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How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

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Re: How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

#131

Post by kqr »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #109

Fun to see GM Axel Smith mentioned, I used to be his student as a teenager, when he was still an IM. Great teacher and just a wonderful person overall. I can vouch for his methods, even if I was a teenager when I practiced them. This is a great article on how to improve chess as a beginner, from the perspective of a former beginner. Basic recognition of patterns is the bedrock of tactical calculation. And focusing on…

The way I've heard it described for go is that beginners improve fastest by focusing on problems that require them to calculate 1–3 plies out of their comfort zone. These build strongly on pattern recognition (those are the comfortable bits) but also include some game tree walking (at least in go, 1–3 plies make up a pretty heavy game tree for a beginner.)

The idea is that calculation practise is great, but it also takes a lot of time. In the time it takes a beginner to solve one very deep calculation problem, they could have finished 40 pattern recognition problems and that would probably be more beneficial. So calculation and pattern recognition has to be balanced, and a few plies out of the comfort zone strikes that balance.

Re: How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

#132

Post by valval »

ycombinete wrote: post #54
rtpg wrote: post #10

and here I was happy to get up to 1000 in Chess.com after 2 years (only to then just hover around forever). Knowledge is power etc etc but at one point nothing replaces studying. I've found that anything under 15 minute clocks just feels like brain poison to me, though. Your brain goes completely into pattern matching mode and lose out on the actual interesting tactical analysis you can do when you're taking a bit mo…

Sounds good to me! Ratings are a treadmill. As you get better so do your opponents. You'll always have a ~50% winrate. I'd rather have a stable rating over time, at a level I can maintain comfortably, than have to expend ever increasing levels of energy to maintain a higher level; and probably end up having less fun. (maybe it's more like treading water. You can get more of your body out of the water, but each inch r…

Your analogue is probably true to a certain extent, but in reality maintaining your current form in any domain of expertise is easier than achieving that form in the first place.

I only really have video games as an easily quantifiable example, but playing in top 1% of League of Legends doesn't really require anything more than a couple games a week to maintain that level. I have the knowledge, I know what to do, and I can execute on that. Perhaps this would be harder in a domain that leans more on physical or mental condition which tend to decrease over time, but probably not so much in Chess and the like.

Re: How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

#133

Post by sjducb »

ShoneRL wrote: post #126
sjducb wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument generalises to all sport. If you want to become the best in the world at something then you have to give it 100%. It will be everything in your life. Most people who try to be the best don’t make it. If you’re nearly the best then your life sucks. You’ve spent all of your energy trying for something that’s not going to give you any returns personally.

I suppose it does to a certain extent but most of my experiences were with Chess, Football and Boxing. People say Chess is a sport but it's not really physically-exerting like some other sports or even healthy at all. In terms of other sports, I think football (soccer) is a sport you don't really have to be 100% at, since that sport is somehow globally recognized and profitable so even subpar players can live well of…

I think you have to be very good at football/boxing to make a living off it.

A subpar 3rd division football player is a better athlete than anyone you have ever met in your day-to-day life.

Chess supports maybe 30 full time competitors, whereas football supports a few thousand. However millions more people try to be footballers. Your odds of success are probably better with chess.

All three of those sports destroy your body. With chess it’s the hours sitting still and being stressed. With boxing and football it’s the concussions, tough training regimes and accumulated injuries that never fully heal.

Elite sport is bad for you.

Re: How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

#134

Post by thrwyexecbrain »

Despite absolutely loving chess as a child, I never studied it professionally, and I did not even play a single game after primary school. A couple of years ago I stumbled upon a chess video recommendation here on Hacker News. It was the 27th entry of ChessNetwork's Beginner to Chess Master series and it rekindled my love for the game. I have been playing chess casually ever since. I cannot recommend ChessNetwork's videos enough: I found them to be insightful, well-made, and very respectful of both the game and the audience.

Re: How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

#135

Post by 4lun »

sph wrote: post #55

Great article. I got into chess recently, and I can only recommend the "Learn chess with Dr. Wolf" app. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/learn-chess-with-dr-wolf/id135... It's got a beautiful UI, and it's a conversational chess tutor that goes over the basics, tactics, advanced strategy and with whom you can play and will point out mistakes and blunders for later review. Perhaps it is too basic for anybody that has a fe…

Ah this is great, just spent 30 mins playing this on the London underground as it works offline too

Re: How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

#136

Post by smatija »

_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #125
zelphirkalt wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And not to forget to avoid disappointment: An online 2000 is maybe an offline 1800 or so. Online ratings are in general higher than what people actually have offline.

I am not sure if that is generally true. It’s true for lichess and chess.com (compared to ELO) It really has only to do with the formula they use. They have different formulas. I think e.g. lichess has a formula so that the median is centered around 1500. This is different from how ELO is calculated. I would assume if they all had the same way to calculate the rating, it should be somewhat close.

Yes and no - they use different systems, but even if they used same system ratings would be different.

This is since ratings only measure player's performance relative to other players in the same poll. A lot more people (and a lot more begineers) play online than in FIDE rated tournaments. So playing poll in tournaments is stronger than online playing poll, so even if we assume same rating system in all cases, players will have lower ratings in tournament play than online.

What complicates matters further is that playing polls aren't totally unified - in FIDE Elo ratings it's possible to see regional differences (indians for example are in general underrated), since playing poll is segmented by distance (due to travel costs not a lot of players play internationally). Additionally COVID19 made a total mess of ratings, since there was not enough events last few years, so majority of younglings are underrated due to not playing enough rated games, while improving as fast as the previous generation.

FIDE is currently deciding on rating reform, which will be implemented in january, trying to handle this situation.

What complicates matters even more is that FIDE Elo algorithm is not optimized for accuracy, but for calculations by hand (try calculating glicko2 rating change without computer!), so glicko2 more accurately predicts player performance.

And finally, time controls differ a lot between online and tournament play. Online even 5minutes feels slow, while in tournaments 90min+30sec/move is one of shorter time controls. Performance between slow and fast play is in general correlated, but this correlation is weaker at higher ratings (since both sides of the game have some non-transferable skills, so blitz specialists for example exists).

Re: How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

#137

Post by pedrekz »

smatija wrote: post #127
drexlspivey wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but when you're rated so low, openings rarely matte No way you get to 2000 by cheesing, maybe 1000 max. 2000 rating is not low, it’s top 0.3% on chess.com

It's possible, if unlikely - wayward queen is not as bad as it looks (black has maybe a tiny bit more than equality), most players don't face it often (so probably don't have a lot of prep memorized) and in blitz time controls it's hard to find optimal punishment for subpar opening play. And 2000 is not that high again - top 0.3% on chess com is maybe top 50% of tournament players. Online chess has a lot of begineers…

Everyone who’s higher rated than 500 can see that you’re lying, I don’t know why you insist. Yes, you’re not immediately losing the game if you play the right moves, but it stops being a “trick” waaaay before you’re 2000, even in blitz. You don’t need any “prep”.

Edit: you’re not the same person from the comment above, my bad

Re: How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

#138

Post by codetrotter »

I preferred the original title:

> How To Learn Chess As An Adult (or, how I went from 300 to 1500 ELO in 9 months)

Because it showed that the person writing this “how to learn” was speaking from personal experience.

There are too many articles online that say how to learn something, but the author may never have actually tried it themselves and are instead writing based on other sources. Or worse yet, now in 2023 they may have asked ChatGPT how to learn something and just copy-pasted what it said.

Changing the title to just:

> How to learn chess as an adult

Is a mistake IMO, and makes it easier to skip past this article.

Re: How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

#139

Post by smatija »

pedrekz wrote: post #137
smatija wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible, if unlikely - wayward queen is not as bad as it looks (black has maybe a tiny bit more than equality), most players don't face it often (so probably don't have a lot of prep memorized) and in blitz time controls it's hard to find optimal punishment for subpar opening play. And 2000 is not that high again - top 0.3% on chess com is maybe top 50% of tournament players. Online chess has a lot of begineers…

Everyone who’s higher rated than 500 can see that you’re lying, I don’t know why you insist. Yes, you’re not immediately losing the game if you play the right moves, but it stops being a “trick” waaaay before you’re 2000, even in blitz. You don’t need any “prep”. Edit: you’re not the same person from the comment above, my bad

2000 rated players of course won't get mated in 3 moves, but position after 1. e4 e5 2. Qh5 Nc6 3. Bc4 g6 4. Qf3 is not unplayable for White - Black is equal or maybe just a little bit better.

In lichess Blitz database for 2200+ rated players there are 13883 games with this position. White won 50%, drew 7% and lost 43%.

Of course this position is nothing to write home about, but for online Blitz it's good enough.

Re: How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

#140

Post by VonGallifrey »

narag wrote: post #87
washmyelbows wrote: post #18

"Only about 10% of players ever gain more than 100 points, and only about 1% of players gain more than 200 rating points given years." This seems like a wild claim. On chess.com I've gone from 500 to ~1050 in a handful of months without any real study, just some light YouTube watching. 500->800 felt like all it took was learning a few openings and not blundering pieces. 800-1050 felt like it came mostly from getting…

This seems like a wild claim. On chess.com I've gone from 500 to ~1050 in a handful of months without any real study, Is rating on chess.com similar to rating in lichess? The article mentions 1%, but you start with 1500 in lichess??? If you lose often, you quickly go down. But if you keep an even record, you stay in 1500. I don't understand how people learn from slamming blitz/bullet games. As in the article, speed t…

> If you lose often, you quickly go down. But if you keep an even record, you stay in 1500.

Is that actually true? You start at a 1500 in lichess, but that is a provisional rating and the outcome of your first few games are going to cause BIG swings in your rating. After your rating is no longer a provisional rating then that is going to slow down.

Losing a few games at the start might take a lot more wins to "even out" in rating. Just keeping an even record might not be enough to stay 1500.

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