Difference between 1200 and 1400 - 1500 scholastic player?

I am not a chess expert, but my 1st grader (whose account this is) has been playing a lot this year. He's gone to 1250 or so in tournaments. Played in a quad yesterday with kids 100 - 200 points higher, managed just one draw. But he was equal or better for most of the 1st two games but could not capitalize.

It led me to wonder -- what skills separate a 1250 kid from 1400 - 1500 kids? Is it just more tactics, openings, fewer blunders? Or is there some core set of tools which one must acquire to make the next step? That is, what is the shortest path from here to there . . .?

 

Thanks in advance.

Tactics, but also openings to a lesser extent. The latter is more true if you play a kid only once in a tournament (like in most), and don't have that "second chance" to sidestep the one trappy line that they may actually know decently (unlike the case if you played someone in a match).

dannyhume: so if you were to rank time spent, you would put tactics > openings?  How about endgame and middle game strategy and positional understanding? So is a 1500 kid largely just a 1250 kid with much better tactics? If so, that is a simple plan to follow . . . 

Having coached a high school club, who probably are like younger kids in the same rating range, the main difference between my 1200 players and my 1400-1500 players was that the higher rated players left fewer pieces undefended - and were therefore less prone to en prise capture - and had better endgame skills.  They were generally a little better across all skills (tactics, openings, strategy) but mainly in those two areas.

I used to photocopy and make my 1200 and under players read the chapter on Overprotection in Nimzowitsch's My System.  I also had them read the first edition (new then) of Jeremy Silman's How to Reassess Your Chess, which is triple the size now in it's 4th ed and probably not suited to a first grader.

As a Teacher with an Advanced Teaching Certificate, I would look at a first graders scorebook and then assess how much of his problem is a thought process problem, where he forgets to look for certain things and makes foolish mistakes, and how much of it is a lack of tactics/patterns recognition.  If there are suitable tactics books or online tactics trainers for him, I would encourage them.  At 1200, it's also time to understand endgame principles like The Opposition, the Pawn Square Rule, etc. if he doesn't already. Perhaps Silman's endgame book, divided into rating levels, would be a good place to start.

Tactics is the most noticeable difference for sure, although maybe more specifically it's the ability / habit of calculating forcing moves to 1) check if you can win material and if you can't then 2) check if your intended move doesn't give up material.

Getting a tactics book and doing some time period of solving puzzles each day is a quick way to see results. There are places online you can do puzzles for free, but I'd prefer a book like this which organizes them by theme
https://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Tactics-ChessCafe-Chess/dp/1888690348

Because of the age it's hard to know (at least for me, who is not a coach for kids) when and how to introduce more abstract stuff like strategy. As you suspect, eventually a player has to learn a little of everything (strategy, endgames, openings).

If he was equal or better during first half of most games, it sounds to me like he needs to study the endgame now to hit 1400-1500....to get higher he will have to study all....but like has been pointed out tactics will decide most of the games at his level...so continue with that too.

ndb2010: The most realistic answer is that people and their opponents have different strengths and weaknesses for their level, but for lower level players like you describe (myself included), it will be lower-level mistakes (e.g., crude calculation or simple tactics/combinations) that statistically make the largest impact.

All of my wins and losses against class D players (50% wins) and below (1 draw and zero losses this past year) were, without exception, tactics or "visual neglect" (oops, forgot his bishop was staring at my rook, my bad).

My few wins and a draw against class C players (I won around 1 out of 7-8 against class C OTB) were all tactical mistakes on their part, without exception... I won because I managed to escape the opening without a major disadvantage and then ended up not making the last big mistake.

Against all opponents, if I escaped to move 7 without being at a major disadvantage OR ended up in a line that I know through move 6 OR ended up out of a line they know through move 6, my win-percentage goes up 30% (okay, this is no more than 30 games, so maybe not enough to make these judgments, but that is my limited experience).

I have had maybe 1 or 2 fairly "even" endgames that I have won against similarly-rated players. I had a totally won endgame that I botched against a player 300 hundred points higher than me (I was almost ready to quit). This 3 games only for me.

So yes, I believe tactics (including crude oops blunders) > openings > endgames is he order in comparing 1200 to 1500 level players.

Positional sense is tougher to judge... The class C opponents I believe were all stronger positionally than me, except for maybe one of them. But a lot of their "positional knowledge" in our mini-post-mortems seemed more based on their knowledge of the specific opening played rather than smarter planning in a novel middlegame position.

Helpful - thank you.  Coach (very strong GM) is suggesting endgame focus (though he says Dvoretsky not Silman) as the summer learning project. So this is totally consistent with the advice given. We will keep doing chess.com tactics. 

That's a coach way to do it, endgames, nothing wrong with that. This isn't necessarily "the shortest path from here to there" that a parent might want, but it's a longer term focus, building a strong foundation for lots of improvement over the years.

Chess.com's tactics ratings are so weird lately I have no idea if a 2000 rating is good or bad, but I assume that's good enough to be actually getting tactics (not just capture the free piece puzzles which aren't even tactics) and if so, then that's fine.

Also, if you're paying a coach, then maybe stick with that advice vs what you find here on the forum 

Sammy_Boi - I trust the coaches advice very much, as he sees the kid in class and is an excellent coach, but I value the advice of the community as well - people speak from their own experience. He was 1700 in tactics before it went haywire. 

Oh ok sounds like you have it all covered.

A lot of people wish they started that young, good luck to you both

I didn't read every post, but #4 and #5 sum it up pretty well. Tactics and endgames, in my opinion, will help any player below 1800 improve quickly and especially at such a young age.

I know a guy who went from 1500 to 2100 with just a year's worth of tactics.  He was overrated, because his first rapid tournament after that milestone ended with a 0.0 for him, but hey, it's still rather impressive.  Huge jump.  Just saying.

Originally posted 3 years ago. Now in 4th grade and has shown some improvements . . .

Oh I didn't check the date

can a person with 1200 elos can go for tournaments

Better tactical vision, positional understanding, opening knowledge, more consistent, more resilient,...