I have a very specific problem,in 70% of my games I end up with some sort of an advantage out of the opening,sometimes with a whole piece,but I always end up moving my pieces aimlessly and eventually getting forked, chekmated or I run out of time.
Don't know if there's some way to fix that, it just happens so often it's ruining chess for me,any ideas why that happens?(btw this is mostly in bullet and blitz)
this happens to all of us, if there was a clear answer then we would all be world champions. Maybe you should stop playing short games cos what you need is to calm down and start counter-checking your moves to avoid blunders
Well that's true but my problem isn't blunders,it's that I don't know the way forward or how to convert the advantage to a win,so I end up doing passing moves or backwards moves and eventually lose the game..I'm sure there's a reason for it
"Moving backwards and doing passing moves with an advantage" sounds to me like you could put some emphasis on positional chess / strategical thinking and endgames.
The first giving you ideas what to do in certain positions, like get your king into safety, attack queenside, attack kingside, provoke doubled pawns, get a passed pawn, push a pawn threatening promotion, get a knight outpost, trade a bad minor piece for a good minor piece, minority attack, strive for an open or a closed position, ..., and when to trade material or when to keep it.
In fact there are so many different positional ideas that for me it's hardly ever a problem to find a decent plan. The issue is rather to consider which is the best of all available 'decent plans', especially taking into account what the opponent is up to.
The point regarding trades is an obvious idea what one can do who is up material after the opening: trade stuff. This directly leads to the second topic: endgames. Many endgames are already winning when you are up only 1 pawn. This is why the side that has a material advantage usually is happy to trade everything, while the other side tries to avoid trades. However, there are exceptions (drawish endgames), and technique is required. A good endgame technique can provide certainty which endgames to strive for and which to avoid when playing for a win. So it even influences your decision making in the middlegame.
For positional understanding certain books, videos, lessons, playing through master games, talking to / analyzing with better players can be helpful. For endgames potentially boring self-study is hard to avoid, again e.g. with books or video material.
And I might be wrong but I'd assume for most people it's easier to apply new concepts when the brain has time to think and double check stuff. So bullet, perhaps even blitz, might not be the best time control to improve at these things.
It‘s called experience, you have to work on it for years and decades. The switch is called „hard training“.
Thanks for the reply,gives me a lot to think about,and I think especially endgames is an area that I need to focus on.I'm still very new to positional play but it's something that I'm working on
@CM Sarg0tn I know chess requires hard work and training,I'm just trying to understand the problem that I'm having.
#1 Improvement at non-bullet games eventually translates to improvement at bullet games. Generally, the slower the game, the more opportunities for reflection and the more it's worth reviewing the game afterward.
Also reading about master games can help you learn from others' experiences. Reading blogs such as
http://www.thechessmind.net/ can also be useful.
Everybody is weaker at some piece of the game then in others. You win games based on your strength in openings and lose games based on your weaker middle-game. Or the other way around.
I think you only get really fully balanced players at the very top of the rankings.
It might not even be really desirable to directly train for your weakness. You generally have those weaknesses because you don't enjoy studying these kinds of problems. So you have to train in less enjoyable ways to fix those weaknesses. If you play only for fun this is counterproductive.
@Toadofsky sounds very reasonable everyone says you should play slower games to improve I should probably do that,and thanks for suggesting the blog
