How to Improve Rating

The previous post by me was for Akarish_2010

I've started a spreadsheet where I try to point out my biggest mistake in all games. I'm 1600 in lichess classical, 1400 lichess rapid - about 1200 on chess.com. My biggest weakness is still hanging pieces. The shorter the time control, the more pieces I leave hanging. 10+0 - I hang pieces in 22% of my games. 20 minutes or more time control, that reduces to 8% of my games.

I know a lot of people suggest to play longer time controls as a beginner. The problem is that I feel like whenever I come back to rapid (10min), all improvement I made playing longer controls goes out the window because I continue to hang pieces. Does anyone have suggestions on how to train to stop hanging pieces?

I still hang pieces. But I think I hang less if I have a plan and am not just pushing wood. This usually requires analyzing your games with the computer at the time of the blunder.

Also studying end games so you can develop a plan to get to a certain mate position. I would love to have lichess feature to search for openings that ended in certain mating positions in the openings I play. This would help me greatly in developing a plan to get to a position were I have a hooked mate or Anastasia mate or double bishop mate.

Have you used the lichess practice page?

https://lichess.org/practice

Going through the mating patterns is helpful in recognizing them in your games and on the puzzle page.

But I am in the same boat as you. So I would welcome a masters input.

Another feature I would like is being able search for people who are improving in chess ie their ratings are going up. Then form a group post to share best prep techniques. Unfortunately a rapidly improving account has the potential for being a cheater. Or someone who started using keyboard moves for time advantage.

If you will notice on my bullet profile I have recently made big ratings improvement. This is due to me stop playing 1-0 tournaments and playing 2-1 bullet games. I realized that I was losing a-lot in the tournaments due to time. Probably due to keyboard users. 2-1 bullet non tournament games takes that variable away from the keyboard users.

@Tyrant-I Try playing a 15+0 game.

Instructive post!

@MrCalderon
amog us

@MrCalderon said in #24:

@Tyrant-I Try playing a 15+0 game.

Unfortunately you then run into people using computers but still a valid point.

@Tyrant-I Rarely. It's like once every ten games and Lichess catches them often. I get points refunded.

Thanks @MrCalderon !

@mAHiTh1708 Thanks. If you apply these principles, your play will considerably improve. I've been doing puzzles from Lichess on a physical board (without moving the pieces until the end) with good results.