because it forces you to trade off between over-thinking and running out of time and under-thinking and making bad moves. This is also a real life skill. But I know that my person…

Not to tell you how to raise your children, but please only teach your kid if you see he likes it. Disclaimer: I was a kid that lived my mother's dreams/hopes for a time and now I dread every second of that period.

I don't need my kid to live my dreams but it's my job to teach him life skills and chess is a good way for teaching what I just talked about.

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

#112

Post by sillysaurusx »

CydeWeys wrote: post #104
sillysaurusx wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that HN hyper-focused on your 600 points observation. However, 600 points means you went from 1500 (the start) to at least 2100, which is almost universally recognized as "pro" or at least semi-pro for chess. So yes, logarithmic curve and dimensionless pedantry and all that, I'll grant you; but that's missing the trees for the squirrels in the forest, since 600 points means "I went from noob to pro." No one ex…

> I guess you could argue that it's possible for someone to start at 1500, then really suck at chess and drop to 900, and then merely become average again (1500), and claim a 600 point improvement. This is showing some pretty serious misunderstandings about ELO ratings. 1,500 is absolutely not the starting point. When you first learn Chess, your rating will be low hundreds (like under 500). It takes a decent bit of p…

... Oh.

It turns out that watching GothamChess doesn't make me a chess player.

Thank you for that. It's mildly interesting analyzing the source of why I was so wrong:

As someone who aspired to be pro at Dota (but was never too skilled at it), my "competitive instincts" have been calibrated for games where you do indeed start at some baseline, even among competitive players, because you will quickly be balanced out to the proper ELO. For example, in HoN (precursor to Dota 2), 1700 was widely considered pro, whereas everyone started at a baseline of 1500. The noobs were quickly punted down to lower than that. (It could've even been 1300 and I'm misremembering, but the point is, the competitive scene was still balanced around 1500 as a baseline.)

Ditto for Dota 2, back when they had explicit MMRs. (MMR = ELO.) Nowadays they don't have MMR, they have ... tiers? ... since they realized that it kind of sucks having a community obsessing over what your actual number is, rather than what division/tier you're in. So they were like "Ok, congratulations, you've reached Immortal tier, you're now a pro."

Anyway, when there was MMR, it still started at some baseline. Because again, the noobs would quickly be punted down to where they belong. 5k was widely considered pro back in those days, back when 5k meant something. But MMR inflation meant that the benchmark then became 6k = pro, and eventually 7k was top tier (I think?), so this was already a de facto tier system.

Point is, saying "1,500 isn't the starting point" for chess, but yes of course it's roughly average among people who play Chess competitively. The competitive scene is all that matters. Me blatantly not reading the article was based around the assumption of "Of course this is referring to the competitive scene."

As I said, it's interesting just how wildly wrong those assumptions were. :)

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

#113

Post by WJW »

efficax wrote: post #102
FPGAhacker wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I don’t mean this is to be snarky , but aren’t all chess games decided by mistakes?

failure to see disaster 3 moves ahead is a mistake, failure to see it 10 or more moves ahead is just the limits of human reasoning. In between is squishy

I've managed to progress (over the course of several months) from making dumb blunders like hanging a queen or a rook to blunders 3 moves ahead that are instantly losing according to the engine but completely innocuous to my eye, even when reviewing the game. "Just don't make blunders" is the standard advice but it is not very actionable. Do you have any advice on how to go about this?

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

#114

Post by jbritton »

wpasc wrote: post #88
SamBam wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

I often wonder if chess players have a natural "peak"/"optimal" age range in the way that professional athletes do. Being a thinking game that requires strong brain functionality combined with accumulated experience, I wonder if there is an age range that is best for most players. Trade offs may be something like in yours teens and early 20's your brain may have the most plasticity and ability to visualize (plan 10+…

I watched a YouTube video recently that talked about how difficult it is to go from 2350 FIDE to 2500. It seemed to imply if you don’t make 2500 by age 20, you will probably won’t ever get there or it will require years of study. The video was just an opinion, no data to support it was presented.

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

#115

Post by neilk »

I'm quite good at puzzles now, but it doesn't seem to affect my ranking in actual play.

I might be asking for the impossible here, but is there a way to get better without turning this into a part-time job, where I have to read a lot of books, study and memorize openings, and so on?

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

#116

Post by Bootvis »

sabujp wrote: post #108

you can play "sound" chess using general rules and get to about master level on lichess : * trade a piece (bishop for knight and vice versa) when it's being less effective than the opponent's piece * block opponents bishops * block opponents pawns * don't give opponent's knights a perch (supported by a pawn) on your side of the board, especially near the middle * try to promote edge pawns to the middle or clear the p…

What is master level to you?

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

#117

Post by WJW »

huachimingo wrote: post #89

Unpopular opinion: Chess needs an update with more moves or randomized pieces (position, etc).

This is not actually an unpopular opinion but one that many players (including former world champions like Gary Kasparov) have voiced as well.

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

#118

Post by bennyg »

seanwessmith wrote: post #43
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.

I would love that - been thinking about how to automate Youtube's generated closed captions from positions I'm in based on positions he's in. I typically play Caro-Kann and Danish Gambit so it seems likely I probably see common positions in the first half-dozen moves or so.

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

#119

Post by amotinga »

Mizza wrote: post #9

"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." - Paul Morphy. I started playing anonymous games on LiChess, and playing without ELO anxiety is way, way more fun. It's a game, this is all I need out of it.

I once read 'power of mediocrity' or something like that that I saw here on HN. that article talked about the fact that it's ok to do things just to enjoy them as opposed to getting better at them.

since then I don't worry about my rating anymore, just playing on lichess without loggin in, just to have fun.

I'm not improving much, but i have fun.

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

#120

Post by yupper32 »

slingnow wrote: post #83
sillysaurusx wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that HN hyper-focused on your 600 points observation. However, 600 points means you went from 1500 (the start) to at least 2100, which is almost universally recognized as "pro" or at least semi-pro for chess. So yes, logarithmic curve and dimensionless pedantry and all that, I'll grant you; but that's missing the trees for the squirrels in the forest, since 600 points means "I went from noob to pro." No one ex…

Your comment is all over the place with assumptions that are odd / incorrect and easily corrected by reading the article. First of all they went from 1200 -> 1800, not 1500 -> 2100. Second, just because you are given a preliminary rating of 1500 doesn't mean that you are a 1500. I don't know where you would get that idea from. If my 10 year old nephew signs up for lichess and never plays a game, by your logic he's a…

Meh, I'd say you could be a pro at the IM level. Plenty of IMs do lessons and stuff.

But yeah 2100 lichess is not even close to pro.

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