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What are your goals at chess.com?

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GPossum06
Do have any ideas on how I can do this
outwittedyou

I've been doing this for about 2 years, and I learned (kind of) back when I was about 6 or 7. I gained around 800 elo by May, earlier this year, but plateaued about 100 one day and quit for a couple months. I'm now over 1100 rapid and moving up. Here are my tips:

1. Switch to slower time controls. My problem with blitz was I kept on running out of time and was overall rushing my moves throughout the game, making mistakes along the way. Even though I still play relatively fast compared to my opponents, I've found 10 minute rapids to be a good amount of time (even for my 100+ games), while I can still get time pressure on my opponent.

2. Figure yourself out. I'm a very attacking player, love to go for the king. But not everybody is like that. I'd recommend taking a test to find out what kind of player you are (chesspersonality.com is a good one). It'll probably feel right when it tells you the answer, and then you just need to make a common goal for every game based on that. I have in my mind to attack the castled king, but you might need to remind yourself to focus on smaller pawns that are weak, and to slowly gain an advantage over your opponent and win.

3. Adjust your opening. Now you know the kind of player you are, figure out what opening sets your style of middlegame up best. There's a ton of information out there about different openings, and feel free to try them all out!

4. Join a club. I'd recommend joining one of the clubs here on chesscom. It's a great way to share your knowledge and feelings about the game with others, and can help relieve any chess-related stress and give you more voices to help improve your game.

5. Play in tournaments. One of the best things to do is to play in tournaments. You get to see how you size-up against stronger (and weaker) opponents. Pulling off a big win can be eye-opening (and so can a bad loss... I had one yesterday). You can also look at the other games to see how other, better players work their magic.

Hope these tips help, and good luck on your journey!

Dntomberli
Hi
killakeef23

My goal is to de-analyze and re-mistify the "book standard".

The collating of a large enough sample size of historical game records data merely allows for an

"if white/black -- plays (X) move ; then [y#] times/100 moves of (x) in the same exact position-- (X) move "leads" to victory."

The *subject* of the statistical analysis is the source of any of it's statistical significance, insofar as it is meant to be used by other "study subjects" to more accurately assess their own "relative". performance. But there is no "relative" to a statistical "average"; one can say they are either above or below average, yes; but that assertion makes zero reliable predictions about the nature of an individual *subject* that were not already known about that individual *prior* to the analysis of the *average*.

I.e. Overall averages can't be used in a causally inverse way to diagnose and predict any single individual's performance, whether in the future or the past.

It's a form of survivor bias at the highest levels-- masters spend years or decades perfecting a particular configuration and pattern to their position developments. They're human and will adopt the most likely strategy to guarantee victory, and when the move is played resulting in a win by plethora's of GM's all waxing eloquent theory that they convinced themselves and others of or vise versa, because obviously it's complicated and the explanation makes sense when someone gets to their level of play and experiences the internal risk/reward assessments for such moves for themselves. But the trick is, we don't have to wait until their level of play, to be opportunists for advantage in competition. So we encourage beginners to "study" and practice opens, to follow basic guidelines to put boundaries on the level of risk being introduced into a position with each move.
What we actually can't even reliably offset for, is our own external psychological influences insofar as identifying and quantifying the degree to which they positively or negatively affect the risk/reward assessments that we subjectively use in the moment to actually make the moves. 
A tangential example, aka, "It's a bit of a stretch, BUT"--

What if E4 is only so "winning" because of something as simple as "non-threat peripheral vision dismissal" for instance-- Eyes are focused on the majority of central space where the bulk of calculative processing is attributed to, and as networked nodes of neurons with varying countless weights of their own; they place a "gradient risk/reward bias" over the entire board, in which the edges are the least often associated with calculations involving immediate threat assessments--

therefore, since we are all human with quite consistently similar brain functions; the overwhelming majority of games are played by both players using very similar "guidelines" and core logical foundations upon which their expertise was built up from.
They literally, can NOT play anything but what the brain let's them see as being most likely to yield reward. Hundreds of years of that feedback loop from 'low skill-learning from below, high skill-teaching from above' does not make for a sufficiently "large" sample size. It's exactly the opposite.
The "correctness" or "incorrectness" of moves, being debated down to broad generalized theory that predicates it's logical authority on [what I presume *may* be] inherently biased by the same countless misattributed causal circumstances that result in your brain choose *that* parking space at work all the time, but never *that* one.

You'll make up whatever logic works to explain the result you subjectively achieve, post cause and effect. "How did you fly like that? "Well, I just had to sprout wings I guess, otherwise I'd be pizza sauce".
"Where are the wings?" "Guess ya don't need em once you're safe, so ya know, the body recycles quick."
In the absence of ANY other information between the two parties in the above example-- yeah/ guy sprouted angel wings and hit the cruise control before going animorph and his body absorb-gesting them back into his body. How are YOU going to argue with the guy who just literally flew like *that*? How do YOU know he doesn't have wings, just because *you don't*? Do YOU have any other MORE plausible explanation? 
No, of course you don't. You see people flying bro, get help. Just kidding. The help will get you first, don't worry.
TLDR..... 

Chess performance analysis turns a board of opportunities to introduce yourself into "E4, because if not, I only have 19% chance of winning"
That's an absolutely MISERABLE condition of meta-play for such a beautiful game with so many varieties of tactics and patterns to be learned from, but more importantly, to be DISCOVERED for oneself by playing; I know it's not black and white(I want my pun credit to reflect this), and that there's a large segment of the chess demographic that prefers casual creative kind of play, and that yes statistical analysis CAN to some degree inform each individual move of a -/+x#[%chance of victory from there], and that yes, even the creative weirdo opens get their time in the x ray machine, and many of them can't play in the same tournament with the elite's, analysis or not. My point is more conceptual internalization of the "RULES" we're told, and the "ACCURACY" metrics thrown in our faces like gym junkies trying to measure their biceps.....

As they are conditioned physically, they are mentally conditioned in a way that's MORE important than that ; they are conditioned believe they know what "strength" is; and all amongst the "ranks" of the "strong", will agree with each other about what makes THEM so strong-- if only that would ever agree to disagree. That is the state of chess right now at the top all the way down to the youngest demographics, the most important of all; discourage consistently "creative" plays; because sample sizes of those plays are not large enough. The win rate for anything remotely unique past 5 moves is going to be 0% forever, until it catches on and OTHER individuals begin submitting such similarly significant samples to build an accurate data set from.

For unique and RARELY PLAYED opening or positions, is almost so non-existent as to be statistically 0%. This is just wrong morally and intellectually, first off, but it's wrong statistically and competitively as well. The truth about chess that no one wants to say out-loud--

You can ONLY learn what you *CAN* learn. Beyond that, it's highly likely that at the elite levels, the players themselves are only assessing their decisions in retrospective inverse causality, filling in fuzzy deep-processing(yes I'm serious) that happens, then gone instant, like powerful computer RAM. They know they experience that deep storm of intuitive calculation, and they can extrapolate from there, the basic essence of positional awareness and the inputs to be taken from the board, i.e. piece count, spread out, move numbers, checks, how many defenders, blah blah etc chess nerd talk 2.0.
The brain will lie to us about anything that is too complicated to wrap our minds ALL the way around. It will take the thing/s and compress them for us, and when we ask "hey what's this file you just gave me and why?" ***positional assessment deep mode, you're gonna lose in 8 moves*** [shudders in fear]

[Loses in 9 moves]

[probably invents like.. Spockfish]
....

[Grows up to tell chess kids "just shuddup and calculate"]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This, in practice, will, and already HAS, lead to a drastic drop in opening varieties by raw [%/x#games^ever]. That means the next generation of chess isn't learning CHESS. It's learning what WE teach them chess is. And that's fair to a degree. But as kids, the most valuable learning moments that lead to long term high iq thinking come from free and creative play, with limited hard guidelines to stay within.

I see way too many "elite" games that are just *copy-paste "same as the rest" looking center pawns double knight, fiancetto'd bishops, pretty trimmed bushes of pawns like white picket fences surrounding their prized piece of country real estate, even zigzagging for extra pop on the eyes. 
The highest level of POSSIBLE play in chess.... SHOULD appear at first glance, to be a nearly indiscernible scattering of pieces in random places with few, if any, clear targets or threats at any ONE moment on the board. It should have absolutely 1 and only 1 single definable pattern to the positions on the board, that the pawns become more and more evenly distributed across the board, as moves progress. "Development" at that level should NOT EVEN EXIST. 
The tempo loss of develop, wait, target, chase, build a posse of reinforcers, then launch blitz trade 3 for 2 attacks should not exist at the peak possible performances of move "pressure"; Most of the "moves" at the peak possible performance level SHOULD seem to any sane chess player, to be completely stupid and wasteful of tempo, and all the other routine critiques of weak but ambitious play; have we forgotten that feints and misdirects can exist in chess TOO? Not at the HUMAN intelligence scale, but at something exponentially moreso.... I think we wouldn't be able to follow the game, and it could very well look like a confusing mess of random moves and takes that go on for thousands upon thousands of moves per game; it may be such high level play that neither player can every gain enough advantage to secure a win at all, if checkmate is the undying law.

~~~~~~

SUPER LONG READ. Just some entry level assessments of what I see going on in the chess world, and I don't go digging, so anyone please retort and attempt to enlighten me if you feel my sentiments on analytical prioritization over intuitive creative need some context or some logical checks. Thanks everyone.

Fr3nchToastCrunch

My goal is to git gud