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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

#161

Post by jbc1 »

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…

At least on lichess which is where The articles mmr is coming from, 1500 is roughly average among everyone playing not people who play competitively.

I sit around 1450-1500. Myself and others I play against regularly throw pieces away for free. Not fall in to traps or anything like that, or even when rushing on low time, I mean just straight up plonk a Queen down in the path of a bishop during the early/mid game for no reason at all. And then sometimes our opponent doesn’t even realise we did it! It’s certainly not competitive tier play.

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

#162

Post by [deleted] »

anandoza wrote: post #139
spekcular wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's some data for your question. A list of the world's top players (over 2700 Elo) is maintained here: https://2700chess.com/ . With the exception of Anand at 51, they're all quite young.

Hey, I'm not 51 yet!

[deleted]

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

#164

Post by jeremyjh »

WJW wrote: post #113
efficax wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The reason everyone says drill tactics is because the tactical motifs become a building block of several moves that you can see as one object; so if you can see that motif arise two moves away and the motif is three-move combination its the same as seeing five moves ahead but you didn't have to brute-force calculate every line five moves deep to find it, you recognized the pattern at a depth of two.

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

#165

Post by noisy_boy »

I have a genuine question. My long time peeve has been that I suck at Chess and every time I play against anyone/anything, I just lose. It demoralizes me and then after sometime I try again, only to have the experience repeat. I have had decent grades, I code for a living and have been told that the quality of my work isn't bad so I guess I'll risk coming across as arrogant when I think that I'm not absolutely dumb.

So the question is, is there anyone who has had the same experience? If so, what did you do to improve? Mind you, I'm not asking folks who put in moderate effort and got results. I'm talking to the ones that keep failing and failing spectacularly but eventually improved. Is it even possible to have anyone like that? If so, what did you do? Is it about just keeping at it?

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

#166

Post by caterama »

noisy_boy wrote: post #165

I have a genuine question. My long time peeve has been that I suck at Chess and every time I play against anyone/anything, I just lose. It demoralizes me and then after sometime I try again, only to have the experience repeat. I have had decent grades, I code for a living and have been told that the quality of my work isn't bad so I guess I'll risk coming across as arrogant when I think that I'm not absolutely dumb.…

This happened to me. Just get online, play games, and do puzzles and you will improve. One of the tough things is getting started. When you sign up on lichess.org, you start out with 1500 rating which is literally ~50th percentile [1]. You're probably not actually 50th percentile so you're going to loose literally all of your first 10-20 games until you stabilize at a lower rating (it was ~850 for me). It's a little rough, but you just need to get through it. Once your ranking stabilizes, you'll be matched against opponents who you have a chance to win against. From there you'll see improvement over time. Improvement is slow, though. 600 points in 6 months is notably _fast_. I've managed ~800 improvement 3 years.

[1] https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz

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

#167

Post by retzkek »

dev_tty01 wrote: post #63
zz865 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I'd have enough trouble remembering which color I was!

I played once on a board where the pieces were red and blue instead of black and white. I was completely messed up... Funny how the brain works. Or maybe it is just me?

Some people believe that learning with a colored "rainbow chess" set improves retention and pattern recognition. http://home.hu.inter.net/~prochess/rainbow.htm

Sort of like syntax highlighting I suppose.

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

#168

Post by retzkek »

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…

Maybe you'd like 960 aka Fischer Random Chess, with 960 starting positions there's no opening theory to memorize, just principles and tactics from move one.

Not as popular as regular chess but usually no problem finding a game.

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

#169

Post by hcnews »

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…

Yeah I got to 1650 rapid chess.com within 6 months (starting from basic knowledge of chess pieces moving). I was kinda told that 1800 rapid chess.com within a year of playing is kind of expected.

For people wondering, lichess inflates rating usually at lower level (since it starts at 1500 vs 1200 chess.com). Usually lichess ratings are inflated by 200-300 compared to chess.com which is a bit closer to FIDE ratings.

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

#170

Post by silisili »

noisy_boy wrote: post #165

I have a genuine question. My long time peeve has been that I suck at Chess and every time I play against anyone/anything, I just lose. It demoralizes me and then after sometime I try again, only to have the experience repeat. I have had decent grades, I code for a living and have been told that the quality of my work isn't bad so I guess I'll risk coming across as arrogant when I think that I'm not absolutely dumb.…

I'll reply, but probably not how you want.

I've always been a smart guy at a lot of things, especially math, who never had to try that hard in school.

I went to exactly one chess club meeting in high school, as I knew how to play and wanted to learn more. I was defeated in a few moves by a kid who not only laughed at me, but told his friends about whatever rush I just fell for and they all had a good laugh.

As you may imagine, I never went to another meeting.

Years later I came across Yahoo Chess, and thought I'd give that a try. I was beat by someone from Syria who used his victory to explain to me why Americans are so stupid and cocky.

I learned two things about chess -

1) It's not about being gifted or smart, it takes a lot of work and practice.

2) The community can be toxic as hell, so have thick skin. Or don't, I don't even play anymore. Two games were enough to teach me I don't want anything to do with that club.

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