Rough chess improvement

The rating system is self-correcting within 30-50 games usually.

The real issue is confronting your limitations. I might be "only" 2150 strength when I come back even though that's a fine rating.

I was blessed in that I learned chess in NYC in the early 1970s, when it was unmistakably clear how to become world champion: just do what Fischer did.

This is why a generation of young men from NYC became video game wizards, doctors, lawyers, astronauts, film producers, and anything except chess champions. It wasn't lack of talent: Fischer had just proven how to do this, had just done it, and wasn 't exactly a role model, plus the arcades were full of pretty girls and the chess clubs were not. In 1981, chess was losing badly to PacMan for relevance. After Fischer it went back to Karpov-Korchnoi and the stereotypical Russians, then Kasparov and it was pretty clear we weren't going to have another world champion for a long while.

This generation of players generally takes a maximalist approach to opening theory because doing so worked for Fischer. It still works today though the engines have modified the ideal strategy to one that exits the main lines no later than move four or five.

@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. 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.

If you really are close to 2200 and play FIDE rated tournaments regularly then you will reach your real rating quite soon. If you don't want to play FIDE then join your countries chess organization and play there at least.

@SwiftCuber14 said in #14:

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.

Hi @SwiftCuber14 , here some suggestions about your games i found on the spot, just so you can compare to the things i meintioned in my earlier post. I choosed games with at least a 5 min. time-control (no bullet stress) and not too strong opponents, which would slay you anyway:

Game 1 (5+3):

4. ...dxe4 => One should keep the tension as long as possible. Only take, if not taking would lead to something bad. By taking, you almost always loose a tempo/let your opponent improve his pieces. Look what happened after move nr. 5: White improved his "weaker" c-pawn into a "stronger" central pawn and you just lost a central pawn (your d-pawn), how ironic.

5. ...Nf6 => Just hanging your only left central pawn, which you should guard like your eyeballs. Imaginge white would have just taken it...

6. ...Ng4 => Moving the same piece twice in the opening. Yes, you can do this in blitz, hoping the other person falls for this 1-mover, but what do you really expect from this move? e3 is protected by the bishop on c1 and f2 is simply protected by Qe1 (notice, by playing Qe1 white can put his queen on a better square, controlling lots of dark squares and soon coming to g3 - again you helped white develop and also will loose another tempo soon, when white later plays h3 on your knight).

Notice: By so far, you have not spent any time on thinking. Your clock shows 5:08 at this moment.

9. ...Bxe4 => The clock shows, you thought about this capture for about 10 seconds and still took the wrong pawn, even if chances were 50/50 to do it right. To me this means, that you a) need to take more time before moving and + b) need to work on tactics - atm it just looks like playing roulette.

10. ...Bxf3 => You did it again... - To take is a mistake! a) Since you are behind in material, you should not exchange anything, if not necesserly needed and of cource not your strongest active piece + b) Look what happened: You take the "passive" knight and give away your best attacker. In the next move, white re-captures and places his prevoiusly locked-in bishop on the perfect diagonal! + c) You moved instantly, not thinking even a second about the consequences. You have "proud" 5:01 on the clock but a losing position after only 9 moves :(

Here some maths, so you may be more confident with your thinking time: 5 min. = 300 seconds. So even without time increment, you are able to play 30 moves and think about every move for about 10! seconds. With 5+3 like this game, you have 90 additional seconds to think until move 30, that means, you can think about 390/30 = 13 seconcs for each move until move 30 (of course, you dont't have to do this all the time, so you will get even more time to think on the critical moments in the game).

Game 2 (9+3):

You won this game against a weaker opponent, but anyway, your playing-style remains the same:

5. ...Be4 => There it is again! Moving the same piece twice in the opening.

6. ...Qd6 => Moving the queen out early in the opening

7. ...c6 => Yes you saw the threat on b7 and even thinking about your move about approximately 10 seconds, you did not played the multi-purpose-move ...Qb4+. Yes, this is not the easiest to find, but more tactical awareness will definitely increase the chances to find stronger moves, especially if they come with a check!

Then comes a phase you play well and suddenly...

27. ...gxf5 => You hung a piece, giving your opponent the chance of counterplay. So, tactics again...

I hope my point is clear, i'm sure other games look similar.

Work on tactics first, play lower time-controls/maybe with increment and only play a few games. It's much better to play few games, but analyze the games deeply, find the errors, that come up in every of your game and work on them. If you do this consistently for weeks/months, i'm pretty sure, your rating will go up soon. Only then you can think about more advanced techniques/strategies/endgames.

I know, there are lots of different opinions on that and i got the point of the "old" russian chess school, where kids first learn the endgame techniques, so they learn to understand, what they want to achieve during the game first (going into a preferable ending), but since you seem to want see results in your rating "quickly", i guess the tactics-train is the smoother way for you (but still hard to master)...

Btw, here is a game of mine where i commented every move. Think of it like that every move you play should have a real purpose. Maybe analyzing this may helps you in finding good moves in your own games, too - especially since i've seen that you also like modern-style openings.

https://lichess.org/forum/game-analysis/show-your-best-chess-game?page=3#21

Have a nice day!

@derkleineJo said in #24:

Hi @SwiftCuber14 , here some suggestions about your games i found on the spot, just so you can compare to the things i meintioned in my earlier post. I choosed games with at least a 5 min. time-control (no bullet stress) and not too strong opponents, which would slay you anyway:

Game 1 (5+3):

4. ...dxe4 => One should keep the tension as long as possible. Only take, if not taking would lead to something bad. By taking, you almost always loose a tempo/let your opponent improve his pieces. Look what happened after move nr. 5: White improved his "weaker" c-pawn into a "stronger" central pawn and you just lost a central pawn (your d-pawn), how ironic.

5. ...Nf6 => Just hanging your only left central pawn, which you should guard like your eyeballs. Imaginge white would have just taken it...

6. ...Ng4 => Moving the same piece twice in the opening. Yes, you can do this in blitz, hoping the other person falls for this 1-mover, but what do you really expect from this move? e3 is protected by the bishop on c1 and f2 is simply protected by Qe1 (notice, by playing Qe1 white can put his queen on a better square, controlling lots of dark squares and soon coming to g3 - again you helped white develop and also will loose another tempo soon, when white later plays h3 on your knight).

Notice: By so far, you have not spent any time on thinking. Your clock shows 5:08 at this moment.

9. ...Bxe4 => The clock shows, you thought about this capture for about 10 seconds and still took the wrong pawn, even if chances were 50/50 to do it right. To me this means, that you a) need to take more time before moving and + b) need to work on tactics - atm it just looks like playing roulette.

10. ...Bxf3 => You did it again... - To take is a mistake! a) Since you are behind in material, you should not exchange anything, if not necesserly needed and of cource not your strongest active piece + b) Look what happened: You take the "passive" knight and give away your best attacker. In the next move, white re-captures and places his prevoiusly locked-in bishop on the perfect diagonal! + c) You moved instantly, not thinking even a second about the consequences. You have "proud" 5:01 on the clock but a losing position after only 9 moves :(

Here some maths, so you may be more confident with your thinking time: 5 min. = 300 seconds. So even without time increment, you are able to play 30 moves and think about every move for about 10! seconds. With 5+3 like this game, you have 90 additional seconds to think until move 30, that means, you can think about 390/30 = 13 seconcs for each move until move 30 (of course, you dont't have to do this all the time, so you will get even more time to think on the critical moments in the game).

Game 2 (9+3):

You won this game against a weaker opponent, but anyway, your playing-style remains the same:

5. ...Be4 => There it is again! Moving the same piece twice in the opening.

6. ...Qd6 => Moving the queen out early in the opening

7. ...c6 => Yes you saw the threat on b7 and even thinking about your move about approximately 10 seconds, you did not played the multi-purpose-move ...Qb4+. Yes, this is not the easiest to find, but more tactical awareness will definitely increase the chances to find stronger moves, especially if they come with a check!

Then comes a phase you play well and suddenly...

27. ...gxf5 => You hung a piece, giving your opponent the chance of counterplay. So, tactics again...

I hope my point is clear, i'm sure other games look similar.

Work on tactics first, play lower time-controls/maybe with increment and only play a few games. It's much better to play few games, but analyze the games deeply, find the errors, that come up in every of your game and work on them. If you do this consistently for weeks/months, i'm pretty sure, your rating will go up soon. Only then you can think about more advanced techniques/strategies/endgames.

I know, there are lots of different opinions on that and i got the point of the "old" russian chess school, where kids first learn the endgame techniques, so they learn to understand, what they want to achieve during the game first (going into a preferable ending), but since you seem to want see results in your rating "quickly", i guess the tactics-train is the smoother way for you (but still hard to master)...

Btw, here is a game of mine where i commented every move. Think of it like that every move you play should have a real purpose. Maybe analyzing this may helps you in finding good moves in your own games, too - especially since i've seen that you also like modern-style openings.

lichess.org/forum/game-analysis/show-your-best-chess-game?page=3#21

Have a nice day!

Thank you so much. The truth was brutal but it is what I needed to here and I actually see where I am going wrong. Although the first game I remember playing whilst I was annoyed and not really playing properly which why I played b7 which is rather irregular for me. The second have however left me speechless because I completely understand what you are talking about. You have helped me so much and the lessons you have taught me is something people pay coaches for and you have it to me for free. This brings me a lot of joy since my chess is sometimes really good and I have even beaten some strong players even an IM in a simul. Once I learn to remove these bad habits then I will have more potential. Thank you!

@thendrey said in #17:

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!

You made me realize that if I want to be a CM then it won't hurt to play national tournaments for the experience and the improvement. Thanks!

@SeriousChest said in #4:

I recommend focusing on longer time controls exclusively. I used to play 15+0 and no blitz or bullet for a few years back on FICS 10+ years ago.

A 15/0 is by no means a "longer time control" lol.

@DigitalDestruction said in #27:

A 15/0 is by no means a "longer time control" lol.

I would disagree because "longer" is a comparative term, and 15+0 is longer than blitz and bullet times controls. Yes, "longer" can idiomatically be used as an adjective (I wasn't using it that way), but I think that's improper because there already exists the perfectly fine word "long".

@SeriousChest said in #28:

I would disagree because "longer" is a comparative term, and 15+0 is longer than blitz and bullet times controls. Yes, "longer" can idiomatically be used as an adjective (I wasn't using it that way), but I think that's improper because there already exists the perfectly fine word "long".

I'm just saying that if we're instructing someone to play "longer games", we generally mean something like 30+30 or 45+45, etc. 15/0 is basically just an extension of blitz, especially since it has no increment. 15+10 would help someone improve far more than 15/0, of course.

"... Most internet players think that 30 5 is slow, but that is unlikely slow enough to play 'real' chess. You need a game slow enough so that for most of the game you have time to consider all your candidate moves as well as your opponent’s possible replies that at least include his checks, captures, and serious threats, to make sure you can meet all of them. For the average OTB player G/90 is about the fastest, which might be roughly 60 10 online, where there is some delay. But there is no absolute; some people think faster than others and others can play real chess faster because of experience. Many internet players are reluctant to play slower than 30 5 so you might have to settle for that as a 'slow' game." - NM Dan Heisman (2002)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627010008/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman12.pdf