Improve after 1100

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NordInferno

I am quite a beginner at chess, I used to play in childhood... and left it, I restarted playing recently, and started learning, from youtube, solving tactics, etc.
Currently I am stuck at 1100, and I want to improve, but I don't know in what area I should try to improve (openings, tactics, endgame, or anything else)..

As for openings, I haven't studied any openings as such, but I almost always play King's Indian Attack as white, and Caro-Kann as Black...

So, please guide me on where I need to improve..

You can watch my games from the archive...

Thanks in advance for support😊

-Nirav K.

RussBell

Improving Your Chess - Resources for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/improving-your-chess-resources-for-beginners-and-beyond

MarkGrubb

Not openings. I had a look at your last loss, against sloppy2hotty. You hung your knight cleanly in front of the bishop. You'll struggle to make progress past roughly 1400 until you stop giving away pieces. Openings wont help with that. Suggest daily tactics and calculation, solve them in your head before moving, focus on quality not quantity. That's what helped my board vision. My rating has climbed to 1550 since I stopped losing material to simple captures and tactics. The other thing that helped me was piece activity and coordination, get everything developed. The old 'dont move the same piece twice' rule. Once you get a piece to a stable square, leave it there, dont be tempted into chasing pawns, instead turn your attention to your next worse piece. Once your pieces are active, you'll find tactics and be able to pressure squares and pawns. Good luck.

NordInferno
MarkGrubb wrote:

Not openings. I had a look at your last loss, against sloppy2hotty. You hung your knight cleanly in front of the bishop. You'll struggle to make progress past roughly 1400 until you stop giving away pieces. Openings wont help with that. Suggest daily tactics and calculation, solve them in your head before moving, focus on quality not quantity. That's what helped my board vision. My rating has climbed to 1550 since I stopped losing material to simple captures and tactics. The other thing that helped me was piece activity and coordination, get everything developed. The old 'dont move the same piece twice' rule. Once you get a piece to a stable square, leave it there, dont be tempted into chasing pawns, instead turn your attention to your next worse piece. Once your pieces are active, you'll find tactics and be able to pressure squares and pawns. Good luck.

Thanks for advice man...

As you rightly pointed, at that time, I just saw that my pawn on d6 was pinned to queen and can't capture on e5, so I just thought to move my knight to c4 with tempo on queen and with idea of Nd4 threatening Nxe3 followed by Bxg4... and I got too tunnel-visioned for that idea, that I gave up my knight for free...

 

MarkGrubb

It happens. When you've found a nice move think 'is it safe, what is my opponents strongest reply' look for your opponents candidate moves that refute your idea. You have to do that on every move, it takes time to form the habit. I was watching a Dan Heisman video (I like Dan, he has a lot of videos on chess thinking), he said players will struggle to get past 1600 if they dont consider ALL their opponents replies on EVERY move. Sounds exhausting, right? The puzzles help, if you are trying to get them right first time in your head, once you think you've found a solution, you have to double check for refutation/defense. I found this habit transfers into my games.

Ctenocephalides

Good luck

Kapivarovskic

As far as opening goes, learn the opening principles.... if you want to study a little bit of an opening as white, and it's most common responses go ahead and do it, find one that suits you and go for it, I'd recommend e4.... ruy lopes or italian....but don't memorize it, try and understand the reasoning behind the moves... as black you should have an answer for e4 and d4, but then again memorizing it won't help you much, might help you win a couple of games but nothing substantial... 

As pointed above... stop hanging pieces... obviously you're gonna eventually hang a piece or two, especially in blitz.... even GMs do but it can't be something happening often.

Playing longer time controls will help you as you have more time to analyze your moves and options and your opponents responses.

Learn some mating patterns, and basic endgames strategy... as as mentioned above tactics tactics tactics will help you go a long way... good luck