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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

#141

Post by cosentiyes »

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+…

Someone posted some basic analysis with mild QC on elo vs age for FIDE rated players as of 2014: https://www.chess.com/blog/LionChessLtd/age-vs-elo---your-ba...

I think there are a lot of confounders to consider. Though GMs like Anand show a drop in standard rating (https://ratings.fide.com/profile/5000017/chart), his blitz rating is near his all-time-high (ie. is his standard rating drop due to decreased mental performance or a shift in interest/focus to blitz?). Similarly, I suspect a lot of strong players who fall in the `2000<FIDE rating<2300` realize they may not be the next magnus and shift focus when/if they make the decision to pursue a career outside of professional chess.

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

#142

Post by mkaic »

Moodles wrote: post #21

I think by far the biggest improvement newbies can make is just not hanging pieces and blundering, honestly. Literally the majority of games at I used to be quite good as a kid, winning championships and whatnot, and I'm actually glad my grandfather didn't teach me opening theory so much, so I could be trained to think more than memorize. Sadly at the highest level, you do just have to memorize the best opening lines…

I'm a huge fan of Eric Rosen, who plays lots of gambits and aggressive games with highly instructive commentary.I'd highly recommend his content whenever you feel yourself starting to get tired of traditionally high-energy YouTubers -- Eric is lively and funny but also stays incredibly chill and calm 100% of the time. I've watched hundreds of hours of his videos and have never seen him lose his cool ever, it's impressive.

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

#143

Post by bsder »

Moodles wrote: post #21

I think by far the biggest improvement newbies can make is just not hanging pieces and blundering, honestly. Literally the majority of games at I used to be quite good as a kid, winning championships and whatnot, and I'm actually glad my grandfather didn't teach me opening theory so much, so I could be trained to think more than memorize. Sadly at the highest level, you do just have to memorize the best opening lines…

> I think by far the biggest improvement newbies can make is just not hanging pieces and blundering, honestly. Literally the majority of games at This, in fact, exactly what GM Ben Finegold points out. At anything short of Master-level play, blunders define the winner. "Never resign" is something that he drums into his students.

My biggest issue with chess is that playing chess isn't "fun"--it's hard work. There are a lot of games that I would rather play when I'm against a human socially.

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

#144

Post by pishpash »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #105
sharedfrog wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder when Magnus will stop being able to "beat" Magnus of 1 year ago. While this doesn't answer your question, it's interesting to note Magnus's peak rating was actually 7 and a half years ago, when he was only 23.

Then again with how ELO works it doesn’t necessary mean that it was Magnus’s peak only that that the point when the gap between him and the rest of the chess world was the largest. I think others became stronger and he had more competition. Still Magnus himself seems to think he is past his peak in interviews.

I mean, he himself wouldn't necessarily be able to tell the difference of him getting worse or the rest getting better. To him it's just getting harder to beat people. At his level how can you judge yourself unless you played against a fixed-version AI chess program?

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

#145

Post by pishpash »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #125
wpasc wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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+…

It's worth noting that chess grandmasters can burn up to 6000 calories per day while competing in tournaments. It's an absolutely exhausting endeavor, and I imagine sheer endurance can play a huge role. So yes, performance does fall off with age, though not as intensely as something like hockey.

The brain is an organ like any other and gets fatigued more easily with age.

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

#146

Post by marcusbuffett »

a13n wrote: post #129

Note that going from 1200 ELO to 1800 ELO is going from 18th percentile to 74th percentile. Pretty much any form of study over 6 months will get you that progress, because you'll have spent more time on chess than ~74% of players. Going from 1800 ELO to 2400 ELO (74th percentile to 99th percentile) in 6 months would be a lot more interesting, because clearly your study habits are helping you progress faster than othe…

I don’t have hard data to back this up, but I do think that 1200 to 1800 on lichess in six months is very solid improvement, there’s a ton of accounts that have 10x+ my playtime and are rated below. It doesn’t seem to be just a time invested thing.

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

#147

Post by narag »

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…

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?

I don't know what it means in theory. In practice I win and then lose 200 points in lichess in a few days.

Some time ago I used to win and lose 100 around the day in a cycle. Maybe ratings aren't adjusted around the globe, so for the same points there are different skill levels as you go through time zones.

There's a fact that really annoys me: for my 2+1 bullet, it's harder to be at 1500 than at 1600. Once I'm at 1600, I can reach 1700 with a winning streak. If I fall into 1500, I tend to get stuck there.

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

#148

Post by cottager2 »

a13n wrote: post #129

Note that going from 1200 ELO to 1800 ELO is going from 18th percentile to 74th percentile. Pretty much any form of study over 6 months will get you that progress, because you'll have spent more time on chess than ~74% of players. Going from 1800 ELO to 2400 ELO (74th percentile to 99th percentile) in 6 months would be a lot more interesting, because clearly your study habits are helping you progress faster than othe…

I have friends that have played on Lichess for years and never reached above 1400. How you study is much more important than how much you study. Analyzing different modes of study, as done in this blog post, is quite useful.

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

#149

Post by CydeWeys »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #112
CydeWeys wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It's also worth pointing out that now that the bar to entry for playing online Chess is so low, a lot more players are playing in some form of ranked competition. So the lower end is filling in with unskilled people who hardly ever would've "played ranked" in the pre-Web days.

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

#150

Post by jlturner »

I would meet with a chess tutor every week for 6 months some years ago. The biggest thing that contributed to my games getting better (which the author didn’t mention as a method they tried) was analyzing my own game.

Thinking back on the moves you made, why you made them (ie gaining material, tempo, position), opportunities missed, and blunders made. It did help to have a coach go over my games with me, helps identify what to work on, what to think about when playing and focus on.

The biggest thing I wasn’t thinking about is how the moves I made moved the board into the position I wanted to checkmate in — I was too worried about losing the pieces themselves.

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