hi all, I have searched but not found anything helpful.
I am new to online chess and will be starting my adventures of rated games and tournaments.
One thing I have noticed while playing online is my "vigilance", eg, I keep missing obvious moves for and against me, tactics, that OTB I dont miss.
Are there any recommended lessons, videos, tactics etc that can help improve my vigilance in watching the whole board while playing online ?
Hope this makes sense and thanks for any suggestions.
Welcome!
The most important things when it comes to vigilance are your experience and your time management.
You're going to lose a lot. We all did. Take some time after the game to find your first mistake of the game, and try to figure out what lead to the mistake.
After you play enough similar games, you'll recognize patterns (like "hey, I notice that if they move their bishop then their queen out right away, I need to find a way to protect the pawn on f7/f2").
But you'll only get that experience by making mistakes and recognizing them. So what should you do in the meantime?
Use your time wisely. I'm glad you're playing longer games (15+10 from the look of it).
If you lose a game with 8 minutes left, then you had 8 minutes worth of thinking you could have used to play smarter/safer moves. If you're playing with an increment (like 15+10 means you get 10 more seconds every time you make a move), use at least the increment's worth of time on every single move, even if it's a simple recapture, just to see if anything catches your eye.
I can go into detail with more specific strategies, but these two things are important to realize.
I cannot elaborate on the very informative post by
@RebeccaPawnI have only been playing a few months myself and I find myself blundering and loosing games where I had a chance.
Just keep playing, and best of luck!
I was given advice to avoid bullet and even blitz, which I did not take, thinking I could improve by battling over shorter games, but I now realise I was being given excellent advice, which I ignored.
IMO I would suggest you play correspondence games, it was the advice I was given and I thought these games were making me over-think my moves, but in reality my correspondence rating is over 400 points higher than my rapid rating and 500+ over my blitz and bullet ratings
thank you RebeccaPawn and synposis, great advice and will take both into account.
much appreciated
My pleasure. I also suggest playing against people as a way to improve.
When you play against the computer (especially at low levels) it'll randomly mix in good moves (as part of a plan to attack/defend) and bad moves (to make itself easier).
If you play against players of your same level, they'll be playing moves that they think are the best move, and you can try to gauge a pattern or a plan from their choices - something you can't do against the computer.
I'm not a very good chess player (online, or offline; at least for standard chess).
In any case, when I did try to actively study and learn, one thing that several people tried to teach me was looking at the board, not just overall, but in quadrents, or looking at the board in 4x4 sections. (Had something to do with supporting pieces, and not leaving pieces hanging.)
Another thing to consider is patterns and practices (i.e. end-game tactics, and mid-game shots, and how to setup for one or the other). In summary: If you think to yourself: "it would be nice to have a Knight over there in a few moves" ... counting how many moves it would take a Knight (or Bishop) to get to a particular square (to provide support). And this gets into things like positional thinking (which I'm not good at). But, knowing the count of moves to get a particular piece to a specific position, and the number of counter-moves that could prohibit that comes in handy (off-hand).
And, as for online versus offline (OTB) play ... yes, sometimes there is an adjustment period, but, in good time (spent playing online) you'll adapt to moving from one to the other easily. I would suggest reviewing online games, offline, OTB study on your own. And vice-versa: For any game you play offline, keep track of the moves, and input them online for analysis. (The latter will help a lot.)
really at your level just play through the games of the great chessplayers before you. I started with the games of greco vs nn. Then moved on to morphy , steinitz, and so on so forth. stick to one opening for white and a couple for black. I say this because you will need to approach different openings differently. Learn and play some gambit lines as you get better you'll stop playing them only to rediscover them after getting a lot better. Tactics practice them, study them. Know your basic endgames until you can pretty much premove them and most importantly be patient.
It will take years to get up to anything near 2000 on this site.