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Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months
171–180 of 207 posts
Re: Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months
#172I 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 find Gothamchess very annoying. I like Ben Finegold a lot. Go Ben!
Re: Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months
#173I 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.…
Similar experience here. Winning at online chess is punishment for me. They immediately start matching me against better opponents in order to make me lose again. I hate every game with these points systems.
I don't think I'm stupid but I do have attention deficit disorder. People told me to memorize chess openings and that was just so boring I couldn't pay attention. At this point, using a computer to break the game starts sounding a lot more interesting than playing the game itself. If it's just memorization, I'm not gonna waste any of my neurons on it.
Re: Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months
#174I 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've been playing a lot of chess over the past year or two. One thing that upped my game a lot was watching videos on Youtube about common openings and traps. If you regularly lose right away, you're probably falling for traps. Once you know about them they're easier to spot. You can also attempt to spring them on other people, which is fun (though unlikely to work against anyone serious about chess). Learn about the basic tactics like pins and forks and get better at spotting them.
My advice is to learn maybe 3-4 openings and just use those every time. It narrows the field of possibilities. You'll get acclimated to the different ways they tend to play out. Of course, people will use others that you're unfamiliar with and you'll probably lose.
Otherwise, just play a lot. I like bullet chess (1 minute games). The fast pace means lots of reps and you get good at assessing the board quickly.
Re: Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months
#175Does learning chess improve other facets of cognition?
Research on this seems to mostly have settled on “no, maybe some accelerated development for kids”. I just know it’s better for my brain to be thinking about chess for 2 hours than to be on Reddit for 2 hours, which is what I was spending the time on before.
Re: Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months
#176Pedantry 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…
At OP's level (1800 lichess), there are only two rules of importance: "don't blunder" and "don't give up." Here's one of their recent wins [1]: in this game, OP had black and was completely lost, down a rook and a knight. Black played on, white dropped their guard and blundered, black pounced on it, and black gets the full point, having made the second-to-last mistake.
I am 2100 in lichess 5/0. Most of my games are still resolved by blunders on either side. It's rare to get a positional advantage and then grind away; instead someone didn't see that backwards knight or lateral queen move.
Re: Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months
#177I 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.…
At the beginner chess level, you're likely to face opponents who know a few traps. When you lose to a trap, learn it, and then inflict them upon your opponent!
Re: Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months
#178Pedantry 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…
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Re: Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months
#179I gained 200 point when I started practicing blindfolded, also great visualization training! A good way to start this is have someone call out squares on the board and you respond with the color. Next start naming the diagonals. Then start moving around a knight, bishop, and then slowly build up your ability to hold a game in your head. Highly recommend! Thanks for this article. The woodpecker method seems like a nic…
How long did it take you before you could play a whole game blindfolded?
I created a new account on lichess and started playing blindfold games right away. It depends on how long the games are and how complicated the position gets but anywhere from 13 to 50 moves I'll be okay. I won two games so far.
Re: Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months
#180I gained 200 point when I started practicing blindfolded, also great visualization training! A good way to start this is have someone call out squares on the board and you respond with the color. Next start naming the diagonals. Then start moving around a knight, bishop, and then slowly build up your ability to hold a game in your head. Highly recommend! Thanks for this article. The woodpecker method seems like a nic…
i assume you have a direct mapping in your mind between squares and colors or actually visualize the board but for those that don't you can convert the column letter to a number then add the two numbers together and depending on whether the number is even or odd the square will be black or white. ie: d1 -> 4 + 1 -> 5 -> white. there are a bunch of tricks you can do if you use number,number notation but being able to…
At first I used tricks but the more I practiced the better I got.