Road to 1600 Rapid, trying to improve after every game.

Short intro: I started playing chess last November and got hooked on it. After playing a LOT between November - March and getting to 1470 rapid rating,  I got burned out and frustrated because I felt like I was spending too much time on chess without improving much. I also got into "blitz fever" playing too much blitz without really studying to improve. I would sit up late nights, often with beer involved, just playing game after game until I was so strung out I was just hanging pieces left and right.

Now I`m back in the chess saddle and I have decided to go back to the drawing board.  Back to basics. Chess 101. Giuoco Piano. Development, king safety.  I need to have a healthier relationship to chess, and I need to make my chess time productive.

I am going to play rapid 15/10 and 30 min, and I`m going to analyze every game as thoroughly as my understanding and time allows. If I make mistakes I am going to try to learn from them, 

Goals for this summer:

1. Eliminate horrible blunders, such as leaving pieces en prise, falling for obvious skewers, dangerous pins, forks and "mates out of the blue". Win, lose or draw is not the important part here, I just want to practice good chess habits and learn how to play patiently and solidly. If I lose I want it to be because I got thoroughly outplayed, not because I gave up something for free. At least this way I can go through my loss and learn something more productive than "I shouldn`t have left that piece undefended"

2. Don`t play when tired or distracted. Chess time will be "tunnel time", during that time it will be my sole focus.  I am going to set aside time specifically for that purpose. I will warm up with some tactics puzzles, and if I`m so tired or distracted that I can`t solve any of them then I`m probably better off doing something else than chess at that time. 

3. Analyze every game. By forcing myself to analyze every game, I am forcing myself to learn from every game. If it is a particularily instructional game, or the opening catches me off guard or the endgame is completely unfamiliar or something like that, I will do a deeper analysis. I will study the unfamiliar opening or the particular endgame, as to be better prepared in the future.

End goal for 2019: Reach a solid 1600 rapid rating. I`m already 1470. I`m quite confident that I can reach 1600 if I get a good streak. By solid 1600 I mean I should be able to hold my own consistently in games against other similarly rated opponents. If I can stay around 1600 for 100 games or so, then I`ll consider my goal reached. 

Without further ado: Game 1 (with analysis). I am black in this game

Horrible blunders: 0

The most important part is that I avoided blunders. However I`m a bit dissapointed with myself that I didn`t "see" Nxf1 going up the exchange on move 24. In this particular instance it probably didn`t matter much. But I need to be honest with myself in that I didn`t see it. 

Possible improvements: attacking f2 with the queen on move 12 was perhaps a bit premature. Maybe I should have played more positionally with 12. Qg5 or 12. Nd5. Though Nd5 would have been met by Ba4 and later c3 so don`t see how I would gain much. 
 

Game 2

Game 3

Not much to say about game 3, except that I`m happy to bank a miniature after the nerve-wracking previous Sicilian game. 

Game 4

I wrote an analysis of game 4 but it somehow got lost so I`ll just write a short summary. Basicly I got out of the middlegame in game 4 with a (I would say) slightly better position. My opponent made a mistake which cost him 2 pawns, but despite having 2 passed pawns and a comfortable endgame I managed to mess it up and got mated in the middle of the board.. I definitely need to hunker down and study endgames if I ever want to improve. It`s in the endgame I usually blow my advantage or the obvious draw.

Game 5 was a quick win with a tactic, so not particularly instructive, except to confirm my observation that players at the 1400-1500 rating level often run intro trouble by blindly grabbing pawns without having a good look around. I`m posting game 6 here.

I'm going to go through all of them later, as this thread is really interesting to me, as I would say 3 months ago on a different account I was struggling to break 1500.

What changed was:

Puzzles! Chesstempo.com. Thank me later. This site also has great puzzles (I like them a little better than Chesstempo.com) but you have to pay.

Opening Knowledge: Higher rated players told me to ignore the opening and "play good moves". While there is an element of truth, I would end up in worse positions after move 7. The opening moves are just too analyzed to not study.

Getting a book(s): I've heard reassess your chess by Silman is amazing. I currently have his Complete Book of Chess Strategy.

Hope this helps!

(P.S: I am a 1600 rapid player, if you would like to see how I play, I would be open to an unrated challenge.)

I feel the same about openings. While you can no doubt win with "any" opening if you`re really good at chess, the reality of the matter is that the first 10 moves have a huge effect on the rest of the game. I suck at endgames (as my two losses show), but I`m still near 1500 rating just by knowing solid opening lines and having a decent eye for tactics. One misstep in the opening and you can easily be done for.. 

Hello,

I consider myself a beginner, although I'm 1850 rapid. I've learnt chess two years ago, and I've been consistently improving since. 

Here are some pieces of advice. I will illustrate with a 30+0 game that I've just played.

1 Tactics. Until 1700-1800, a tactical superiority will decide the game. My training is 3-4 hours of tactics every day. Chess.com, Lichess and Chesstempo provide good puzzles. You should do blitz (less than a minute per puzzle) and standard (between 30 and 60 minutes per puzzle) tactics.

2 Endgames. I would consider to learn the basics of rook endgames and king + pawns endgames. You can easily blunder in endgames. Openings are far less important.

3 Games. Three 30+0 games every day.

You should consider taking only 5-10 % of your time studying opening and strategy / positionnal play.

Here's my game

This exemple shows a few things.

- My opponent blundered a rook in a 30+0 game, though he is 1750.

- This was the first time I played the Italian game with 4 d3, and I have no knowlege on this opening. My opponent had some knowledge on this opening as he played his moves very quickly. It didn't matter.

- I strategically outplayed my opponent. Nevertheless, I never studied any Strategical book. This comes with practice. 

You guys are fast learners!

This loss was very instructive for me. I played quite a slow, positional game this time around and managed to grind out an advantage step by step. Then I blew my advantage again, because I wasn`t slow and careful enough. Even though it was a 30 min game I started having 6 minutes versus 20 minutes, which also affected my play.

Note 1: Better time management.

Note 2: DEFINITELY start studying endgames and positional chess. I`m thinking to look at some games by Kramnik and Karpov and see how they grind out positional advantages. Then I`ll do some drills and lessons involving passed pawns and endgames with rooks and pawns. 

Overall: Even though it`s frustrating to blow advantages over and over again, at least it`s encouraging to know that I built those advantages in the first place. Back when I was in the 800-1000 range I looked at 1400 rated players as Gods, because if I ever played one I just lost and couldn`t explain why. Now I consistently manage to put 1400+ players on the backfoot, and even win, so I would say that is an achievement (for me).

I played the previous opponent again. And AGAIN I blew a advantage. This time the advantage was on the order of magnitude of 18 pawns according to the computer.. so good job me. I feel quite tilted ATM, I`m just not able to convert winning advantages. I played too defensively in the end and once my opponent managed to double rooks in front of my king I just lost track of my own plan... Enough chess for today.

I looked at game 4.  I don't think it was a complicated endgame technique thing, you just kind of forgot for a moment that the way you win an endgame like this is push your past pawns.  20. . . . a5.  No reason to move that rook now, its in a good spot.  If white moves his rook, you just play a4.  

You`re right, I should have kept it simple. I guess I was hope-chessing a bit and got intrigued by the bank-rank weakness of my opponent. I never even thought of the interesting tactic of "double attacking my pawn and knight while at the same time resolving the back-rank issue" It cost me the game (in an interesting way)

It`s not a matter of HAVING to improve after every game. I`m just forcing myself to analyze every game.  Maybe the title was phrased badly. I fully expect it to take a long time and hundreds of rapid games before I earn a 1600 rating. By analyzing every game a ong the way I `m hoping to get there faster and more effectively. 

I took a look at the game. You didn`t add comments so I do not know what the purpose of your moves were. At a glance it seems like your opponents main weakness was passive play and being too grubby about exchanging his bishops for strong knights. The bishop pair is a long-term advantage but I would exchange my bishop for the powerful knight easily 

Now with comments. 

"Eliminate horrible blunders, such as leaving pieces en prise, falling for obvious skewers, dangerous pins, forks and "mates out of the blue"."

This!!!^

It seems to me that between about 1000 and a 1600+ rating, players are in the process of gradually learning to commit fewer basic errors (blunders and mistakes). It is harder to eliminate them than it appears because they often seem to occur, not because you can't see it, but because you became focused-on/distracted-by a complex situation, sometimes with time pressure, and didn't take the time to back off and look for obvious checks, captures and threats first. At my current 1300 rating, I feel like I don't need to be able to consistently find incredible moves to get to 1600, I primarily just need to eliminate obvious blunders.

I also notice that many players at my level (myself included), need to slow down on what at first glance seems like an automatic recapture. That causes us to respond to an opponents blunder with a blunder of our own, and a game ending opportunity is missed. 

I am taking a very similar approach to you. I have a basic opening plan, I am learning some endgame basics, I spend the most practice time on tactics, and I play games, and I analyze a lot of those games to learn from my mistakes. I also like the "retry" feature for learning to improve. Although my opening plan is not extensive, but I do have it written down, and as I make mistakes I modify it to improve. That improves my consistency. 

This time I just got outplayed, I had no clue what I was doing in this game, and just played bad. Overall I didn`t find any coherent plan, played overly cautiously, and just reacted to my opponents moves. I played 2 more games after this one, I`ll post them tomorrow.

Note to self: don`t touch the mouse until you know what move to play.

I thought only the French were patronizing. You're a NM, there is nothing to boast about. And a weak one, I have to say. 

I fully agree with this. Even if playing with the mindset that "I`m just not going to commit any blunders" - it usually doesn`t work out. You need to make risky moves in complicated positions to be any good at chess. Time pressure often gets to me, and even if I`m repeating to myself "you can`t move this piece, you can`t move this piece" I can easily get distracted during time pressure trying to look at some different lines, get frustrated seeing nothing productive and STILL move the piece I under no circumstances should have moved. In the future I will deem it more important to not make a blunder than to not lose on time.. Better lose on time than make a blunder..