Looking for Help - 1200 Plateau

Just played a tough game and realized I am not improving at all. I always feel lost, always one move behind and generally bad about my chess. I study tactics daily and I've really been trying to take my time every move with 15/10 time control. I cannot seem to parlay my study into any sort of relevance on the chess board. My openings are mindless and I have no clue. I seem to never fianchetto my bishops and I really seem to struggle with craftier players who do this. 

After the game I just played I'm starting to believe that improvement may be impossible. I have been stuck at this chess level for probably over 10 years. What is a person to do here except accept my fate? 

I'm not a coach or anything but if you want to train together I'm sure we can sort out what has been holding you back. 10 years with little improvement must be frustrating. Slaying puzzles every day is good and playing and reviewing your games is good too. If you don't have any idea about the opening phase then maybe you need to start there and familiarize yourself with the Opening Principles, or perhaps it is time to dive into some opening theory and learn it well.

Improving Your Chess - Resources for Beginners and Beyond

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/improving-your-chess-resources-for-beginners-and-beyond

Good Positional Chess, Planning & Strategy Books for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/introduction-to-positional-chess-planning-strategy

Chess Openings Resources for Beginners and Beyond…

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/openings-resources-for-beginners-and-beyond

Dear Durlag,

I am a certified, full-time chess coach, so I hope I can help you. Everybody is different, so that's why there isn't only one general way to learn. First of all, you have to discover your biggest weaknesses in the game and start working on them. The most effective way for that is analyzing your own games. Of course, if you are a beginner, you can't do it efficiently because you don't know too much about the game yet. There is a built-in engine on chess.com which can show you if a move is good or bad but the only problem is that it can't explain to you the plans, ideas behind the moves, so you won't know why it is so good or bad.

In my opinion, chess has 4 main territories (openings, strategies, tactics/combinations and endgames). If you want to improve efficiently, you should improve all of these skills almost at the same time. That's what my training program is based on. My students really like it because the lessons are not boring (because we talk about more than one areas within one lesson) and they feel the improvement on the longer run. Of course, there are always ups and downs but this is completely normal in everyone's career.

If you would like to learn more about chess, you can visit my Patreon channel (www.patreon.com/Bgabor91), where you can learn about every kind of topics. I've just started this channel and I'm planning to upload 3-4 new videos per week.

I hope this is helpful for you. Good luck with your games!

You’ve done about 100 puzzles on chess.com in the span of 90 days. In the past 10 years you only did about 300 puzzles. So that right there tells us you actually haven’t been doing daily puzzles for the past 10 years. You seem to only started that about 90 days ago. Which isn’t a bad start btw, though it’s a bit misleading, as you said, “I haven’t improved in 10 years.” It leads us to believe you were doing tactics all that time, but you weren’t.

Same thing goes with games played, you only played about 30 games in the past 90 days, yet in the past not one but 10 years, you only played 388 games. So against you really haven’t been playing consistently for the past 10 years. You only started playing consistently in the past 90 days, btw, 30 games in 90 days is not much at all, especially if your playing rapid time controls.

The amount of tactics you did doesn’t even scratch the surface of your much needed tactics journey.

It seems you do not know how much playing or tactics you need for improvement. Let me help you. You should aim to play 5 rapid games a week, analyzing them once by yourself afterwards, and also with a stronger chess friend or coach. If you play faster 10 minute games you should aim for 10 games a week, but since you play 15|10 regularly you should stick with that.

About tactics…. There are many ways to go about it, but I think you should consider buying a tactics book with about 1000 puzzles. Why?? Generally tactics books go over set themes to help you get familiar with the types of tactics they are presenting, and later test you on them. The aim is to go over the same tactics multiple times till you have them down cold. Think of it like learning your multiplication tables.

About your last loss…. First off, you wernt playing attention to your opponent’s light squared bishop. Instead of playing c5, you should have considered playing c6 to shut down his bishop, which in fact was the star of his game. You lost that game because your opponent had a pin on your queen, and you wasted a move by attacking his queen with your bishop, which was easily dealt with. You actually helped your opponent find a good move. By attacking his queen, you forced him to move it to a square that was not in front of his rook, which gave him the pin he needed to win a pawn. Had you of moved your knight to that square instead of your bishop, the game would have been fine.

Hi!

You could check out my Instructive Games Series (I to IV) in my blog: https://www.chess.com/blog/maafernan

Or for personalized lessons, you can contact me anytime.

Good luck!

Can you share the game you was talking about?

Maybe, if we can see game, we can help you figure out your Errors.

I too would like to throw my hat in to do a lesson. No charge, I just think you're situation is relatable, common, and yet easily overcome if you get some good advice from someone who's been there before. Message me tonight or any night really and we can work through the 1200 plateau together.