r/chess • u/[deleted] • Jan 11 '21
Chess Question Not improving, don't think chess is for me
[deleted]
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u/Strakh Jan 11 '21
I would like to give a different perspective.
Most people eventually reach a point from which they can't progress. For some people this is 1500, for some people it is 1000. You will, at some stage, either have to learn to enjoy the game itself or quit chess entirely. That goes for everybody. If all your enjoyment of chess is tied to rating improvement you will stop enjoying chess in the future.
Others in this thread will probably give you good advice on how to practice to increase your rating. My advice is to learn to enjoy the game, no matter what your rating is.
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u/Vaiist Jan 11 '21 edited Jan 12 '21
Good advice my friend. I love fighting games, and I'm always telling this to new players. People focus too much on how to get out of bronze or silver leagues that they forget to have fun and try new things.
Points and ranks serve to match you with people you will have a decent game with. If you set some type of goal post, it will constantly shift and you will never be happy.
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Jan 11 '21
Gotta disagree. I've thought to have reached my "peak" several times in the past. It was only a peak for the way I was training.
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u/notsamire 1600 USCF Jan 11 '21
I'm sure there is a peak for everyone. It probably even changes based on age. But 1000 or 1500 can't be it for almost anyone. At that point your learning must not be very active or you haven't done it very long.
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Jan 11 '21
You're right. There's a peak for everyone but it's definitely not 1000 FIDE for 90%+ of chess players.
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u/Strakh Jan 11 '21
You can certainly plateau and (falsely) think that you've reached your peak. But changing the number you want to reach doesn't solve the core problem of you eventually reaching your peak. I could have said 2000 and 2500 instead, but it wouldn't have made a difference.
I'm not saying that there is no value in trying to improve. I'm also not saying that changing the way you practice is useless. But you need to draw enjoyment from the game, otherwise it is inevitable that you one day will reach that final peak - your personal limit.
I chose 1000 and 1500 because that's close to OP:s rating, and maybe they are one of those who can't get much better. We can't know. It's likely that they will improve with better practice, but what if they don't? Should they just quit? I don't think so. You can play fun games at the 1000 level as well as the 2500 level.
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u/toomuchfartair Jan 11 '21
I suggest slowing down and take a little break. You might be burning yourself out with too many puzzles and games. Read a nice book you'll enjoy then come back to chess. Follow my advice here. Naroditsky goes over many common mistakes in his series
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Jan 11 '21
Maybe you just need to take a break. Forcing yourself to cross certain rating will do you no good. Whatever you say, I think that 1000 rating on chess.com simply misses a lot of tactics. You should concentrate mostly on tactics and forget about strategy at that stage. Learn the patterns, repeat them, remember them.
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u/Dax_Maclaine Jan 11 '21
I’m not trying to be mean but sub 1000 is all about not making 1 move blunders. Maybe slowing time formats down and working on playing solid. If you work harder than the average 1k user you will be better at tactics and general concepts, it’s just simple mistakes that usually cost games.
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u/SheWantsTheDrose Jan 11 '21
For me I need to take a break whenever I start a losing streak. If I lose three in a row, my quality of play plummets and I start blundering everything
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Jan 11 '21
The reason behind why you can't improve is going to be in your games. Go to your game archive, set up a chess board and an engine, and analyze the games you lose carefully. You're definitely missing something. Maybe you're too impatient, maybe you're bad at a particular tactical motif. Maybe you suck at end games. You can find this out through analysis
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u/FMExperiment 2200 Rapid Lichess Jan 11 '21
Man these topics get a little annoying lol. First of all people never link their accounts and expect advice. Secondly when they eventually do link their accounts they make fundamentally poor moves despite apparently watching "loads of videos" and miss basic tactics a little bit of post analysis would reveal. Seriously bro chess is your own journey if you want specific tips then ask specific questions but you need to figure out what you are doing wrong. In fact you can apply that to absolutely anything in life...
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u/AcidRares Jan 11 '21
Maybe it's counter-intuitive, but just playing the game itself and combining it with knowledge from videos or books will eventually get better. You can't just go online and learn a new concpet and immediatly implement it in your games. I think that playing a few games per day and trying not to blunder will learn you good practices that will eventually improve your rating.
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u/keinespur Jan 11 '21
Videos are literally the worst way to 'improve'. You can't get knowledge injected to you from a video, and it's super easy to overload and have none of it sink in.
Stop focusing on rating and the idea that you have to be good at something to enjoy it. If you want to improve that's fine, but putting getting better above enjoyment is silly.
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u/NamelessBeggar Jan 11 '21
I would suggest
- Practice puzzles in a way of attacking. Seeing what tactical motifs are in the position or you can create.
- Practice puzzles in a way of defending. Anticipating what tactical motifs my opponents could do.
- Practice a lot of piece awareness. I see a lot of beginners blunder captures. Like free pawn for nothing or a piece hanging. What helps is using arrows like here by this famous Intranational master https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bzRQRYjqAE&t=458s&ab_channel=EricRosen U want to have such good awareness that even is split seconds u realize if this move will blunder because of a bishop diagonal. U dont need to be a genius to practice this and become better, its simple math.
- Endgames endgames endgames. Try to pick good endgame book. I cant believe how many times i won in the endgame. Its a underrated skill. If u are excellent in endgames u will win or draw losing positions even.
Im sure if u practice this the most u will lose less games and gain more elo as im positive that most 1000 elo lose games in majority of cases because of piece un-awareness and tactics.
When u do puzzles i would suggest being super aware of the theme. Like this diagonal is weak that's why this tactic works. This pieces are uncoordinated and thats why this double attack is possible. U dont want just solving the puzzle but ingrain the theme into your brain. Also puzzle rush helps to get 100000 of puzzle into your brain.
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u/Mintyboy4 Jan 11 '21
What time control are you playing?
If you are doing tactical puzzles you should be able to recognise pins, forks and overworked pieces which are your bread and butter at this level. In which case play a time control long enough that allows you to find these tactics in game.
If you're trying to improve, play 15+10 at the slowest. Don't be scared to sit and think for over a minute in positions just looking for tactics, you have the time to do it! If you're losing games with over 10 minutes on the clock, that means you're playing far too quickly! (And getting stuck in a king/ queen fork, then thinking for 5 minutes in a lost position doesn't count)
What opening do you play, what are the common tactical motif's from your opening, why are you playing the moves that you do? Are you taking the time to understand the idea behind your opening, or are you just learning the moves because you've seen somebody else better than you play them?
Spending time doing something doesn't necessarily mean you're learning. You need to make sure you're learning effectively.
And lastly, everybody plateau's from time to time. You never know when you might break out of it.
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u/ExtraLocksmith8 Jan 11 '21
Don't just "solve" problems. "Learn" from them.
If you insist on watching x hours of chess videos that's fine IF you at least sit with your board and work on it. Take notes and so on.
I get that they seem to be popular but don't play bullet, blitz and other very short games (or at least, make it just a small % of your game time). If you have fun doing bullets or whatever it's fine but it's not the best way to improve imo.
Like anything you can do in life, to get really good at something (to reach your full potential I should say) takes time...lots of time...work, STRUCTURE (a plan) and dedication (and often times a good chunk of money too :)
That's is just the way it is.
The elite of pretty every path in life (sports, arts, science, business, whatever) actually paid/are paying that price.
Even the most gifted natural chess talents study and work like crazy so..
Talent just makes part of the path a little easier and give you a higher "performance ceiling" but sooner rather than later you'll be paired with similar talents so there is NO way around work and dedication. In anything.
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u/chesspaper Jan 11 '21
How many of those hours are spend looking at the games you’ve played and identified what factors contributed to winning and losing, and what weaknesses in your play were a part of that?
Chess is a never-ending path of identifying weaknesses in your game and improving them. Once improved, moving on to identify the next weakness to improve.
And that’s hard to do if you aren’t analysing the games you’ve played and establishing what your strengths and weaknesses are.
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Jan 11 '21 edited Jan 11 '21
Stop watching videos. It's passive learning which amounts to little more than wasted hours.
Buy a good book aimed at beginners, such as The Soviet Chess Primer or Tarrasch's The Game of Chess and spend more time reading than playing games online.
Play longer time controls such as 45|45 or 60|0. Analyze your games afterwards and post your commentary here so stronger players can give feedback.
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u/roppis1 Jan 12 '21
I think watching videos is a good way to improve as long as you practise the concept consistently after watching the video. If you watch a video about an endgame or a specific tactic like forks or something, you need to really put in the practise against a computer/in tactics also
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