To say that I am terrible at chess is, well, a gross understatement. I have played hundreds of games between here and
chess.com, but seem to never improve. I've watched plenty of YouTube videos and have an account on Chessable, but nothing seems to be helping me improve. It feels like I am going into every game blind and other than maybe the first couple of moves, I am constantly guessing at what might be the right move. It's like other players see things that I don't. How do you all find mentors/people to help? I thought about joining a team, but there are so many that I don't know where to start or what teams are worth joining. Any advice on teams or mentoring to help me be the opposite of complete garbage?
PS, I literally just used a chess engine to find the checkmate on the captcha in order to post this because I could not find checkmate myself. I am not exaggerating when I say my play is complete garbage.
Everyone starts off in your shoes (or worse!). I can’t commit to much, but willing to lend a hand to help get you on the road to improving. At least help guide you towards self teaching.
P.S. you can PM me if you’d like, they don’t have captcha’s. :)
-Jordan
Chess improvement is a long, long journey unless you are naturally gifted.
This is why child prodigy's who excel spend 30+ years honing and improving to become the next Fischer, Carlsen.
Chess is like a sport, if you do not practice everyday and strive to improve, like a sprinter who sits on his ass, smokes & eats cheeseburgers, you'll go from World class to dumb-ass :)
Stop the bullet & blitz, play rapid & classical.
If you can't see a mate in one you don't have a mentoring problem, you have a "not enough games played/not enough puzzles solved" problem.
Apologies for checking your profile, but I've reviewed some of your games and your play isn't as bad as you're describing here. You can definitely see a lot of good moves. You do miss quite a lot of good moves and hang some pieces, but hey, we all started out like this. You do not need a mentor, what you need to do is play more games (preferably rapid and classical), do puzzles and take your time to think before a move. Please bear in mind you are better than 33% of rapid players (your most played mode), which means that there are LOADS of people that play worse than you do. Maintain a positive attitude, analyse your errors and play lots and lots of games.
Thank you all for the help! This is some really good advice. I appreciate you taking the time to help me feel a bit better and give me some direction.
lichess.org/practiceI would definitely recommend completing all of the exercises on the lichess practice page. The order in which they're given is very useful as well.
I can mentor u, I like to teach to understand myself,
and understand chess, I am a weak professor.
We can have fun with the study tools etc...
@FiveToolDev I do have some tips
1. Do plenty of tactics
chesstempo.com/ is a good tactics website
2. Analyze your games, analyzing your games helps you improve from you mistakes
3. You can watch some chess videos on a specific topic to help you improve
You can private message me if you want me to mentor you
Being bad at chess is ok! We all started out bad at chess and it takes time to improve! I spent like 1 year learning the rules of chess!
