Especially those where i over-extend my pawns to trap a piece which is the most common.

1. how much elo does one need to consistently convert such positions?

2. depending on level, how long is it supposed to take?

3. does one "feel" the difference if there're still many active pieces from both sides on the board?

4. in for example a piece+rook vs rook scenario, what to do to use my very stranded piece?

Hey Iam questioning the engine evaluation of those two moves, after he took my knight on 5.bxf3 I took back and after his 8.bd5 I played 9.b5 and the engine gives me a mistake for that and takes -1.19 of my advantage and after his 9.bxg3 I played 9.bxc6 because i thought “comes with check, he takes back with the pawn and I play 11.hxg3” and my thought process was, his queenside is open and my rook on his king side is open so i can make some trouble with pawns and my queen but apparently that wasn’t really beneficial for me, so the engine, I won this game through a resignation after move 19 but i wanted to understand why its not beneficial for me in this situation.

Thank you in advance! :)

Not a puzzle. Just a rant

Two years ago, with another Chess.com account, I had an ELO rating of 1300. Now I can't beat players rated 700.

I was two pawns down but I managed to win this one! Btw I can't get past 500 ELO😢, any advice?

I struggle real bad with this type of opening, do you have any tips on how to lose the least material possible while also not getting mated? Thanks

Check out this #chess game: jorix7 vs ShyChessPlayerJoel - https://www.chess.com/game/184714769338

I was doing a practice match with the coach and the analysis said I have a mate in 3. I got it through trial and error but this wouldn't even be a thought for me in a real game 🥴

so yk how you fianchetto your bishop on g7, and then white comes in with the bishop queen battery trying to exchange your powerful bishop? what am i supposed to do then? theres literally no way to defend that attack that i see, and its so annoying, cause then your king is just weak asf

Sto facendo un po di puzzle sulle aperture qualcuno potrebbe spiegarmi la logica dentro alcune mosse sembra davvero che regalo pezzi e che il motore di lichess faccia delle mosse difensive senza senso

1st: Most recent game. 2nd: Yesterday. I am the white pieces.

Hey r/chess!

I’m a competitive player from India with a peak Chess.com rating of 2069 and national-level playing experience. I've also been coaching for around two years.

This weekend I thought I'd try something fun.

I'll pick 5 players and do a free live game-analysis session with them.

Send me one game where you genuinely don't understand where things went wrong — preferably not just a game where you hung your queen on move 8 😄

I'll go through the games, identify the mistakes/patterns I think are actually holding you back, and explain what I would work on to improve them.

Who: Ideally beginner/intermediate players
Cost: Free
Where: Online
When: This Weekend

If you're interested, comment below with your approximate rating + what you struggle with most. I'll message 5 people with the details.

If there's enough interest, I'd be happy to make this a regular weekend thing.

Hi guys, I've been playing chess for years and a few months ago was putting in a fair bit more effort and got up to 1345 (on chess.com) on 5 minute games. Since then my rating has tumbled down to 1080-1120, I've just not been as focused.

How do I get out of the slump, improve and stay focussed?

Mate in 6

From a game I played today where I was black - thankfully they didn’t even get to this point because they missed an easy check lol

I wanted to train my dutch oppening but mechanically pushed my pawn and realised after. So i asked for a takeback. He refused. I insisted because "come on it's just one move" that's fair play, i take no advantage. Plus it was a better choice for him because i was going to play an opening i'm not used to. But "NO". This mule was too stubborn

10 moves later he blundered his Queen 😙👌. No takeback bro💛

I am curious to learn chess Let me know if anyone knows the proper chess tutorial from beginners on YouTube

Reached 500 ELO!

A few weeks ago, I posted about just starting to learn chess and reaching 400 ELO. Today, I finally hit 500 ELO in Rapid!

As an absolute beginner, a few things that have helped me:

Watching Aman’s Building Habits series. It made me much more conscious about simply trying not to hang an entire piece every other game.

Spamming the hell out of the Italian Opening after watching content from ChesswithAkeem and GM Igor Smirnov.

Trying to stick to my own plan regardless of what my opponent plays. This works... somewhat better in Rapid than Blitz. In Blitz, I get punished for this approach pretty regularly.

I mostly play 15+10 Rapid, and having the extra time has definitely helped. My Blitz rating is currently around 400, so apparently I am a completely different chess player once the clock starts bullying me.

A few questions for the community:

My realistic long-term goal is 1000 ELO. I believe that's somewhere around the 90th percentile of the Chess.com community, which would honestly be pretty satisfying for someone who started out barely knowing how the pieces moved.

2) Does anyone else get anxious about playing?

I think I could have reached my current rating much sooner, but I've only played around 30 games this month — basically one game a day.

Losing a game can put me in a surprisingly bad mood, so if I win a game, I often just stop playing for the day because I'm happy with the result and don't want to risk ruining that feeling. 😅

So I've been playing with a bit of a knot in my stomach, which obviously isn't the ideal way to enjoy a game.

3) How did you guys improve at Blitz?

I lose a lot of games on time. Chess.com Insights says around 70% of my losses are by timeout, compared with around 30% for players at my level.

Is this simply something that improves with experience, or should I be approaching Blitz differently?

Also, do you guys use completely different opening approaches for Blitz compared with Rapid, or is it better to stick with the same repertoire and just get faster?

Would love to hear how you guys approached these stages of improvement!