Learn and apply the most important principles of chess. - (core of my teaching)
Always blunder-check your moves.
Solve tactics in the right way.
Analyze your games.
Study games of strong players.
Learn how to be more psychologically resilient.
Work on your time management skills.
Get a coach if you can.
inconsistency with my performance, needing a solid study plan.
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Hey there.
I am rated over 2400 online (https://www.chess.com/member/ppandachess). I created a free course that will teach you a training plan to improve. Feel free to check it out: https://www.panda-chess.com/daily-improvement-plan
Glancing at a few of your recent losses, I'd say your biggest weakness is your tactical vision.
You are frequently losing material (often a pawn or two), and then spending the rest of the game struggling to survive a material deficit.
I'd recommend putting more time into tactical training, as tactical mistakes are what's giving you issues. I particularly like Puzzle Rush Survival for this - trying to solve puzzles and survive as long as you can, and continually trying to raise your best score.
I also recommend spending more time analyzing your games, and exploring other moves and ideas that you could've tried. I'm old-school, so I operate on the belief that a player should spend more time analyzing a game than they used playing it.
So if you spent 10 minutes playing a game, you should spend more than 10 minutes analyzing it afterward ... What if you tried this move, instead. Or this sequence? Or what if you had developed a knight here, instead of playing a pawn move there ... how might the game have went? (And so on, and so forth.) These kind of exploratory questions (with an engine by your side, to assist you in spotting blunders) can help you discover things that you might otherwise not have found.
In any case, it sounds like you're doing well. Keep going with it!
MaetsNori wrote:
Glancing at a few of your recent losses, I'd say your biggest weakness is your tactical vision.
You are frequently losing material (often a pawn or two), and then spending the rest of the game struggling to survive a material deficit.
I'd recommend putting more time into tactical training, as tactical mistakes are what's giving you issues. I particularly like Puzzle Rush Survival for this - trying to solve puzzles and survive as long as you can, and continually trying to raise your best score.
I also recommend spending more time analyzing your games, and exploring other moves and ideas that you could've tried. I'm old-school, so I operate on the belief that a player should spend more time analyzing a game than they used playing it.
So if you spent 10 minutes playing a game, you should spend more than 10 minutes analyzing it afterward ... What if you tried this move, instead. Or this sequence? Or what if you had developed a knight here, instead of playing a pawn move there ... how might the game have went? (And so on, and so forth.) These kind of exploratory questions (with an engine by your side, to assist you in spotting blunders) can help you discover things that you might otherwise not have found.
In any case, it sounds like you're doing well. Keep going with it!
My most recent games are the reason for why I made this post, they were incredibly bad. Also I appreciate the advice, I will focus more on tactics, and analyzing my games to a better degree than I am now.
I looked at your last four losses. I disagree with the previous poster. I think the losses are due to a lack of positional understanding more than to tactical weaknesses. In every case, you did not take advantage of a positional advantage that your opponent allowed or you gave away a positional advantage. Yes, you made tactical mistakes, but those came after you made positional errors.
my advice?
1. Stop playing rapid chess. Give yourself time to think.
2. analyze your games. Don’t just look for 1-move tactical blunders, which is what you get from Game Review.
3. go back and study how masters think. I recommend Chernev’s Logical Chess Mive by Move and his Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played. Working through several books like this will teach you more than months of playing rapid games against lower rated players when the games are decided by Basic blunders.
this type of book will show you how to develop long-range plans. Then, playing slow games will give you the chance to practice.
mikewier wrote:
I looked at your last four losses. I disagree with the previous poster. I think the losses are due to a lack of positional understanding more than to tactical weaknesses. In every case, you did not take advantage of a positional advantage that your opponent allowed or you gave away a positional advantage. Yes, you made tactical mistakes, but those came after you made positional errors.
my advice?
1. Stop playing rapid chess. Give yourself time to think.
2. analyze your games. Don’t just look for 1-move tactical blunders, which is what you get from Game Review.
3. go back and study how masters think. I recommend Chernev’s Logical Chess Mive by Move and his Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played. Working through several books like this will teach you more than months of playing rapid games against lower rated players when the games are decided by Basic blunders.
this type of book will show you how to develop long-range plans. Then, playing slow games will give you the chance to practice.
Wow getting advice from a National Master was quite unexpected, honestly when it comes to chess books I have only read about half of the Soviet chess primer and half of chess fundamentals by Capablanca, and I read those probably like in the beginning of my journey. I also can somewhat agree as I barely know what positional chess is, if I had to give my definition on it than I would say it's the opposite of tactical chess that relies more on strategy, things like weak squares, holes, and pawn structures, I could be wrong. As for rapid, I feel as if quitting would be damaging to my chess, I have found my only source of growth being that I just play a lot of games and I find value in that. If switching to lower time controls is what you might be trying to imply I used to be a 15|10 player in the beginning of my journey (played like 200 of those) but quit because they lasted to long and I seen better value in playing 5-10 10+0's than just 1-2 15|10's, you can disagree with that but prior to the switch to 10+0 I had seen almost no rating growth. Also in my recent game I am wondering would this be an example of positional chess, my opponent moved his bishop out to f4 on move 4 making his b2 pawn weak, which I didn't punish it because I just missed it. Though would like this be an example of how a positional player thinks?
Just hit 1800 after around a year of playing chess, though the one thing I notice is that my level of play is very inconsistent like obviously people have good days and people have bad days but it seems as of lately the bad is outweighing the good. I don't really know what to ask I am trying my best but especially today I was just blundering everything missing tactics, and just in general making a lot of mistakes. Also I don't have a consistent study plan which I feel like can be important to have so if any high rated player (2000+) finds that a certain study plan works for them I will greatly appreciate it if you can share. As for my chess, my current goal is to hit 2000 rapid by the beginning of February (4 months), just wondering if this is possible and if so what should I do. Currently I am playing 10+0 games and reviewing them to like the bare minimum (I would spend more time on them but other than obvious blunders I am having trouble spotting weaknesses), I also do puzzles like I did a lot today but other than today I am very inconsistent with puzzle training. Also if I had to state my current weaknesses it would be time management, calculation, and blundering. As for openings, I am not needing any assistance with that. Anyways sorry for this rant post I used to post on these forums a long time ago but stopped to focus on my chess but hopefully there are still strong players who scour the forums and are willing to help me out. I think if I want to make 2000 I definitely need some study plan put into place, as for the amount of time I have daily for chess about 2-3 hours.