Nexim's post was fantastic advice!
The thing I love about this game is,it's a life long endeavor......Why not enjoy the ride?....Win or lose,it's fun and over enough time,we(hopefully) get a better understanding of chess.
Good luck
I Am God Awful and Completely Lost. Did I Waste My Time/Money?
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I looked at a few of your recent games.
You're either not a total beginner, or you've learned a lot. You clearly know how the pieces move. You almost always notice immediate threats: when one of your pieces is under attack, you move it or defend it.
It looks like you've also been studying opening principles. You're clearly trying to control the center, develop your pieces, etc. But in two of the three games I looked at, your opening was tactically unsound. A quick way to improve your rating is to limit yourself to openings that actually work. If you lose a rook on move 5, don't play that opening again. Otherwise, you'll frequently be starting from a disadvantage, which is less fun. In the medium to long term, you do want try lots of openings and variations and get a feel for them, but first you should have one or two you feel really good about and that let you concentrate on other parts of the game.
In the openings as in later in the game, you're often failing to think more than one move ahead. This is perhaps the hardest thing for beginners. You have to think about lots of possible ways your opponent might respond, and lots of possible ways you might respond to that response, and it quickly becomes overwhelming. It takes a lot of experience to reach the point where you only think about a handful of moves, because all the other moves are just obviously not as good.
A very good way to improve at that is to do lots of tactics problems. This will a) get you used to imagining the future state of the board and holding that in your head; b) teach you which moves to consider first. (Hint: always look for forcing moves, like checks, first.) It will also start developing your intuition for tactical patterns, so you'll notice an especially good move without having to think about it. Example: in one of your most recent games you had a mate-in-1 on move 15. A little tactics practice and you would have spotted it.
Finally, I know you've heard it but you need to hear it again: play longer time controls! As a beginner, you need to look and look again before you choose your move.
haha331 wrote:
nexim wrote:
Chess is a cruel game for a beginner. Almost everyone knows the rules and especially if you have some background in board games or strategy games, you might think you'd do well in chess as a beginner. Wrong. The thing is that there is really nothing that teaches chess - other than chess. Yes, if you are good at memorizing things, calculating, have a logical way to reason and can string together a plan you could do well. But only after you play and practice a lot.
I would say that for a complete beginner the first month is the most difficult. You either take the beating and keep going or just quit out of frustration. I've played a lot of games and I don't think any other game has been as cruel experience for a beginner with a competitive mind. You will lose almost every game and it sucks. And it can take even months before you even start to feel like you're actually learning anything.
However, it does get better after the first month and if you just keep your chin up, keep playing, self-reflect on your mistakes and try to learn something from every game, it's just not possible to not get better. The cool thing is that you can really feel the improvement after a few months, even more so after the first year and if you keep going the next years. It took me about 2 years from beginner to finally start feeling comfortable over a chess board and games started to feel more fun than a massive mental struggle of trying to avoid mistakes. Most of the frustrating stuff (like constant scanning for targets, weaknesses and missing pieces) became more and more autonomous and I felt like I could actually use my mental capacity to plan. To play a strategy game trying to outsmart my opponent both positionally and tactically - to maneuver my pieces sharking for an opportunity, trying to tie my opponents defenders in knots while simultaneously avoiding my opponent from being able to do the same to me. That's when chess actually got fun.
And that's why it's such a cruel game. It took almost 2 years of being a mental struggle of just trying to avoid mistakes and having a feeling of barely understanding the game at all to a level where I actually feel more comfortable playing. I do still drop pieces occasionally, make silly mistakes and so on, but it's not every game. I can play pretty fast and fairly accurately and see most of the tactical opportunities almost instantly. That is a massive difference to what I was able to do 2,5 years ago when I started playing.
Truth is that now that I've actually started to understand the game, I realize how little I actually know. There is so much more for me to study and learn, tactics to train, games to play, openings to learn, games to watch and so on. But the main thing is that it's fun and interesting. It has truly become a hobby that I could spend decades learning more about, and I would never know everything.
In other words, ask yourself why you want to play chess. If you appreciate the game and want to learn, realize that it's going to take months, maybe even years to become "good" at it. And even then there are going to be much bigger fish in the pool and players who will smack you out the board with their eyes closed. However, I don't think any other game has given me similar sense of satisfaction and accomplishment as learning chess has. Yes, there are much easier games to get good at (and feel the satisfaction of beating other players), but it's the struggle that makes the accomplishments feel so much sweeter.
Best advice I can give to you is that if you really want to learn chess, accept that it's going to take a long time. Just be curious about the game, try to play every day, do lessons, watch YouTube videos, read chess books and try to absorb all the knowledge you can. You can only do this if you truly appreciate the game and want to understand the beauty of it. Forget about your rating (or at least try to) and focus on trying to learn something new every day. If you keep doing this for a month, a year or even a decade you're going to be a much better chess player.
It would have taken you an hour or two to write this
I am delighted with americans. No one in Russia could write the such long post advice on the social forum.
I am not kidding. People here are very friendly to each other.
Dude, I’ve not won a single game yet so don’t worry about it. I’m not an unintelligent person, but when it comes to tactics and seeing more than one move ahead, I’m an absolute moron.
I might be able to help you, just message me
There are a ton of resources for you. But you keep making the same mistakes over and over again.
My suggestion is to play a slow game--choose one that you lost--and annotate the first 20 moves--what you were thinking of and how you made your decisions. Then give this to a very strong player and he will point out your mistakes. Make a list of your mistakes and try very hard to not make those same mistakes again?
If you do this you will substantially improve.
haha331 wrote:
nexim wrote:
Chess is a cruel game for a beginner. Almost everyone knows the rules and especially if you have some background in board games or strategy games, you might think you'd do well in chess as a beginner. Wrong. The thing is that there is really nothing that teaches chess - other than chess. Yes, if you are good at memorizing things, calculating, have a logical way to reason and can string together a plan you could do well. But only after you play and practice a lot.
I would say that for a complete beginner the first month is the most difficult. You either take the beating and keep going or just quit out of frustration. I've played a lot of games and I don't think any other game has been as cruel experience for a beginner with a competitive mind. You will lose almost every game and it sucks. And it can take even months before you even start to feel like you're actually learning anything.
However, it does get better after the first month and if you just keep your chin up, keep playing, self-reflect on your mistakes and try to learn something from every game, it's just not possible to not get better. The cool thing is that you can really feel the improvement after a few months, even more so after the first year and if you keep going the next years. It took me about 2 years from beginner to finally start feeling comfortable over a chess board and games started to feel more fun than a massive mental struggle of trying to avoid mistakes. Most of the frustrating stuff (like constant scanning for targets, weaknesses and missing pieces) became more and more autonomous and I felt like I could actually use my mental capacity to plan. To play a strategy game trying to outsmart my opponent both positionally and tactically - to maneuver my pieces sharking for an opportunity, trying to tie my opponents defenders in knots while simultaneously avoiding my opponent from being able to do the same to me. That's when chess actually got fun.
And that's why it's such a cruel game. It took almost 2 years of being a mental struggle of just trying to avoid mistakes and having a feeling of barely understanding the game at all to a level where I actually feel more comfortable playing. I do still drop pieces occasionally, make silly mistakes and so on, but it's not every game. I can play pretty fast and fairly accurately and see most of the tactical opportunities almost instantly. That is a massive difference to what I was able to do 2,5 years ago when I started playing.
Truth is that now that I've actually started to understand the game, I realize how little I actually know. There is so much more for me to study and learn, tactics to train, games to play, openings to learn, games to watch and so on. But the main thing is that it's fun and interesting. It has truly become a hobby that I could spend decades learning more about, and I would never know everything.
In other words, ask yourself why you want to play chess. If you appreciate the game and want to learn, realize that it's going to take months, maybe even years to become "good" at it. And even then there are going to be much bigger fish in the pool and players who will smack you out the board with their eyes closed. However, I don't think any other game has given me similar sense of satisfaction and accomplishment as learning chess has. Yes, there are much easier games to get good at (and feel the satisfaction of beating other players), but it's the struggle that makes the accomplishments feel so much sweeter.
Best advice I can give to you is that if you really want to learn chess, accept that it's going to take a long time. Just be curious about the game, try to play every day, do lessons, watch YouTube videos, read chess books and try to absorb all the knowledge you can. You can only do this if you truly appreciate the game and want to understand the beauty of it. Forget about your rating (or at least try to) and focus on trying to learn something new every day. If you keep doing this for a month, a year or even a decade you're going to be a much better chess player.
It would have taken you an hour or two to write this
Yep that is great advice
Chess is a cruel game for a beginner. Almost everyone knows the rules and especially if you have some background in board games or strategy games, you might think you'd do well in chess as a beginner. Wrong. The thing is that there is really nothing that teaches chess - other than chess. Yes, if you are good at memorizing things, calculating, have a logical way to reason and can string together a plan you could do well. But only after you play and practice a lot.
I would say that for a complete beginner the first month is the most difficult. You either take the beating and keep going or just quit out of frustration. I've played a lot of games and I don't think any other game has been as cruel experience for a beginner with a competitive mind. You will lose almost every game and it sucks. And it can take even months before you even start to feel like you're actually learning anything.
However, it does get better after the first month and if you just keep your chin up, keep playing, self-reflect on your mistakes and try to learn something from every game, it's just not possible to not get better. The cool thing is that you can really feel the improvement after a few months, even more so after the first year and if you keep going the next years. It took me about 2 years from beginner to finally start feeling comfortable over a chess board and games started to feel more fun than a massive mental struggle of trying to avoid mistakes. Most of the frustrating stuff (like constant scanning for targets, weaknesses and missing pieces) became more and more autonomous and I felt like I could actually use my mental capacity to plan. To play a strategy game trying to outsmart my opponent both positionally and tactically - to maneuver my pieces sharking for an opportunity, trying to tie my opponents defenders in knots while simultaneously avoiding my opponent from being able to do the same to me. That's when chess actually got fun.
And that's why it's such a cruel game. It took almost 2 years of being a mental struggle of just trying to avoid mistakes and having a feeling of barely understanding the game at all to a level where I actually feel more comfortable playing. I do still drop pieces occasionally, make silly mistakes and so on, but it's not every game. I can play pretty fast and fairly accurately and see most of the tactical opportunities almost instantly. That is a massive difference to what I was able to do 2,5 years ago when I started playing.
Truth is that now that I've actually started to understand the game, I realize how little I actually know. There is so much more for me to study and learn, tactics to train, games to play, openings to learn, games to watch and so on. But the main thing is that it's fun and interesting. It has truly become a hobby that I could spend decades learning more about, and I would never know everything.
In other words, ask yourself why you want to play chess. If you appreciate the game and want to learn, realize that it's going to take months, maybe even years to become "good" at it. And even then there are going to be much bigger fish in the pool and players who will smack you out the board with their eyes closed. However, I don't think any other game has given me similar sense of satisfaction and accomplishment as learning chess has. Yes, there are much easier games to get good at (and feel the satisfaction of beating other players), but it's the struggle that makes the accomplishments feel so much sweeter.
Best advice I can give to you is that if you really want to learn chess, accept that it's going to take a long time. Just be curious about the game, try to play every day, do lessons, watch YouTube videos, read chess books and try to absorb all the knowledge you can. You can only do this if you truly appreciate the game and want to understand the beauty of it. Forget about your rating (or at least try to) and focus on trying to learn something new every day. If you keep doing this for a month, a year or even a decade you're going to be a much better chess player.
It would have taken you an hour or two to write this