What are good ways for someone who hasn't played in a while and is really low ELO?

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Vertemes

I've struggled at this game a lot, so I took a break for a while. Now that I've come back, I feel like I've done even worse. Pretty much nothing has helped the entire time I played chess before I took a break, and I feel like I won't be able to improve unless I get coaching or practice matches.

wizzardA1

Play as many puzzles as you possible can to shake off the rust.

Watch and study higher-rated games in depth with notations.

Develop an opening repertoire and practical endgame studies.

HeckinSprout

Hello! I think wizzardA1 gives good general advice.

I took a look at some of your games. In the past 2 months you've only played games against bots and people WAY higher rated than you. Even if I look back further, so many of your games are against players 1000+ elo while you're 500. I'd get back to playing more opponents your same rating level. And reviewing all of your games afterwards. I don't know if you are doing this already, but if not, reviewing games and seeing what didn't go so well for you and committing it to memory can really help.

The games I did look at, I'd suggest slowing down. Many of your games are 10/10 rapid and you finish the game with 5+ minutes on the clock. So managing your time more is something you may want to concentrate on. Going along with the theme of time - each turn before you move, check for hanging pieces. I noticed in quite a few games that you are missing opportunities to capture free pieces that your opponents are hanging.

Good luck!

ChessMasteryOfficial

Learn and apply the most important principles of chess. - (core of my teaching)
Always blunder-check your moves.
Solve tactics in the right way.
Analyze your games.
Study games of strong players.
Learn how to be more psychologically resilient.
Work on your time management skills.
Get a coach if you can.

Bgabor91
Vertemes wrote:

I've struggled at this game a lot, so I took a break for a while. Now that I've come back, I feel like I've done even worse. Pretty much nothing has helped the entire time I played chess before I took a break, and I feel like I won't be able to improve unless I get coaching or practice matches.

Dear Vertemes,

My name is Gabor Balazs. I’m a Hungarian FIDE Master and a certified, full-time chess coach, so I hope I can help you. happy.png Everybody is different, so that's why there isn't only one given way to learn and improve.

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 analyzing your own games. There is a built-in engine on chess.com which can show you if a move is good or bad but the only problem is that it can't explain to you the plans, ideas behind the moves, so you won't know why it is so good or bad.

In my opinion, chess has 4 main areas (openings, strategies, tactics/combinations and endgames) and 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 enjoy the lessons because they cover multiple aspects of chess in an engaging and dynamic way, keeping the learning process both stimulating and efficient. Of course, there are always ups and downs but this is completely normal in everyone's career. happy.png

If you would like to learn more about chess, you can take private lessons from me (you find the details on my profile) or you can visit my Patreon channel (www.patreon.com/Bgabor91), where you can learn about every kind of topics (openings, strategies, tactics, endgames, game analysis). There are more than 30 hours of educational videos uploaded already and I'm planning to upload at least 4 new videos per week, so you can get 4-6 hours of educational contents every month. I also upload daily puzzles in 4 levels every day which are available with a FREE subscription.

I hope this is helpful for you. Good luck with your games! happy.png

ThinkSquareChessAcademies

You should attempt to slow down during your games and analyze tactics. Try to look for 'loose' pieces. I can also offer you cheap coaching, far below the rates of other coaches. PM me if interested.