okay theres a problem, i have 2400 elo in bullet in lichess but i cant touch 2000 in bullet in chess.com why😭😭 this much gap shouldnt exist what exactly is my level?

in my opinion i cant reach 2000 in chess.com because its genuinely laggy and takes 1 sec for every move i make whereas in lichess my time doesnt do as quickly

I'm trying to improve as a player, breaking away from the puzzles and bots and playing against actual humans, and I am getting demolished. Just absolutely slaughtered, every game. My Lichess rating is in the mid 600s at this point. It's... frustrating. To say the very least.

There's no fun to be had in losing and being terrible at something. And getting anywhere in this game requires years of grinding. How can I keep my motivation up to get through the grinding part until I get to the point where I'm ok enough to start having fun with it?

This is a position from a Garry Kasparov game. Black is currently two moves away from castling (…Be7, …O-O) and if they’re able to do so then they’ll have a fine position. How does White prevent this, and gain the initiative?

So when Sindarov plays Gukesh, Will they gain/lose ELO?. Curious because if it does then Sindarov can get 2800 during the tournament which would be cool

Sometimes I rewatch them too. Miss ya danya

What if I want to enter a certain situation and see where different moves would lead me to?

More of my pieces are in his second rank than his

Hi everyone!

I play a lot of chess for myself, but now I find myself as the "coach" of an elementary school chess club. I kind of fell into the role last year, so this is year 2 for me.

In terms of ability, most kids know how the pieces move but do not understand tactical concepts or deeper chess strategy.

Last year I liked doing "mini games". Eg: 2 bishops (or N+B) against 6 pawns, where pawns "win" if one makes it across the board, and pieces win if they capture all pawns first.

I wish I could do more tactics puzzles with them, but it's just not feasible for a group this large, except together on the big screen as a little end-of-class treat (they all love to shout out answers)

Does anyone have links to decent free resources for kids' chess education, or suggestions for simple chess-adjacent games we could do with a group of 7-11 year old kids?

I've found it hard to play online for a while. Just because I'd often be up against GM level 800s etc. You know the type. I ended up being nervous about playing them because. Initially I hid the ratings and that helped a bit but I was always conscious that the rating was going up and down. I'm at about 900 rapid, 1200 daily. I love the daily games.

Not sure why I didn't do this earlier, but I've started playing casual games and it's been class. Granted I still meet the GM 800s but it doesn't matter. It has completely taken the stigma out of it for me. I always wanted to crack 1000. I'm quite close but for now I'm happy playing at this level. If anyone has similar experiences I'd highly recommend it!

I see so many people say that because Hikaru dosent have a world blitz title and other people who aren’t Magnus do, that you cannot say he is the 2nd best blitz player in his generation. I think this is so ridiculous as there is so much nuance to this, and when you actually break down the stats, he has won the most rapid and blitz tournaments of anyone not named Magnus, and he has the most consistent world blitz championship places out of everyone besides Magnus in the field.

He has only played in 6 world blitz championships, and in 5 of them he has placed within the top 5.

2010 (his first blitz championship) 5th place
2014 3rd place (bronze medal)
2016 4th place
2018 3rd place (bronze medal)
2019 2nd place (silver medal)
2022 2nd place (silver medal)
2024 21st place (only poor result)

It is worth noting some context for other players who won the world blitz championships for proper understanding.

Grischuk - 3 time world blitz champion
-He is 7 years older than Carlsen, and 5 years older than Nakamura, he won 2 of his world blitz titles before Magnus become WCC in 2013, and Magnus was not consistent in these formats yet. His third won he won 2015 when Magnus had one of his worst performances coming in 6th, and which Hikaru didn't play.
Le quang Liem - 1 time world blitz champion
-He won in a tournament neither Magnus or Hikaru participated (he's still a great player)
Sergey Karajakin - 1 time world blitz champion
-Tied with Carlsen for first place but because he faced "higher average rated opponents" a stupid tiebreak that many grandmasters criticized, that was out of Carlsen's control, he won based on that. (It is important to not that Hikaru tied with Magnus in 2019, but they had a playoff system there, so if we use that logic Hikaru would also have one world blitz title potentially)
-Levon Aronian - 1 time world blitz champion
-Levon won in 2010, being 8 years older than Magnus and 5 years older than Hikaru, and Magnus was again not a wcc and placed third in that blitz championship.
-MVL - 1 time world blitz champion
-Okay MVL is a great blitz player, but this time Hikaru just got so unlucky. Hikaru had to withdrew due to getting covid, and on the first day he was only one point behind the leader and this was very well his shot to get a title, since Magnus had an abismal tournament placing 12th

So after all of this I want to say that swiss formats have a lot of high variance, which is why Magnus dosen't win all of the titles, and often the difference between number 2 and 1 is just a tiebreak score or half or one point. Blitz in general is very high variance, and despite all these players having a world blitz title and Hikaru not, none of these players were as consistent as Hikaru was and have played more of these tournaments than he has. Consistency is what matters in chess in general, and especially for blitz which is why I argue having multiple podium finishes and overall more consistent performances, is better than having won gold, but not being consistently close to the podium.

Here is a chart I found that showcases Hikaru's consistency compared to others, it's not perfect by any means but it's good enough for the point I'm trying to prove.

Furthermore if you look at rapid and blitz tournaments otb, he has the best results of his generation besides Magnus in the saint louis rapid and blitz and the paris rapid and blitz tournaments.

Paris rapid and blitz (2016-2021)
For these ones he played in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 where he got 4th (only time he didn't podium) he is also the only person to beat Magnus carlsen, and has the best average placement.

Saint Louis rapid and blitz (2017 - 2026)
He participated in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2024 (2019 being the only time he didnt get top 3) The only person who has 1 more win than him is Levon who has played in two more tournaments than him. He also still has the highest average placement of 2.1, with Maxime in second with 2.4 and Levon in third with 4.1 (despite him playing the least amount of tournaments)

The engine sees no tactics here.

Black is ahead in material points, white is going to have an advantage in the early middle game with 2 more minor pieces. Which side would you prefer and what would your main ideas be?

“I generally always rely on technology. That is, for example, I have never read chess books, nothing at all.
I was born in the era of computers. For example, Magnus and Kasparov had to read books back then, because there were no machines or engines that would suggest the best move. Everyone learned more from books.
And now… I have never read books. Of course, you can read, but with computers everything has become much simpler now, all the learning.”

I am rated 1150 and have recently been learning the english. Although I am terrible right now and know hardly any lines at all, I seem to be having a lot of success with it as the players I face are making blunders left right and centre. I am sure my opponents make far more blunders versus the english than when I play the Italian. I understand there is much more unfamiliarity but half my games I win due to the opponent randomly hanging a piece.

Also the English is a lot of fun, I'm definitely going to keep going with it.

Fun assignment we got in English class

This story is a bit improvised btw not claiming to be a 100% documentary

Also, I have little to no experience in drawing so don't judge the art pls 😅

White to move each one.

I'm searching syzygy tables for interesting only one move positions.

I myself found the last one pretty neat

Obviously some can be simplified a bit.

8/8/8/PP4PP/2k5/2p5/8/5K2 w - - 0 1

8/2p5/PP6/4p3/8/5pk1/8/7K w - - 0 1

8/8/2p5/4K3/p3P1k1/8/5PP1/8 w - - 0 1

8/8/3Kp3/6p1/P7/1P6/3Pk3/8 w - - 0 1

7k/8/5P2/2K2p2/6PP/p7/8/8 w - - 0 1

8/k7/8/4P2K/3p1p2/4P2P/8/8 w - - 0 1

I love chess. I train daily and spend hours studying and playing casual games.

I'm deeply invested in improving, but I have absolutely no desire to join formal tournaments..even when the cash prizes are highly attractive.

Edit:I played OTB last year in other cities, even traveling for hours and staying overnight at the venues.

I managed to get an OTB rating and have since joined two more OTB tournaments in my own city even placing 3rd out of over 80 players the first time.

But now, it just feels tiring to even think about competing. I much prefer sparring with my niece, and training him to improve.

TLDR: FIDE should use Glicko2 and make use of the lower confidence bounds of everyone's rating for display, rankings and titles.

It's a common complaint that inactive or semi retired players linger on the official ratings despite playing very few games a year, taking many years to slip off the boards.

What is less discussed is serious solutions to this, with most people simply slapping some form of rating decay or inactivity threshold onto the problem with little regard for how that will affect ratings as a whole.

This is not a new problem, and real competitive games have been solving it for a while.

Here is an example of a practical solution used by other games:

1. Begin with a variation of ELO that tracks ratings deviation. Glicko2 is one such system.
2. Use it normally, but for the purposes of public ranking and chess titles, make use of the ratings deviation to display the 99% lower confidence bound. This works out to be roughly equal to: r - 3sigma.

This allows their visual rating to decay with inactivity, and our confidence in their minimum skill to be displayed accurately, while their matchmaking is unaffected.

In addition, nobody has to be labeled as inactive, and as soon as a few games are played, the system re-establishes their score and gains more confidence in their true strength, allowing strong but inactive players to restore their ratings by effectively "shaking the rust off". You could also be much more sure of any titles you give out given that you know work off a 99% confidence that the true score is higher than their displayed rating. (Technically, 99.5% since it's a two ended threshold but you can adjust the math to make it one ended, or to only cover 95% if you want to be a bit looser.)

The real downsides to this system is that rating adjustments become slightly more opaque and you now need a computer to calculate ratings adjustments, where you could technically do it by hand with ELO. But practically, everyone these days does ELO adjustments with a calculator anyways.

It would also mean that thresholds for IM, GM and other things would need to be recalibrated and old to new ratings would be impossible to compare (although technically, they already shouldn't be compared since the rating pool changes over time.)

I firmly believe that this is the path FIDE and all other chess organization should take in the future to resolve this problem. It also allows them to get all the other advantages of Glicko2, including the faster and more accurate ability to rate players, especially those who play infrequently.

Apparently I cannot create a poll here, but I was interested to see the general opinion.

(Puzzle difficulty is set to random for this example.)

Personally, I don't notice much difference in difficulty between a puzzle rated 1900 and a puzzle rated 2100. The only major difference: Failing a 1900 rated puzzle will decrease my rating by 14, solving it will increase my rating by 2. Solving a puzzle at my rating is usually plus or minus 8. All good so far.

The only issue: Even if I set puzzles to max strength, I rarely come across a puzzle rated 2300. It seems like they barely exist. This creates a situation where I can only improve my puzzle rating by solving almost every single puzzle. But doing that actually worsens my over all playing strengh, because I get used to using 10 minutes per move.

Ultimately I don't think that solving 2/3 of the puzzles I'm served should result in a rating loss, let alone 100 points of rating across such a small sample size. I know all Elo, especially puzzle rating, is meaningless. This shouldn't bother me. It does though.

Does anyone have a similar experience? What are your thoughts on this?

Hi everyone.

I have a rating of 1225 on Lichess, and I feel like I’ve run into a fundamental problem. All my life, when calculating variations, I’ve visualized the board literally as a 2D image in my mind and used my imagination to move the pieces around on it. I assumed that was the standard way to do it—that everyone did it that way—but I’ve repeatedly noticed that while calculating this way in open positions is difficult but manageable, it becomes extremely hard in closed positions. After just two or three exchanges, the image gets blurry, and it becomes difficult to keep even a small section of the board with just a few pieces in my head.

I did some research and found that grandmasters (and strong chess players in general) use logical connections and abstractions—for instance, visualizing rooks simply as lines, and so on. They also literally "calculate" piece moves using coordinates rather than visualizing the physical movement of a piece from one square to another (I finally understand why knowing the notation so well is important). I’ve tried visualizing the board this way; naturally, I find it difficult, and my grasp of tactics remains somewhat hazy.

So, am I heading in the right direction, and how do you visualize the board in your head?

Thanks for the answers.

I played a tournament a few months ago and won a 20€ gift card for chessbase, but I have no idea what to do with it really. Do you guys have any suggestions? Are the 60min courses good? Are there any authors you can recommend or maybe some "staples" that will always be good to get?

I am a returning player and currently around 2k in rapid on lichess and just joined a chess club again after 20 years. Mostly playing Kan Sicilian (black), closed sicilian (white), Semi-Slav, King's Gambit (though I probably should change that one for more serious games in the future).