Thougts about my (lack of) improvement

Fellow chessplayers,

I picked up chess seriously about a year ago. I was on vacation abroad with a friend and he wanted to play and bought a board. He's played alot, I learned the basics of the game as a kid but that's about it, he even had to teach me castling and en passant... we played almost every day for 2 weeks and obviously I got wiped off the board every single time.

But, I got struck by the chess obsession and when I got back home I started reading books, follow top level chess games, started playing here on chess.com, got a computer engine and started analysing my games, etc etc.

I play daily and have played something like 800 games online since i joined the site.

So, have I improved at all? Well, yes. When playing the same friend today we're pretty equal. I also play my sister occasionaly OTB, she knows nothing about chess theory, but has a good eye for the game and is pretty intelligent (mensa member). A year ago I often lost to her, today I usually win.

However, I feel that I'm stuck somehow. I still lurk around rating 1200 here on chess.com, despite the amount of time and effort I put in playing and trying to learn more about the game.

I honestly don't think that I'm so untalented that there is no more room for improvement, but obviously my training methods isnt't effective.

So I am simply wondering if someone have had a similar experience, and how you managed to keep moving forward?

I've heard all the usual tips, "keep playing" - yes I am, as said before 800 games and counting, "train tactics" - yes, I solve puzzles from books and in the Chessimo app, "play OTB not just online" - yes, I play weekly at work in a casual chess group with my students (20+ age student, not kids) and so on...

But still, I continue to make awful ugly moves, and failing to see when my opponent do the same, and loosing more than half the games. Except sometimes, when the moves just come naturally in some mysterious way, and post games analysis shows that my moves are mostly in the top 4 of what the engine suggests. It's pretty weird.

I play opponents in the range of +/- 100 from my own rating.

Appreciate any thoughts and ideas!

One year isnt that much. I was around your rating after one year of study. Just do Tactics on tactics trainer, continue to learn new openings and study endgames. 

Thanks for your input. How long have you studied? In what ways did you improve from one years study and until now?

Always pay attention to your opponents move and try to see their line of thinking before you apply your plan. Especially when you are in what seems to be a winning attack. This should jump you out of the 1200 range.

Thanks for the responses! I think you have a point, since I perform better in online chess than in Live. Learning to play as accurately as possible without time pressure and then proceeding to faster time controls is something i have always considered very logic.

Only problem is I like the ability to always find an opponent online INSTANTLY when I want to play, wich doesnt happen in CC. But i think i will try to reduce te number of games played daily and instead go for time limits of 45 mins or more for a few weeks and see what happens.

What do yo9u do th actually study? It takes more than just playing games to get significantly better.

You'd think so. This is from a CC game I just finished:

A couple of things...

First of all, a rating of 1200 after one year is astounding and a great job.

Secondly, the above position isn't so simple.  After 17.Nf2 Black plays 17...g4 and unless I'm missing something (possible since I just woke up an only spent a minute or two on this position) you're still going to be in a world of trouble. 

I would say analyze your games as deeply as you can...without an engine.  Once you have scraped every last bit of knowledge out of the game THEN use an engine to verify what you think you learned.

The problem with just using an engine is that you see it say 21.Rf4 and you say "Oh, yeah,  duh" except that you have no idea why that is a good move and/or better than your thought.

My other advice to you would be to pick ONE game each day and spend at least an hour analyzing it.  Ideally this would be a CC game, not a blitz game.

Also, in CC how much time are you spending on each move roughly?  One minute?  Five?  Ten?  An hour?

In the above position you shouldn't move quickly.  You should spend a long, long time working everything out.

NOt sure if you realized, but the position above was not posted by the OP. I posted it because Mark mentioned how CC can help eliminate blunders and I was just being a bit of a smartass trying to show that, although that is usually true, it isn't always.

Personally, I take my time on moves. Looking at overall plans, considering viable candidate moves and analyzing games afterwards.

On a positive note, I did manage to win the game from the position above because of good habits I've developed in CC.

To the OP. I think all of us started that way at first before we all got better. Even the best ones suffered to in thier early years in the game (well i guess not Capa lol).

In my experience well...at first i was wondering why i could not beat the best players in school and wonder if it was all about the opening...I was wrong. Whatever opening they used against me...(e4, d4, c4 , nf3 even a3 ,b4, h3!) they won. So i started reading biographical books hoping to see if i can learn from their style of play than scanning the informators in our school library. And thank goodness i was able to grab a bit of chess knowledge (which up to now im still doing). When i read Capas books i learned that it is possible to exchange pieces straight to the endgame. When i read Tals books i learned that it is possible to move your pieces with the goal of sacrificing them in the near future. When i read Alekhines books i understood that one needs to remove (exchange) the pieces defending the enemy king. Petrosians book showed that we can make exchange sacrifices to have a good position. And of course Fischer, who showed that piece activity and clear cut strategy is needed to win a game. But there is one thing i was lacking (up to now) i have more or less learned from these masters (like all amateurs like me) but not the very important thing (which is why im still learning and lossing)...TOTAL FOCUS and CONCENTRATION ON THE GAME.. and PLANNING (when you do..you know where your opponent will go and what he plans to do, and you yourself will have a plan. :). Good luck.

It is just hard work, I don't believe in endless playing games. Most people keep playing blitz games, but they never learn from a loss but just keep playing for ever.

Study your losses. Keep track of all your games, put them in a database. Go look into them, analyse them by your own(without engine). Deeply analyse the critical moments(at what moment i became worse and why). Check your own conclusion with an engine if your conclusion is right, if it is wrong you learned something new and so on.

Thank you everyone for your responses!