please can anyone help me to understand why I am stuck at 500 elo for so long?

I’ve been stuck at 500 elo for a almost a year. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Can anyone help me understand what I’m doing or not doing?

I went through a few of your games and saw that you don’t necessarily think through your moves very well.

In one game I saw that you had 16 minutes or so on the clock while your opponent had 5. It looks like you don’t analyze your opponents moves before making your own.

****Tips*****
#1. Stop rushing your moves, think before moving your pieces

#2. Lookout for your opponents knight, I’ve seen that they’ve been forking you quite a bit

#3 look for checks

#4 after every game you play review it to see if there’s any significant mistakes you played. If there is, you’ll know for the next game with a similar setup

(I’m by no means a chess expert, these are the tips a friend gave me which helped me improve)

Adam I appreciate your time and help!! Thank you

Hi Geddy, I decided to look at a recent game of yours where you played white. I'm by no means an expert at chess but I can give you some pointers that I was told when I first started. In the opening you should try and develop your 2 knights and bishops, put your central pawns in the centre and castle as soon as you can (either side). Moving the same piece twice usually leads to trouble and takes you longer to "develop" overall. My comments therefore have these guidelines in mind and only apply to the first 10 or so moves. I wish you luck!

I have looked through the game posted, I agree with Lucky Dan about basics. But to try and give a little more clarity; ( i assuming your playing rapid)

A piece is only threatened if it isn't defended or it is of higher value than the piece attacking it.

e.g. An undefended knight attacked by a bishop is threatened, a knight defended by a bishop is not threatened by an attacking bishop. True they may capture your knight, but you will capture back so at this level nothing to worry about.

Counting threats - if a piece is threatened by more pieces (literally count them) than defended the piece (literally count them) then you need to react by a) moving the threatened piece b) add a defender c) capture or pin an attacker with a different piece...there are other ideas you can employ but these will get you started.

The centre of the board, the middle four squares bang in the middle, is like the top of a hill in a medieval battle...From here you can go down the middle, to the king side, to the queen side...This is why we battle to control the centre...It gives us space to switch attacks quickly from side to side at the same time restricting the opponents ability to move so freely making defence difficult. You open with 1.e4 (kings pawn) only defend this pawn if it is attacked, otherwise grab more space by attacking their pawn.

A piece where you don't like it? Understand why you don't like it there, actually look at what its threatening...if you can't understand what it is threatening to do, or supporting, then ignore it don't chase it to a better square. If something bad happens learn from it and understand why that move threatened something you didn't expect and try not to make the same mistake again.

Simple game plan should be to make sure that every piece gets moved (developed), castle your king and then and only then look for things to attack. if your opponent is wildly attacking you, try always to negate their threats by developing new pieces.

Be wary of escalation tactics...you attack my bishop so i attack your rook so you attack my queen...These escalation tactics take a lot of awareness of possible traps, checks and the like, better to avoid this until you gain more understanding of how your pieces work together. There will come a time when you can sense when escalation is right and when its not...and even then strong players can fall foul of this.

Remember checks must be attended to...if you give a check it doesn't matter how many pieces of yours are attacked...the king must get out of check first - and then its your move again...

above game....3. Be3 My belief is that you knew they were intending Qh4 threatening checkmate and so you thought block it - Nf3 was suggested by Dan, can you see why Knight to f3 stops any ideas of Qh4? Thats right! the knight protect h4 from f3. That queen is not going there if you play Nf3.... Don't always react to the move that's made, react to the move that they are intending next...prevent it by helping yourself...Better to develop to prevent, rather than prevent by having your only piece developed exchanged.

Dunno if this helps, but i enjoyed writing it

Hey mate I’m not going to have a look at any game because there’s no need to. If you’re 500 there’s only one explanation and it’s as follows:

What you are doing: blundering pieces, not seeing threats, not seeing your opponents blunders, blundering into mate, giving away material, violating principles, making weakening moves, not developing properly. 

what you are not doing: just inverse the above

This is in no way being harsh but there’s no way to be stuck at 500 without getting pretty much everything wrong. However you can improve easily! You have to try to blundercheck. Focus on keeping your pieces safe, play longer games so you have time to think, and really focus on your board vision. When you lose, have a look at the game, don’t worry about analysing, just pick out the worse few mistakes, understand why you made them and commit to spotting them next time. You’ll soon progress. Good luck man.