Advise to study and not get overwelmed
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Hi everyone,
I was wondering how you all train for chess. Where do you put your focus? I feel like I'm trying to learn more than I can implement in my games and often get completly confused or overwelmed. like I lose my grip on the knowledge I gained. I feel like I'm a bit stuck right now.
Any advise?
Feb 15, 2021
0
#2
It's ok to be overwhelmed and confused when studying something as complex as chess. Just keep going, it takes time and practice (a lot of it). Things that confuse you now will start making more and more sense as you continue to study and play.
It's actually normal when you learn something new, try to implement it in your game and then lose in a spectacular way. Before you learn to use it, you'll abuse it
Feb 15, 2021
0
#3
Study an opening/endgame/tactic/whatever. Try it out in either a human match (for openings and tactics) or against a computer. If you fail, see where you went wrong.
Nothing works better to learn something new than making mistakes.
Feb 15, 2021
0
#4
Looking at your rating and how you’ve been progressing, your study may feel overwhelming, but you’ve made really rapid, strong, consistent progress! Maybe some of what you’re studying doesn’t quite gel or isn’t immediately useful, but that may change, and having already seen the material and thought about it will make it easier to work through in the future. Whatever you’re doing, it looks like you’re on the right track.
Feb 15, 2021
0
#5
(To address your question, which I kind of sidestepped, if you’re feeling tired or overwhelmed, don’t feel bad taking a day or two away from all of it. Chess improvement, as they say, is a marathon, not a sprint.)
Feb 15, 2021
0
#6
Here are some basic tips for you:
https://www.chess.com/blog/nklristic/the-beginners-tale-first-steps-to-chess-improvement
It helped me get better, it should work for you as well.
Feb 15, 2021
0
#7
For me it's really about using the resources on the chess.com site in a systematic way. For example, lately I have been watching the video series "4 exercises to become a tactical genius" by David Preuss. He has a lot of great suggestions for improving at tactics which I try to do. Videos 1 and 2 are the best. He suggests doing some tactics trainer every day and just trying to learn the patterns, not trying to hard to solve them at first. So watch those and work on tactics like he says.
When I started out on the site a few years back I watched all the pawn structure 101 series by Danny Rensche. These were great. I started studying my main openings queens gambit as white and sicilian as black. I steer games into these two openings so I don't have to know every single opening.
So now my routine is I do a few videos, play some tactics puzzles, and then just play a bunch of practice games trying really hard not to blunder. That's it. Try to have fun and not worry too much about ratings or anything. Good luck.
Feb 15, 2021
0
#8
ElkeTS wrote:
Hi everyone, I was wondering how you all train for chess. Where do you put your focus? I feel like I'm trying to learn more than I can implement in my games and often get completly confused or overwelmed. like I lose my grip on the knowledge I gained. I feel like I'm a bit stuck right now. Any advise?
I try to learn one concrete thing each time I study chess. Just one specific thing that I can point to and confidently say, "Yes, I now understand this new idea, and it will help my chess improve."
It might be only yield a small improvement (1% or less, perhaps), but even the biggest wall can be built using the smallest stones.
Feb 15, 2021
0
#9
I would look at tactic puzzle books since tactics are essential to winning games. Also, I would play games with a slow time control and go over the games with a coach.
This is how I got better in chess.
laurengoodkindchess wrote:
I would look at tactic puzzle books since tactics are essential to winning games. Also, I would play games with a slow time control and go over the games with a coach.
This is how I got better in chess.
I'm a newbie and I find that anything less than a 20 minute game and I get too rushed to learn anything and almost every move is a mistake or a blunder. 20 minutes seems to work for me. Maybe if and when I get better I might try shorter or longer games, but for now 20 to 30 minutes is ideal.
While playing does help you improve and analyzing afterward, you need to study the game. What I do is I download chess books to my tablet and while you read the book, you create a study on Lichess and fill in the most important details. Here is a link to some free books. There are of course more books online if you look for them. Here are my French and Queen's Gambit studies to give you an example of what I do. Hope this helps
Wow, thank you all so much for the great advise and encouragement! It's so interesting to hear how and what other people study. for now I'm going to take a small break to let everything sink in and they I'm going to check out the things you all recommended :)
Tonya_Harding escreveu:
Don't listen to them all, and take the old and reliable path of old school learning:
1°) Study on a board a one good strategy/middlegame book, such as "La Stratégie Moderne aux Echecs" by Lüdeck Pachman. It'll take a few months, and will set deep and solid understanding in you.
2°) Study and practice against yourself, on a board, Endgames, beginning with K+pawns Endgames, mother of all Endgames.
3°) After each game you play, look it up, search what went wrong when you lost, search for better moves in openings. There are tools for that on this website.
4°) If you can, join a real Chess club in real life, and play real games in teams or tournaments.
Forget the rest, it's garbage.
Completely agree with you. The Pachman book I read it in Spanish (never translated to Portuguese) "Estrategia Moderna en Ajedrez". It is one of the best books ever written on chess and it will keep being so, while chess is chess. Anyway, looking at her rating it is too early to read that book. For a start in chess literature I recommend the book by Richard Reti "Masters of the Chessboard". I read it in Spanish as well: "Los Grandes Maestros del Tablero". It is a book made to get you in love with chess. Believe me...
[Richard Reti. Les grands Maîtres de l'échiquier]
Dear ElkeTS,
I am a certified, full-time chess coach, so I hope I can help you. 
Everybody is different, so that's why there isn't only one general way to learn. First of all, you have to discover your biggest weaknesses in the game and start working on them. The most effective way for that is analysing your own games. Of course, if you are a beginner, you can't do it efficiently because you don't know too much about the game yet. There is a built-in engine on chess.com which can show you if a move is good or bad but the only problem that it can't explain you the plans, ideas behind the moves, so you won't know why is it so good or bad.
You can learn from books or Youtube channels as well, and maybe you can find a lot of useful information there but these sources are mostly general things and not personalized at all. That's why you need a good coach sooner or later if you really want to be better at chess. A good coach can help you with identifying your biggest weaknesses and explain everything, so you can leave your mistakes behind you. Of course, you won't apply everything immediately, this is a learning process (like learning languages), but if you are persistent and enthusiastic, you will achieve your goals.
In my opinion, chess has 4 main territories (openings, strategies, tactics/combinations and endgames). If you want to improve efficiently, you should improve all of these skills almost at the same time. That's what my training program is based on. My students really like it because the lessons are not boring (because we talk about more than one areas within one lesson) and they feel the improvement on the longer run. Of course, there are always ups and downs but this is completely normal in everyone's career.
I hope this is helpful for you. Good luck for your chess games!
Tonya_Harding schreef:
Don't listen to them all, and take the old and reliable path of old school learning:
1°) Study on a board a one good strategy/middlegame book, such as "La Stratégie Moderne aux Echecs" by Lüdeck Pachman. It'll take a few months, and will set deep and solid understanding in you.
2°) Study and practice against yourself, on a board, Endgames, beginning with K+pawns Endgames, mother of all Endgames.
3°) After each game you play, look it up, search what went wrong when you lost, search for better moves in openings. There are tools for that on this website.
4°) If you can, join a real Chess club in real life, and play real games in teams or tournaments.
Forget the rest, it's garbage.
Thank you for the book recommendation and advise! I Will definately check that book out.
JogoReal schreef:
Tonya_Harding escreveu:
Don't listen to them all, and take the old and reliable path of old school learning:
1°) Study on a board a one good strategy/middlegame book, such as "La Stratégie Moderne aux Echecs" by Lüdeck Pachman. It'll take a few months, and will set deep and solid understanding in you.
2°) Study and practice against yourself, on a board, Endgames, beginning with K+pawns Endgames, mother of all Endgames.
3°) After each game you play, look it up, search what went wrong when you lost, search for better moves in openings. There are tools for that on this website.
4°) If you can, join a real Chess club in real life, and play real games in teams or tournaments.
Forget the rest, it's garbage.
Completely agree with you. The Pachman book I read it in Spanish (never translated to Portuguese) "Estrategia Moderna en Ajedrez". It is one of the best books ever written on chess and it will keep being so, while chess is chess. Anyway, looking at her rating it is too early to read that book. For a start in chess literature I recommend the book by Richard Reti "Masters of the Chessboard". I read it in Spanish as well: "Los Grandes Maestros del Tablero". It is a book made to get you in love with chess. Believe me...
[Richard Reti. Les grands Maîtres de l'échiquier]
Thank you as well for the book recommendation!
Bgabor91 schreef:
Dear ElkeTS,
I am a certified, full-time chess coach, so I hope I can help you. Everybody is different, so that's why there isn't only one general way to learn. First of all, you have to discover your biggest weaknesses in the game and start working on them. The most effective way for that is analysing your own games. Of course, if you are a beginner, you can't do it efficiently because you don't know too much about the game yet. There is a built-in engine on chess.com which can show you if a move is good or bad but the only problem that it can't explain you the plans, ideas behind the moves, so you won't know why is it so good or bad.
You can learn from books or Youtube channels as well, and maybe you can find a lot of useful information there but these sources are mostly general things and not personalized at all. That's why you need a good coach sooner or later if you really want to be better at chess. A good coach can help you with identifying your biggest weaknesses and explain everything, so you can leave your mistakes behind you. Of course, you won't apply everything immediately, this is a learning process (like learning languages), but if you are persistent and enthusiastic, you will achieve your goals.
In my opinion, chess has 4 main territories (openings, strategies, tactics/combinations and endgames). If you want to improve efficiently, you should improve all of these skills almost at the same time. That's what my training program is based on. My students really like it because the lessons are not boring (because we talk about more than one areas within one lesson) and they feel the improvement on the longer run. Of course, there are always ups and downs but this is completely normal in everyone's career.
I hope this is helpful for you. Good luck for your chess games!
Thank you for your comment!
I completly understand what you are saying. I think the thing that overwhelms me is that I can't see my weaknesses clearly and therefore don't know what to focus on.
For the moment I can't really afford a chess coach, so I Will have to do my best on my own. But maybe in the future... That would be nice.
But your comment did help to try find my weaknesses. I often get confused in the opening, so I think that is one. So I'm trying to understand the key openings better. And other ones I think are the overall connection between my pieces and using my pawns. And the time in rapid games freaks me out for some reason. But like you say it's hard to clearly spot them at my level.
But your comment did help me with it! Thank you
