Slow chess improvement

Hi guys! So I'm 15 right now and I started playing chess here around 2 years back. I had a rating of 500 and was a complete beginner with no knowledge of tactics. Right now I'm around 800 and I feel that's a terribly slow progress. I try so hard and sometimes I play around 15 games a day to improve but it just doesn't get better. Sometimes I start well initially but end up losing all the ratings that I had gained at the end of the day. It's my request to the community members here to analyse my playing pattern and please suggest the areas where I need drastic improvement and provide a general feedback. Any form of response is highly appreciated..

Hi. I've just broke 800 myself. I had a quick look at your stats, maybe laying off the ratings treadmill and working on puzzles and end ame drills for a while will make a beneficial change??

Thanks man perhaps I really should start doing puzzles. Never gave much thought to it before!!,

Kind of addicted to them currently, frustrating as a few really don't make sense, but I try to understand the ones I get wrong.

Patterns might be fun but sometimes u just need to keep on playing do analysis on ur games. find a Gambit stick with it. I was 1200 dropped to 800 now lam 1050

If you are below ~1500, you most assuredly have at least 1 of the following problems:

1.  You blunder too much.  You address this by practicing tactics.
2.  You do not pay attention to your opponents threats.  You address this by fixing your thought process.
3.  You do not follow opening principles.

Take the following recent rapid game as an example:

This game demonstrates all 3 problems.  If you want to improve, those are the 3 areas you need to work on.

🤣🤣🤣levy Rozman would die if one of those were his subs

Hello, I've been writing a guide on how to get 1200 rapid in one year. It's a process that I found to work for myself and it's also helped others achieve this too. I hope this is useful:

https://talenthackerblog.com/2022/06/20/chess-beginner-to-intermediate-in-one-year/

Hi! My name is Lauren Goodkind and I’m a respected  chess coach and chess YouTuber who helps beginners out : 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP5SPSG_sWSYPjqJYMNwL_Q

Send me one of your games and I'll be happy to analyze the game for free on my YouTube channel on Sunday livestream from 1-2PM PST.  Ask me questions in real time!  

 This is a great way to improve!

Here’s more  ideas to help you get better.  

-I recommend two books for you: “50 Poison Pieces”   and “Queen For A Day: The Girl’s Guide To Chess Mastery.”  Both books are available on Amazon.com.  Both books are endorsed by chess masters!  

-If you are serious about chess, I highly recommend you hiring a chess coach to help you.  

-Also consider all checks and captures on your side and also your opponent’s side. Always as, “If I move here, where is my opponent going to move?”. Do this for every single move!  

-Play with a slow time control, such as G/30 so you have plenty of time to think before every move. 

That is not a bad post; however, it is more simple than people realize.  Once you understand the rules of the game, the process of improvement boils down to the simple cycle:  Play, Analyze mistakes from your game, Study to address those mistakes, repeat.  Most people play, but never really analyze and thus cannot correct the mistakes.

Over 90% of games below the 1500 level are riddled with tactical blunders (i.e. dropping a piece or more).  The tactics trainer is good at testing your tactics skills, but it not good at developing it.  For that, you need to drill tactics deliberately, not randomly.  For example, when you use the CT-ART program, it separates the tactics by theme then by difficulty.  You progress through each theme separately.  The key is not just to drill them until you get them right (which is what most people do), but drill them until you cannot get them wrong (this is the idea behind methods like the Woodpecker Method and the 7-Circles Approach).  For players that are struggling in the sub-1500 levels, there are some very easy steps they can take to address it:

1. Stop playing speed chess.  It is not going to help you improve.  Instead, try playing 15+10 or 30+0 at the very least - and make sure you are thinking on each move.
2. Drill tactical puzzles deliberately.  You can use the tactics trainer in unrated mode for this, or use something like CT-ART, chesstempo.com, or tactics books.
3. Analyze your games without an engine first, then run the blunder check with an engine to see what you missed.

One thing you won't see from most instructors (or books for that matter) is the levels (priorities) of threats (you'll often hear someone define threats as "checks, captures, threats", which is a circular definition and rather meaningless).  These are how to classify threats:

1. Checks - the most forcing move as it has to be met immediately.  Checkmate can be defined as a "level 1 threat that cannot be met".
2. Mate Threats - These are moves that threaten checkmate on the next move, but can be superseded by a check from the opponent.
3. Captures - This forces the opponent to recapture or make a higher threat.  If the opponent does neither, we win material.
4. Moves that threaten to win material - These are moves that attack a higher value piece.  For example, a pawn attacking a piece.  It forces the opponent to react by moving the piece or making an even higher level threat.
5. Positional Threats - These are moves that gain some positional advantage.  For example, creating a way for a rook to enter the 7th rank, or inducing your opponent to make an outpost you can use for a knight.
6. Non-Threatening Moves - These are moves that do not contain any threat.  This can be developing, consolidating, defending, prophylactic, etc.

All tactics puzzles below the 2400-level involve the first 4 levels.

There are a ton of good books out there.  A few series that are focused on progression are Yusupov's Build Up Your Chess/Boost Your Chess/Chess Evolution series (a total of 9 books), the Steps Method (these are meant to be used with a teacher, but you can use them to teach yourself), and Yasser Seirawan's Winning Chess series (a total of 7 books).  If you want to get started with just a single book, try picking up a copy of "Logical Chess Move by Move" by Irving Chernev (which there are some mistakes in that book, it will go a long way to helping you fix your thinking).

In order to improve your skills, you need to learn as much as you can about the fundamentals.  

To get a sense of the kinds of things you should be learning in order to improve, check out this article.  But take your time.  All of this can't be learned in a day, a week, a month, or even many months - it takes years.  There is no time limit on chess improvement – but that’s what makes it a great game!

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

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

For those at lower ratings who play strictly speed chess (bullet, blitz, rapid), I suggest to check out the section 'Play Longer Time Controls' toward the end of the article.

I recommend also to read/study this very instructive book in order to gain an appreciation for what constitutes proper fundamentals…

Pandolfini's Ultimate Guide to Chess by Bruce Pandolfini 

https://www.amazon.com/Pandolfinis-Ultimate-Guide-Chess-Strategies/dp/0743226178/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1OX6HKY947LHJ&keywords=pandolfini%27s+ultimate+guide+to+chess&qid=1656361791&s=books&sprefix=pandofin%2Cstripbooks%2C184&sr=1-1

With dedication and determination, there is no reason that you shouldn't be able to improve dramatically.  However, if you're not willing to put in the necessary work, then it might be best to accept that you will improve very little, if at all.  (If you keep doing what you're doing, you will keep getting what you're getting.) 

Discover more helpful chess resources in my blog....

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell

Have made progress this year from 700 to winning sometimes and improving at 1000 by using the bots (play against computer). I start by playing the "Friendly" mode where you can see best moves or blunders and have a few chances to do take back. At the end of the game there is an analysis review and you can redo the mistakes. Very instructive. Lessons and puzzles very helpful. Sometimes too many games reinforces weak moves. Don't play when tired. My goal is to one day be 1500.

#1
"I'm around 800"
++ A rating of 800 is a sign of frequent blunders so your first priority should be to free your gema of blunders. It is a mental discipline. Think about your move, imagine your move played, check it is no blunder, play it. Hang no pieces, hang no pawns and you are 1500.

"I play around 15 games a day"
++ That is too much. Play one 15|10 game and if you lose it, then analyse it thoroughly.

Hey @PawnTsunimi thanks for your feedback and thoughts. I agree with your point about tactics and I did try to encapsulate that point in the blog post, perhaps I need to go back and re-write parts for clarity! 

But I do think that saying chess improvement is so simple misses the point slightly. It is simple for someone who has broken past the beginner stage but it isn't for a novice. If it was that simple, we wouldn't have forums full of people who struggle to break 1000. If you've ever spent much time teaching and training people (this my profession), you see what works and what doesn't work. It only helps so much giving people information. You need to help people understand the reasoning behind it. I also feel that a massive degree of learning is mindset driven, and I usually try to address elements of this indirectly in my writings.

When I said it was more simple than most think, I was not saying it is easy, but that the process was not a complicated one.  People still have to do the work, which is where most people fail.

Why is that too much? Just wondering

The answer is it depends.

If you are playing 15 blitz games a day and are analyzing them afterwards, you might make some slow improvements, but you will be making a lot of mistakes in time trouble and analyzing those won't really help your overall game much.

If you are playing 15 rapid games a day and are analyzing them, you are likely spending too much time playing and not enough time analyzing.  15 10+0 games that used all the time for both players would take 300 minutes (5 hours).  You should spend 30-60 minutes on each game analyzing it, so that would be another 7+ hours for a total of at least 12 hours of chess a day.  That is not feasible for most people.

If you are playing 15 classical games (30+0 and longer), there is no way you are analyzing them afterwards.  You simply do not have the time.

Some general thoughts:

If you are going to play blitz, your analysis should focus on 2 aspects:  your opening play and your tactical vision.  You do not have enough time to focus on strategic elements when playing blitz at the sub-master level.  This is really the problem for many beginner players.  These faster time controls do not help you develop good habits.  In fact, they can reinforce bad habits and make it hard to progress later.

If you are going to play rapid/classical games, you can start to spend more time focusing on strategic elements, so your analysis will be much deeper, but also takes much more time (both playing and analyzing).

Without reviewing your games, the default advice to players in your rating range is as follows - you can cross of what you think does not apply, but the reality is, all of it will help:

-Tactics training, solving puzzles - this should be the main thing you do to study. I'd recommend as many puzzles as you can practically fit in (whilst still enjoying the process of solving and learning). This will have two significant benefits for your game: 1) Increased calculation skills and 2) Pattern recogition.

-Basic endgame training, like King + Pawn vs King, and the basic rook endgames involving K+R and 1 pawn vs K+R only.

I'd stick with those two areas primarily, and not even worry about middlegame strategy and positional concepts until you're at least 1200+.

You can also learn a lot from Youtube; I'd highly recommend John Bartholomew's youtube channel, specifically his "Climbing the Rating Ladder Up to 1000" video, and his subsequent videos in the series "...1200 to 1400", "1400 to 1600" and so on.
He also has some instructive videos on the common endgames I mentioned above.

Secondly, Daniel Naroditsky's speed-run series on Youtube is extremely instructive, again you can watch these in order of rating ranges of his opponents.

Lastly, make sure to analyse your games to see what was the critical mistake and try to understand why it was a critical mistake and ideally learn and recognise that move/pattern so that you 1) do not repeat it again and 2) can take advantage of a similar mistake if your opponent makes it!

Do the above, learn the above, and the rating improvement will follow.
But I can not stress enough how important solving tactical puzzles is - do as many as you can enjoy doing.