Learning curve

Hello everyone

I don't know if anyone could shed some light on the subject of the rate of learning that is realistic in chess?

I'm a club player, 50 yrs old, and dabbled in chess for many years but not seriously at all.  I've been attempting to improve my game of late with some focus on tactics and vids here on chess.com as well as purchasing some online learning from a GM in the way of dvd's. 

I think it fair to say that my "progress" is actually in a free fall and seemingly uncontrollably spiralling downwards!  I'm now back down at a level of about 1200 while I'm attempting to learn just 3 openings with very little success.  Part of the problem that I'm finding is that when practising, I'm finding my opponents often play out of "book" play (probably as a consequence of my rating), and so therefore I'm finding I'm not getting practise at playing book moves.  The variations are so vast that it is mind exploding.   The result of this is that I'm not tapping any of these openings into my long-term memory.

Does any kind soul on here have any advice about the strategy of my learning?  For the games I'm losing I do attempt to run through the analysis of where I'm going wrong so as to try to understand my mistakes.  I'm certain my tactics can be improved however I think it is the key objectives of each of the openings that I feel I'm not getting which is partly why I am finding it quite overwhelming. 

I'm finding at club nights, a couple of county tournaments and also many online games here on chess.com, most of the time I'm losing (I'd put a rough estimate of about 80%), as such I'm feeling like I'm losing my way a bit.   Anyone have any advice to offer me?  TIA.....

My cousin was telling me about his brief experience with chess. He had a computer program with a big library of opening moves. For every few moves you put on the board, the program would have a different opening name. He tried to memorize some openings, but the variations seemed endless, so he eventually stopped being interested in chess, because that was no fun... and I agree, who wants to play a game where you're required to memorize an encyclopedia? Luckily chess isn't like that.

Mostly what you need out of the opening is to follow the principals. There are only a few key ideas that tie together the endless sea of grandmaster opening variations.

1) Control the center
2) Get your knights and bishops off the back rank quickly
3) Castle to safety

https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-principles-of-the-opening

As for the key objectives of specific openings, now we're talking the middlegame, and that's the correct way of learning openings... trying to understand the middlegame it's setting you up for. This way even if your opponent plays differently you still have a general idea of what to do. This does take quite a lot of study and experience, but the middlegame too has unifying ideas like piece activity, king safety, and pawn structure. Usually in a middlegame a player will primarily seek play in one of three areas (the kingside, center, or queenside) and there is a main pawn break.

For example a french advance structure (pictured below)

To answer your question about improvement, in my opinion DVDs and videos in general are a bit tricky. It's very easy to watch them and feel like it's useful, but this is usually too passive. Set up a board when you watch a video, and follow along. Takes notes. Pause the video at interesting positions and look at variations on your own on the board. Take any questions you come up with to these forums or put the positions in an engine to see how the computer evaluates them.

I recommend books instead. Even for tactics, because on chess.com low rated tactics sometimes don't even have a theme, and that's not very useful (themes like fork, pin, and discovered check). I recommend a book like this

https://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Tactics-ChessCafe-Chess/dp/1888690348

And in general, any book out of Seirawan's Winning Chess Series.

Not that chess.com is so bad. I see you're a member here. Have you checked out the various resources under the "Learn" tab? For example

https://www.chess.com/lessons

Now to answer your first sentence... what's an expected rate of improvement?

For a 50 year old beginner, honestly, I don't know. It depends what you do, and how many hours a day you do it, but I still think you can improve a few 100 points a year in the beginning as you cover all the basics (tactics, endgames, strategy, openings, and probably in that order, yes it's best to save openings for last).

Oh, and the nice thing about chess is even though it's a difficult game, our similarly rated opponents struggle with the same things we do.

You don't know what to do when your opponent leaves book? Neither does your opponent  In fact, they probably leave book because they're afraid you know what you're doing, so they better do something random to throw you off.

Which I've experienced, on both sides, recently in tournament play. I.e. my opponent plays a move I've never seen, and it leaves me wondering how to proceed and a different opponent of mine was playing an opening that requires a lot of memorization, so I purposefully played out of book early to make him play on his own.

In both cases the player who left book early won

In general the opening isn't so important. The game will turn into a brawl in the middlegame, long after both players are out of memorized moves, and that's where games are won and lost.

Don't worry mate. Just keep playing everyday and try to improve your game focusing on 1 or 2 openings for black and white. I don't know if there's an expected learning curve as it took me 3 months to go from 700 to 1100 and in the next 20 days I went from 1100 to 1500 so I think you have to be consistent ( I played 1200 games and tactics almost every day ).

As a rule, never trust a chess player to accurately describe their rate of improvement.

Talented kids doing systematic study daily might go from beginner to 1500 in a year, but that's certainly not normal. Most people who study, regardless of age, will not do it that fast. 20 days is laughable

Things chess players leave out e.g. they were a strong player 10 years ago, and they're returning from a long break, so they're not actually a beginner.

They're a strong player in a chess-like game (shogi for example) so their improvement is much faster than normal.

The topics and intensity of their study is left our, or lied about (this one is common, but often because for people who love chess, they don't consider some of their activities work, and so neglect to mention that year they studied endgames )

Openings are by far the biggest trap for beginners, of all ages.  We play a game, we get a bad position, and we blame our opening.  "If only I knew this opening better!  Then I wouldn't have lost!"

This is similar to a math test.  It's relatively easy to memorize a few multiplication tables.  The test comes around, we know the answer, everything is great.  Then the next question is 145x96=?, and we throw up our hands.  "If only I memorized up to the 145 times tables!  Then I would have aced the test!"  Or, you know, you could have pulled out your pencil, did some long multiplication and discover the answer.

No matter how many moves you memorize, there will always be more that you haven't.  Worse, focusing on memory means you aren't focused on improving your overall skill.  That is, your goal should be to figure out the right move in any position, and this is a skill that needs developing.  If we instead try to brute force memorize everything, we don't really get anywhere.  Even if you memorized every mathematical factor, you wouldn't be much of a mathematician, would you?

Here's what you should do instead: focus on basic tactics.  Grab a beginner's guide to tactics and go to work.  To change the metaphor, tactics are the to chess what scales are to music, and you can never practice them enough.  It's may also be useful to look at very basic endgames (like King and Pawn versus King, or King and Rook versus King).  Whatever you decide to do, try to focus on improving your thinking.  You want to think like a chess player, not just have lots of chess-facts in your head. Hope that helps.

Watch my stats mate it took me 20 days.

I have been playing 90%+ of the days since I started so it's not that strange.

Also I have to say that my IQ is 145.

I've been playing close to 20 years. I've seen it all, and yes, I looked at your stats and ratings graph. Very good job.

I stand by what I said though

I have seen your stats and you got 200 points on bullet in only 2 days lol I don't know what's more strange

Also my graph doesn't look strange, you can see a clear linear progression.

I mean, we can talk about it if you want.

For example, when did you first learn the moves?

I already knew them all except castling and capture en passant.

Also I must say that I have spent lost of hours on chess since when I started and that I got this fast progression when I stopped playing the Pirc.

You have all been very generous with your time and sharing your experience.... I'm very grateful.

"In both cases the player who left book early won 

In general the opening isn't so important. The game will turn into a brawl in the middlegame, long after both players are out of memorized moves, and that's where games are won and lost."

30+ years ago, I got up to 1763 USCF without knowing the openings.  I don't think I can do that again in today's environment.

Also, whenever I deviated from "the Book" and I won, it really, really pissed off the Book player.  I would always have a good chuckle in private.

"Knowing openings" is definitely a continuum. You certainly have to know something... but you don't have to know as much as opening books and videos might make a beginner believe.

I remember this one game I was 1800 vs 2100. I was out of book on move 3, but I used general understanding and without knowing it stayed in book for 10+ moves. The game was a draw, but I was the one pressing for a win in the endgame. Sometimes that's how it goes.