Your Opinion is Requested: Am I a Slow Learner?

Hey Everyone,

I learned to play chess when I was 8. Basically learned how to move the pieces. Played less than 100 times and then didn't play agian until last year,  50 years later. Yes after watching the movie  :-)

Info: I have played for a year.I analyze most of my games and do puzzles. My rating the last 3 weeks or so (finally) stays consistently over 800. I have played over 1,800 games in a year.

I only play rapid.

Question: Would you think my rating should be higher than just 800? My goal is to reach 1,000 so anyone who has gotten there it would be cool to hear your story. Also would like to hear from people who have any insight if I am improving at an "average rate", "turtle rate", etc.

Thanks

I doubt that anyone can give you good info on average progress rates. Most of us only have our own progress to use as a gauge.

It looks like you haven't done any lessons here. What have you been doing to help you learn?

Analyzing games is good but how much time do you spend?

Puzzles are a help but there is so much more.

I found these videos useful, and I think you will too. They are brutal and unforgiving, but tough love / reality check is what we all often need:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbF1bRwxIWY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odtnysAUGTA

As tygxc says, check that your next move is not a blunder and your rating will increase, very much above 1000. I personally found this video helpful on this topic: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0c6QE7G6fk

Hey Shawn,

I wouldn't get bogged down comparing yourself to others. Mostly it is just a matter of approach. Some people get stuck at 800 for years and then I've seen some people get to 1500 in one year. Sometimes it is just a matter of how the person has approached their progress. Some people get stuck because they do the classic errors (don't analyse their games, don't focus on beginner tactics, play mostly bots, play mostly speed chess instead of slower time controls, etc).

As for me, I have been playing for nearly one year and have got to around 1100. I started playing chess at 33 and have found it incredibly hard. I recently wrote exactly what I did to get to this rating for another chesscom member, if you want this info just drop me a DM yeah?

Take care

I feel that I'm a slow learner and I play chess at 1 week, let's just not compare ourselves to the others and trust our process.

There's got to be a myriad of factors that affect progress.

• Natural Intelligence
• Analytical and problem solving ability
• Time spent on improving
• How that time is spent
  • lessons
  • youtube videos
  • books
  • tactics
  • puzzles
  • analysing games
• Quality of learning time vs quantity (eg do you really understand the puzzles)
• Quality of the learning materials
• Speed of games played
• Starting level

I don't think you should beat yourself up over rating.  However if you keep losing to people at the same level for a long time, one of the factors above may be a reason.

You should probably look at your games overall, and consider whether the time spent learning is being used effectively.  If you think it is, then don't panic and carry on

The most important thing is only one question: "Do you enjoy your chess journey?"

If improvement is important to you, I would consider slightly longer games. 10|0 is a bit too fast for novice players (some can still improve significantly that way, but they are a minority). You have to learn how to calculate and it is harder to learn it by playing 10|0 games for most of us. Speed chess is not played the same as slower games, and in most cases it is not ideal for learning the game. 

I would switch up to at least 15|10 games, especially because 30% of your losses is by timeout. You should choose time control that you are more comfortable with. You don't need to play multiple games per day. It is better to play a single game and then spend some time with it to try to learn some lessons from it. Just playing multiple games and going through them in 5 minutes afterwards will not help you that much. It is just my suggestion, the decision is yours.

As a kid, I've played at most 100 games with members of my family and friends. I've learned the game when I was 8 or something like that, and I stopped before high school. At that time, I knew some basic principles and that is all. I came back a little more than year and a half ago. After a few weeks, I was around 1 200 mark. After 7-8 months I got to 1 500, and now I am around 1 650.

If you wish to hear a more detailed story about my improvement and what I did to improve, you can check this out:


https://www.chess.com/blog/nklristic/the-beginners-tale-first-steps-to-chess-improvement

In any case, try not to compare yourself to others. Someone will spend hours on chess every day, someone will just want to play a few relaxing games, not caring about improvement. The most important thing is for you to be happy with what you are doing.

 The question becomes, how are you spending your time learning? One can spend a lot of time learning, but not what you need to know.

If you have a GM's understanding of the king's gambit, but you're still hanging your pieces, then you're not going to advance very far, even with a GM's understanding of one opening. 

As an adult, you lack time, but you can usually budget the money to afford a coach.   Guided learning will make the most of your time, and it is definitely worth the cash.

My personal opinion is that anyone can be a NM, if they are willing to put in the work. It is an insane amount of work, tbh, but I still feel it is doable.

Hey, at least you're not in my position (peaked over 1000 and am now in the mid-800s!)

That said, at the beginning of the year you made a huge step forward, going from 300s to 800s.  It's normal for people to experience rating plateaus, and 500 points is normally considered a lot of progress in even a first year.

Certainly considering how you can challenge yourself to learn and apply some new skills would be a step forward, but your achievement so far is good progress.

Doing puzzles is great. However, the way you do it is not so great. In most cases, you make a move after thinking for 10-20-30 seconds, and it's either good or not. Fifty-fifty.

What is the point in that? Slow down and try to calculate stuff. That will improve your calculation skills and you will get better in chess. Just rushing through and guessing a good-looking move won't help you at all.

It depends on your level. If you are a beginner, the most you will do is to check for major mistakes. But in any case, the more effort you invest, the better it will be.

First you play a game, it should be a long enough game where you did what you can to play some good moves. Then the ideal way would be to go through the game without an engine, think a bit more about your moves and perhaps some lines you were thinking about during the game. Perhaps you come up with something new. I play really long games (60|0 or 45|45), so I generally skip this step because I feel that most of the stuff I can come up without the engine, I can think of during the game. That is not ideal, but it is just that I don't want to play a long game and then have 2+ hours long analysis.


After you are done, you can turn on the engine and check all previously mentioned with it. But again the more effort you invest, the better it will be. If you just fire up the engine and breeze through the game, the engine will be useless. So, what you should do, is to take your time and try to explain in human terms why some move or a line is good, and why some other wasn't. If you still don't understand after a while, forget about the line and move forward. As long as you learn something from the game, you are good.

As you get better, you will understand more and more. Some people will say to not use the engine at all, and there is some merit to it. The stronger the player is, more he will benefit from analyzing with the engine.


In short, at first, at least try to understand major mistakes, major evaluation shifts, and go from there. If you can understand more than that, so much the better.

Many thanks for your reply. I think I need to spend more time analyzingmy games and doing lessons. 

Very cool. I will check these out.

"As tygxc says, check that your next move is not a blunder and your rating will increase,"

That is good to know. I know that getting really good means tons of work but if I can get better by not just blundering that is cool for now. 2022 will be the year of chess study.

Thanks everyone. One thing I learned from this post is to spend more time on analysis. TRUE analysis. Not just a quick review. With that said I still lose games when my oponent blunders their queen and I miss it. Sad.

I can’t tell you what your rating “should” be, and I certainly wouldn’t call you a “slow learner,” but I do think that after over 1000 games, your rating should be a good deal higher than 800. So you have a problem, or problems. And I think I know what they are.

First, you are playing openings that are too advanced for you. Simplify your opening repertoire! I would recommend that you answer 1.e4 with 1…e5 and 1.d4 with 1…d5. You have three jobs in the opening: Stake a claim in the center, develop all you pieces, and get your king to safety. If you concentrate on those three tasks, you will usually get a pretty decent position

Second: You need to become more tactically alert. This doesn’t mean that you need to be able to calculate deep tactics, quite the contrary! You need to get much better at seeing one—maybe two—moves ahead. When someone threatens your queen on move 18 and then captures it on move 19, you haven’t made a calculation error, you have failed to see what’s right in front of your nose! After your opponent moves, you must always ask yourself: “Does he have any checks, captures, or threats?” And if you determine that there are no threats you have to deal with, ask yourself: “Do I have any checks captures, or threats?” And check them out. You may have a strong tactical opportunity. You need to do this at every turn. It takes very little time, but it makes all the difference!

Based on those numbers, it sounds like you play about 4 games a day on average.  The games I found were 10/0, so you're playing games that are somewhere between rapid and blitz.  Those games are fast enough that time management overshadows quality of play, so I'm not surprised if you are still only 800 after a year.  I do think spending your chess time more effectively could allow you to improve faster.

I'm 61 and I started chess about the same time and in about the same way as you.  However, in my 20s I had a period where I started playing more intensively.  This was when chess programs were just starting to be available; the best was USCF rated about 1600 - chess programs were actually permitted to play in some human tournaments at the time - which was the one I got.  I played about one game a day with it for about a year, allowing myself tournament time - first 40 moves in 2.5 hours - and gradually increasing the program's allowed time.  It took a while to get to the point where I could beat it at all, and then I gradually allowed the computer more and more time while still being able to beat it.  Eventually I could beat it on any time setting, at which point my own strength must have been around 1600 or more.

The key to that improvement was giving myself enough time and having the motivation to do an average of several minutes of calculation per move during the game.  I remember clearly that when I blundered a piece, I got to the point where I would really calculate intensively and could usually win it back.  I also got to the point where when I "blundered", it was several moves deep; I didn't drop the piece right away, but rather blundered in a way that permitted the computer to forcibly take a piece several moves later.

I really think it's practice at this calculation that got me to a reasonable playing level at the time.  I'm not as high any more because I don't calculate as intensively any more - I'm not sure whether I've just lost the motivation or whether age has something to do with it.

At any rate, I think if you want to get above 1000, you need to play longer games and make yourself calculate harder.  Play 15/10 at a minimum instead of 10/0 - maybe two games of 15/10 a day instead of four games of 10/0.  Also, consider playing the bots from easy to hard at 15/10 or slower, so you can have another measure of your progress.