I can't find my weaknesses.

When I thought about raising my level of play, I realized one thing: you need to learn. And there are two options here:
1) Study on your own
2) Training with a coach (if you have money, of course)
It's about self-study.
I studied on my own and my first textbook was Chess Fundamentals by José Raul Capablanca.
From it you will learn everything you need to become a strong player in the first category (1800 elo), and then I would recommend reading "My System" by Aron Nimzowitsch. These two books, in my opinion, should be read by every self-respecting chess player. The results will not be long in coming. In parallel, I recommend studying the endgame, for example, from the book by Lajos Portisch "Six hundred endings". There are collected typical (and not only) chess endings of various types.

Right now, it makes no sense for you to “dig” in your games for too long, since your level of play is not enough to clearly understand your own strategic or tactical mistakes (the coach should help you do this work, but you can do it yourself to become a stronger player). To do this, we learn to understand where to look for our mistakes, why the computer considers this move to be a "miss" and everything else.

So for now, focus on leveling up your game. Play fewer games but try your best in them and you will succeed. If you have any questions, you can write me message. Wish you success!

@SD_2709 given your strength I knew what is you biggest weakness. As it is mine as just little bit less so. You blunder pieces without real reason. I checked two of games quickly and in both you blundered a pawn and within few moves a piece.

You just need to a lot more careful. If never drop piece to so that opponent does even some tactic but just take what you offer you would minimum 200 points stronger. If avoid most two move tactics you still more. round about that time it is worth yur while to work on other thing. Chess without pieces is just so hard.

Play puzzles but by themes. maybe a random set of themes first to have some statistical power, (triplicates).
the themes overlap and are intertwined but there are dominant ones for some of the puzzles*.
You can eventually get a profile over many themes, and there is a slice that can show you weaknesses among those. They are mostly tactical, but do have consequences or ties to more than tactical. But anyway most people here swear by tactical first (some ever) so that you could be happy that way... puzzle focus on themes, not general rating. this is not really a race to best average puzzle rating. not from my point of view at least.

* would be nice @lichess to get updates on the statistics of those per puzzles, not just puzzles per themes, but also the various intersections.

@SD_2709 said in #1:
> I started playing around 3 months ago and I am around 1450 in classical. I also stopped playing blitz, bullet, ultra and variants since I want to improve at rapid and classical. I try to analyse my games first by myself and then with the computer. But I can't find my weaknesses. Can anyone tell me how to find my weaknesses by going through my games so that I can work on improving them? (Thanks in advance).

Lol. Im going to start this with a sentence, but dont take it as an insult, its an effect. The Dunning-Kruger effect to be precise.
Which states that incompetent people are unable to see their own incompetency and thus, they tend to over estimate their capabilities.

At 1450 you have a lot to cover, you just dont see it. You are violating a lot of chess principles.



One of the principles states that you have to develop your pieces first and avoid moving the same piece twice before that happens. In this game by move 15, you moved your bishop twice (which left a pawn hanging, and the rook 3 times before you developed your queen side pieces).

Sometimes its unavoidable to move the same piece twice before, but in the first 3 games i saw from you, you violated this principle without a real reason.

In most games you drop pieces.



At this point, im watching a trend with your defensive opening of choice, you always lose with that opening. Study it or drop it and get something else.



Missed a tactic to win the queen , but there is a lot more going on. 14 0-0.........
You need to castle, develop your knight to f6, and develop the other rook, thats your short term plan, you have the initiative (its a loose term here as no one has anything going up). The point is that you need to develop without giving the opponent tempos of free development.
You throw in a useless check, you really dont get points for stuff like that, In fact, you need the king on its original position to exploit the g1-a7 diagonal if he moves the f pawn. You will get in that diagonal with tempo, as he will need to move the king, or protect a piece if one happens to be in the way.

But you throw in the check, then misplace the bishop, it had to go to d6, which gave white the free tempo by playing f4, then you do a need to do move 0-0-0, and a necessary move Re8, but again, you make a pawn move before development.

So, it took you 14, FOURTEEN!!!!!!! moves to do that simple task. OMGWTFBBQ, and still the knight ended up in a very sub optimal square. 0-0-0, Nf6, thats it.You could have let him trade the bishop for the knight to complete your development, you could have dropped it to d6 in 1 go, but the plan was soooo simple. By making random moves, you just created a lot of problems for yourself, which is a trend, its not only this game, that is your systematic problem, you get in trouble for making moves you do not have to do prior to developing, and that result in hanging pieces, giving free tempos for your opponent so he can develop himself or reposition. Then, just the sheer power of development just crushes you.

Seriously, just follow basic principles. Not too many pawn moves early on. Aim to develop your all or most of your pieces before moving a piece for the second time, castle as soon as possible, dont block pawns with pieces,

Take for instance these games. the result is not important.






Some i won, some i got totally destroyed, but if you look closer, regardless if i played flawlessly or made a lot of mistakes, i only did double piece moves before completing development when it was justified or necessary, but i focused a lot in development. Some times my rooks didnt got "developed" to the center and i started to make other stuff, but they were already connected or just 1 move away from connecting, or could easily go to the center or anywhere i needed them.

Focusing on development will allow you to play both sides of the board, but also, you minimize passive play, you know, if you are defending, you have little chance to win, with pieces developed, the first mistake he makes, you are 1 move away to start your own attack. You cant do that if the knight or bishop are in the original position.

Not blocking pawns allows for pawn breaks when needed, clearing your back rank allows to castle easily, sometimes to the opposite side if you see opportunities to exploit.

Developing will make your play way smoother. Dont focus too much in the result, try to minimize pawn moves and go for development on both sides, and when you are fully developed and your opponent isnt, you will see that its very easy to exploit his position, because he doesnt control key squares, which will result in blockades, pins, skewers, knight outposts, and sometimes even blocking his castling (which is huge since 1 of his rooks is not playing).

If you are not winning a piece or making a real treat, dont move the same piece, develop another one.
If he misplaces a piece and you can develop your own and attack it at the same time, take it, its a free developing tempo.
Your rooks are connected and he placed the queen on the open file, attack it with your rook, free developing tempo.
You dont have a useful move and he doesnt have an attack? Develop a piece.
He pinned your knight-queen and the bisop cant defend? develop the other knight to protect the first and move the queen.

(develop) I hope (develop) you get (develop) the message (develop).

This is a great video on just this!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMWt4JtIZBA

Hope it helps! :)

It's one thing blurting out what @SD_2709 should do and another for them to follow the advice.

After looking at their profile I've noticed that they don't get a computer analysis after each and every game of rapid or classical. In fact it could be their opponent that requested the computer analysis.

It's understandable if they are playing blitz or faster games but with classical there is absolutely no good reason not to use the computer analysis feature.

Immediately after playing these longer time control games (learn from your mistakes). Press that blue button. I can't overstate how lucky you are to live in an age with this kind of technical resource available for free.

This will show you all the missed opportunities, in real time, that not even a paid chess coach would be able to find.

So start there. Go over every game you have ever played with computer analysis. If it takes you 3 months, so be it.

Stop reading books, watching videos, asking for advice from strangers. Just put in the work, do the reps and suffer in silence.

@SD_2709 You can find your weaknesses, and stockfish will lead the way ...

Take your time ... be patient ... then your own evolution of style will emerge, like the Lotus flower from the unspeakable dregs of failure ...

And it won't happen overnight ...

At this stage it is probably difficult to find your own weaknesses or make plans to fix the weaknesses. But simple and more beneficial thing to do is to study a book like Simple Chess by Michael Stean. It is a beautiful little book. And of course keep playing and solve some puzzles on the side. Do these things casually and for fun, instead of overthinking about training and optimal way to mastery, and you can progress quite a lot.

@SD_2709 said in #1:
> I started playing around 3 months ago and I am around 1450 in classical. I also stopped playing blitz, bullet, ultra and variants since I want to improve at rapid and classical. I try to analyse my games first by myself and then with the computer. But I can't find my weaknesses. Can anyone tell me how to find my weaknesses by going through my games so that I can work on improving them? (Thanks in advance).

You probably make the same mistakes as most 1400s,:
- Awareness: always check for capture/checks and tactics
- Plan: Grand principles of positional chess should be known and always applied
- Focus

I believe under a certain level there is no need to tailor specific trainings: tactics, some incredible books like My System and a load of experiences will do wonder.

Tactics is the most important thing on our skill level. We know the basics of openings. We know that open lines are good for our rooks and bishops. We know that a white pawn on row 6 or 7 is very strong in endgames. That's enough knowledge on our skill level. We shouldn't learn detailed openings which give us +0.4 advantage instead of +0.3. We lose games because we don't see a tactic which cost us a knight, a bishop or a rook.