Chess rating vs Self-esteem

@Analysator

Wow! I don't know how I would have found that link.
The chess link is fabulous. You made my day.
This is really great, thank you.

@Toscani
At your rating, you must work really hard at standard patterns - puzzles and simple thematic studies (practical ones). It is helpful to get a good puzzle book which is organized into themes/patterns. Or use some software with puzzles. Once you get good at it, you can try random puzzles. The lichess ones will not help you much at this point perhaps. Once you get to a rating of 2000, it will make sense.

Basically, you play standard patterns and solve them until you see it with a single glance at the board. This is when you know that your brain has absorbed it. Chess patterns occur all too often. Increase your repertoire of patterns (tactical and positional) and you will see a boost in your strength and rating

All the best!

I tried this out with the puzzles, but I feel nothing. Solving is better than failing, that's true. ;)

I wrote somewhere else here: "Tactics are good, but I wouldn’t overestimate them. It‘s rather like the „stopped ball“ in soccer, e.g. corners, penalties, free-kicks."

I guess it's all in the starting position.
I need the pieces to aim towards the center and place one pawn in the center.
Basically, develop minor pieces and push pawns forward.
My starting plan is to capture a bishop with a knight and not the other way around.

The harder part is to view the surroundings of what is next after the opening phase.
I guess it's seeing the mobility of the pieces and how to attract them to vulnerable squares.
If I better my tactical attractions, I will have improved.

Maybe it's using the pawn weaknesses of my opponent and creating a plan according to that.
After all, I'm not building the chess position alone.

I haven't really learned to work with my opponent. I play to block and do my thing. It now feels wrong.
I think I really need to start looking at the pawn weaknesses of my opponent and start exploiting those weaknesses.

When I start wondering too much, it's time to take a break.

@Toscani
yes, its all about square-domination (use/create/provoke weak squares and use/create/provoke strong squares to win material or checkmate the enemy king) and this is only possible if you develop your pieces to the right suqares and let them work together in middlegame.

In most of my regular games (not online) I win in endgame due to better middlegame-play. Blatant tactics are rarely decisive in my games. But of course I am able to use them if my opponent is not careful enough. In long games I am tactically relatively strong while in short time-controls my eyes are usually not quick enough.

Chess is very individual game and you have to find your own style. Other dislike my playing-style and prefer attacking-chess. I only attack if my opponent provokes it with dubious pawn moves. I am a very ambitious counter-attack player by the way... ;-)

But most important is: Have fun with and from chess!!
In my first years I liked the game although I was rated 1100 and lost 70-80% of my games.

@Toscani
I stumbled upon a good link lichess.org/practice

There is another simple philosophy/path to understanding chess itself. Seeing at every juncture how many squares your pieces control. Try to maximize that with every move. Here's a link chessimprover.com/space-point-count/
Not to say that you will become the next Magnus with this, but this is a good start to understanding.

I have solved most of the practice link.... Just the 7th-Rank Rook Pawn to finish off.
The other link is good reading.

As a chess player, I tend to compare my standings in a tournament and I also do it with my chess rating. Is it healthy, I don't know. If I compare my rating or standings to others above me, my self esteem seems to be more affected, then when I compare it with others below me. So I would say my self-esteem is more affected by playing higher rated players.

Often my question is:
What strategy do they use, that I don't use ?
What chess tactics am I not using?

The chess insight section helps me to discover some of my weak points, but doesn't answer my two above questions.

There was a time in my life that I wasted Pawns for no reason. Today, it's a bit different. I look at my pawns as if they were baby Queens.

The percentage comparison in my Rapid profile, helps my self-esteem. Especially when I see that I'm a bit above average.
I can live with that... lichess.org/@/Toscani/perf/rapid

As a chess player, I think I need to start comparing more things, like how I play compared to some higher rated players.

Why am I picking an average move and not the best move? Obviously on average, it's because I'm not trying to see deeper than 4 deep and I don't look at piece safety on every move. At least, I'm aware of some of my faults. I already know I'm a late bloomer. At my age, I'm obviously passed the bloom period, but I still want to bloom some more. :)

On average, do low rated players play gambits well? Does it feel like we are wasting a pawn in hope of a better development. If we cannot exploit the advantage, then why play that gambit? I guess we have to try it, to know we cannot exploit it.

At what rating should a player start thinking of experimenting with opening gambits? Always loosing affects self-esteem. If an opening affects our self-esteem, then it's obviously not made for our rating level. We need rewards to feel good.
Is there a chess insight statistic showing how well we succeeded in gambits?

Is there a way to sort openings by rating level? Since our depth perception is not there at very low ratings... Sorting openings by short-term advantages (ideal for low rated players) and long-term advantages (ideal for experts) seems a way to sort the openings by rating. As we learn to see deeper into a position we can then start hoping to win more games with these openings.

It's nice to see, our chess insights and see which openings we play the most. Between them, it also shows the openings we lost the least. The openings we lost the least are the openings we should be using more often.

Studying openings is a personal thing. I pick them from my chess insights. They are openings that I can use to improve. My opening studies start from openings I lost the least, not openings I lost the most. I feel those hard openings are too much for my present rating.

#4 "If we play at a pace that actual finishes the game with more clock time than we started, then the game was played way too fast. This type of experience affects also a persons sense of accomplishment. They did not play out the games at the expected speed. They now have an under inflated rating in the classical section. To see a true classical rating in that section, we need to pace out the games. Maybe even have them sorted by speed results. Over time, the speed we play out our games will sooner or later affect our self esteem."

For some time controls with extreme increments, You might see that they end with much more time than you start with. Or, any 0+n time control.

I looked in my chess insights for my openings that I played the most.
I then searched the web to see if they were popular this year.
For me, I think these are the ones I need to study, because they seem to be more popular than the others in my chess insights.

Petrov Defense (C42) 1. e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nf6
Reti Opening (A04) 1. Nf3 ...
Nimzovich-Larsen Attack (A01) 1. b3 ...
French Defense (C00) 1. e4 e6
Caro-Kann (B10) 1. e4 c6
Queen's Pawn Game (A40) 1. d4 ...
Queen's Pawn Game (D00) 1. d4 d5

If you look in your chess insights there will be different openings. It will be better that you use your own chess insight openings, because it goes with your actual skills and present rating.

Now I need to start practicing these 7 openings with a few traps in mind, so I can start playing more proactively.
Opening preparation feels similar to when I look at a map to plan a trip.
I feel good when I succeed in memorizing a trap and even better when I gain something from memorizing the trap.