Rough chess improvement

Dear @SwiftCuber14 , lots of the above comments seem kinda right but after checking some of your recent games, IMHO you should first and foremost try to work on not blundering pieces. For example play Puzzle Storm here on Lichess for 15-20 minutes every day and try go get to around 30 solved puzzles consistently. That should sharpen your vision for tactics - especially under time pressure (yours as well as the opponents tactical shots).

Then I would also suggest you to work on "sensible" opening moves: I often saw you playing the same piece twice or even three times in the opening; bringing your queen out early; unnecessarly exchanging pieces (to take is a mistake, because most time you just let your opponent take back so at the end he has improved a piece and you don't, you just moved it one more time); unnecessary pawn-moves in the opening (1-2 pawns in the center should normally do the trick and also let your pieces out); (early) attacking without all your pieces being developed.

Stop playing Bullet/short time controls, you will not learn anything significant from that, because under such time pressure you will make the same mistakes again and again.

I hope this may help you improve and it doesn't sound rude - it really isn't ment that way.
Have fun, we are all on our long way to chess mastery...

@SwiftCuber14 said in #1:

Because of this I found it a common occurrence that I was better than the average person and I won my (English) high school chess championship. However when I started playing online I was 1000 rated

Yep. When you get out of the bubble, you will realize that there are many people better than you.

I have tried reading some books on positional chess strategy and some fundamental endgame knowledge. Any tips to improve?
Hmm, practice everything I suppose. It works in every single field i can think of, should work in chess as well.

@SwiftCuber14 said in #9:

This is very helpful. At the moment I personally don't think I am at the right skill level to participate in tournaments and have been putting off until I reach at least 2200 on Lichess classical even though it will be far harder in tournaments. I am also not very good at analysing my games because I usually see a mistake pr blunder I have made and I wonder why I made a silly move and the rest of the game is me struggling in a lost position.

There is no level at which you will feel you are ready to play in tournaments. Even at my lichess rating level, I feel unprepared to play tournaments :). You should just take the plunge and play. Don't think about rating so much. Just play and get that OTB experience. You don't have to play in the Open section but can certainly play in the U1500 category or something to ensure you are playing people at a similar to maybe somewhat higher level.

2021 was my first time playing OTB tournaments and I really wish I had started years ago. As I mentioned earlier, it just makes you aware of weaknesses in your game the way online play never will. Plus there is the whole sitting at a 3D board and calculating despite tournament hall distractions. It's just a very unique experience.

Once again, don't focus on rating. As you improve, your rating will improve quite quickly as well. Keep studying and look to strengthen your OTB play.

@derkleineJo said in #11:

Dear @SwiftCuber14 , lots of the above comments seem kinda right but after checking some of your recent games, IMHO you should first and foremost try to work on not blundering pieces. For example play Puzzle Storm here on Lichess for 15-20 minutes every day and try go get to around 30 solved puzzles consistently. That should sharpen your vision for tactics - especially under time pressure (yours as well as the opponents tactical shots).

Then I would also suggest you to work on "sensible" opening moves: I often saw you playing the same piece twice or even three times in the opening; bringing your queen out early; unnecessarly exchanging pieces (to take is a mistake, because most time you just let your opponent take back so at the end he has improved a piece and you don't, you just moved it one more time); unnecessary pawn-moves in the opening (1-2 pawns in the center should normally do the trick and also let your pieces out); (early) attacking without all your pieces being developed.

Stop playing Bullet/short time controls, you will not learn anything significant from that, because under such time pressure you will make the same mistakes again and again.

I hope this may help you improve and it doesn't sound rude - it really isn't ment that way.
Have fun, we are all on our long way to chess mastery...

Thank you for the helpful advice and I will stop playing quick time controls as I realise that they don't help. I realise that I don't always play sensible in the opening however usually I am not a fan of bringing my queen out early unless I think I have a strong attack and I'll admit sometimes I move pieces too much rather than developing. Could you give me an example of games where I have done this and was it in rapid because if it is ultra bullet or bullet you could see why I won't be playing good moves. Blitz is another thing where I don't play too well and I am not a huge fan because the time control is not long enough to think but not short enough to make mistakes. I am going to be focusing on more rapid and classical.

@Fantasy_Variation said in #13:

There is no level at which you will feel you are ready to play in tournaments. Even at my lichess rating level, I feel unprepared to play tournaments :). You should just take the plunge and play. Don't think about rating so much. Just play and get that OTB experience. You don't have to play in the Open section but can certainly play in the U1500 category or something to ensure you are playing people at a similar to maybe somewhat higher level.

2021 was my first time playing OTB tournaments and I really wish I had started years ago. As I mentioned earlier, it just makes you aware of weaknesses in your game the way online play never will. Plus there is the whole sitting at a 3D board and calculating despite tournament hall distractions. It's just a very unique experience.

Once again, don't focus on rating. As you improve, your rating will improve quite quickly as well. Keep studying and look to strengthen your OTB play.

My only concern is if I play and reach a low OTB rating then I will have to work even harder to get it to 2200. I realise that I might never feel ready however I can visually see from my games and rating that my skill level is at the bottom of the barrel in comparison to a lot of people I would be playing against.

@SwiftCuber14 said in #8:

Ahh ok. I have currently been going through Winning chess strategies. What is covered in Winning chess combinations? One thing I did notice that kind of annoyed me was there is a misprint in one of the chess positions shown on the book and I had to go to the actual game to find that one pawn was in a different position this could have been a misprint in my book or maybe it is on all books, did you notice any mistakes in Winning chess combinations?
I don't remember any printing errors. Chess combination use two or more tactics theme. For online chess, tactics and blunders decide the game. No need for endgame precision. The other book Simple Chess teach basic positional chess. Tactics arise from superior position.

@SwiftCuber14 said in #15:

My only concern is if I play and reach a low OTB rating then I will have to work even harder to get it to 2200.

There is not nothing to this thought, any rating system has at some lag, and the elo system used by FIDE has more than more modern systems such as that used by Lichess. That said I wouldn't give this concern much weight given your stated goal of reaching Candidate Master. You can think of that goal as having two stages:

1. Reach the playing strength of Candidate Master
2. Play enough Fide rated games at this strength to get your official rating to reflect that.

Playing OTB before you're approaching CM strength might add a little time to step 2, but it will almost certainly help with step 1. The thing is step 1 is by far the more challenging and time consuming step unless you are exceptionally gifted or have difficulties playing FIDE rated games. Many, many talented people play and study chess their whole lives and never achieve step 1, whereas if you achieve step 1, step 2 is basically a given and shouldn't take too long unless you can't find the tournaments to enter where you live. If that doesn't convince you though I would still encourage you to investigate your local OTB scene since there will very likely be opportunities to play OTB without getting a classical FIDE rating. I would expect that you would be able to find one or all of: opportunities for casual games, events which are only nationally rated or events with a rapid time control.

Finally just to give my two cents on what to focus on in achieving your goal. It's an ambitious goal so there's a lot of time and work between now and achieving it. You're therefore going to need a lot of motivation so I would focus on doing things which motivate you to put in the work you need to do in order to improve. Personally I haven't found anything quite like OTB rated tournaments for giving me the motivation to take my games seriously and to work to improve, and I lost nearly all my games in the first few tournaments I played. But yeah, if you don't take the advice of playing OTB for whatever reason do find whatever motivates you to continue in the short term aside from just the long term goal. Good luck!

@SwiftCuber14 said in #7:

This is very useful and I have started to pick an opening and build up confidence within it. I'll try to stop hanging stuff, have you seen that in my games or is that just general advice.

Almost every chessgame is lost because someone hung something: a square, a piece, etc.

Stop playing Bullet/short time controls, you will not learn anything significant from that, because under such time pressure you will make the same mistakes again and again.

I've gone up 120 points a year for six straight years with nothing but bullet.

I'd rather have 20 games an hour to study than one. Study one position in depth and you can miss a lot of prep in other lines.

Also it pays to learn faster. As an older player, I don't have as much time to improve.

Wanting something to be true doesn't make it true.

There is no level at which you will feel you are ready to play in tournaments. Even at my lichess rating level, I feel unprepared to play tournaments :). You should just take the plunge and play.

I've been training for seven years for my return to tournament play. I can lose just fine online without the public humiliation, thanks!