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Below 1700 or so, openings are mostly a waste of time and tactics rule the day. Learning the basic opening principles and two basic opening moves that you keep

Below 1700 or so, openings are mostly a waste of time and tactics rule the day. Learning the basic opening principles and two basic opening moves that you keep playing (one for white, one for black) and focusing on tactics [1][2] is in my experience the fastest way to advance. After 1700 or so, specific openings can be studied. I suggest playing d4 instead of e4 as white (avoids dealing with the Sicilian) and as black the French defense (for e4) and the KID (for d4). This is mostly coming from the POV of getting good at the game with a minimum of theory preparation, whilst being able to deploy the same openings in blitz and bullet games if need be. Another bonus of getting strong at tactics, is that you'll be able to see and appreciate ideas behind the openings and your game analysis will also improve. There are excellent GM analysis videos on Youtube that one can start extracting value from too. [1] https://www.chesstactics.org https://www.chesstactics.org [2] https://chesstempo.com/ https://chesstempo.com/

eachro 6y ago
how does one study tactics?
- kwertyops 6y ago
  Tactics trainers: https://lichess.org/training/ https://lichess.org/training/ https://chesstempo.com/chess-tactics/ https://chesstempo.com/chess-tactics/ https://www.chess.com/puzzles https://www.chess.com/puzzles
  - cactus2093 6y ago
    I'm curious if anyone has advice on how to interpret the ratings in the tactics trainers. Should they map roughly to your in-game rating? I'm pretty new to chess and still pretty bad (just under 1000 online, I make a lot of blunders and/or fall for opponents' tactics) but my rating is 1750 on the tactics trainer. I would imagine at some point the tactics are not the bottleneck and I should be working on something else instead (openings, endgames, or studying mid-game strategy?) but just wondering where that point is.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      You can make grandmaster studying only tactics and playing games. However most branch out long before then because there are other useful things to learn as you get good.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      > Should they map roughly to your in-game rating? For lichess at least, they don't. I'm a 2100 tactics and nowhere near that in actual rating (around 1500).
    - Nemerie 6y ago
      > Should they map roughly to your in-game rating? For a typical player, the chess.com puzzles rating is at least 500 points higher than the blitz rating on this site. I think tactics shouldn't be on focus only for very strong players, such as FMs or IMs, but you definitely don't need to choose one instead of another. It's fine to learn some tactics, then some strategy, then some endgames, isn't it?
    - drw 6y ago
      Among chess.com players who have played 10+ blitz games and 10+ puzzles, the average difference between their blitz rating and puzzle rating is 45 (blitz rating higher). The standard deviation of the difference is 374. Among players who have played 100+ games/100+ puzzles, the difference is -205: puzzle rating substantially higher, standard deviation 320. I'm not sure that it's ideal for ratings to be identical across the domains, but they should correlate to some degree.
- lcuff 6y ago
  As I mention in my own comment, Winning Chess by Fred Reinfeld and Irving Chernev. BEST book I've encountered by far of the dozens I've owned.
TameAntelope 6y ago
To add to this, the advice I've been given as a new/low rating chess player is to study endgames, if you must study something specific.
- opportune 6y ago
  Specifically for endgames you pretty much only need to know two patterns that are rather algorithmic: How to close a game where you’re up a rook or a queen (without stalemating). How to close a game where you’re up one pawn, if it’s not a forced stalemate. Two bishops is maybe something you want to learn. Theoretically knight + bishop as well. I play a lot of bullet chess and pretty much never see these though. The rest you can really only learn with practice and pattern recognition, like how to move your pawns and how to use a minor piece to secure a win. Well, you can try to learn it algorithmically but I wouldn’t recommend it. After learning those I would move onto tactics, because those are generally how you gain a material or positional advantage that doesn’t rely on a very trivial mistake like leaving a piece uncovered.
  - sverona 6y ago
    There's an old story about a GM who wound up with bishop + knight versus king and realized he'd forgotten how to do it.
    - ll931110 6y ago
      Even Women's Chess Champion forgot it once: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFF5ibgB6eA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFF5ibgB6eA
  - hengri 6y ago
    I have ~3000 blitz games in Lichess and I have never once had to play 2 bishops or bishop knight end games.
    - lcuff 6y ago
      I had to play B + N over the board early in my career, so it's definitely YMMV. It takes very little study: For B + N knowing that you mate in the corner that matches the color of the bishop, and that the knight needs to 'lead' in the effort to corral the king is all you really need to know. A half day of practice would cement it, I suspect.
iamcreasy 6y ago
> Below 1700 or so, openings are mostly a waste of time Here is a counter argument - below 1700, someone who knows the strength of an opening would outperform those who do not.
- skulk 6y ago
  The amount of opening preparation that's useful for a sub-1700 is minimal; diminishing returns due to not understanding middlegame positional ideas and shaky tactics hit really hard. When I was really into chess as a kid ~15 years ago, I spent a ton of time reading opening preparation but it was definitely time that I should have spent simply analyzing high level play in all stages of the game because my opponents either didn't know the theory (so while they technically deviated into "worse" lines, I had no hope of understanding why they are "worse" in the general case) or more rarely, they know how to avoid common theory. I think the most important opening prep for a novice is learning what lines to avoid at all costs. A lot of this, though, can be established with the basics: develop pieces, castle early, control center. Any time your opponent tempts you into violating any of these, think thrice.
- YetAnotherNick 6y ago
  The opening strength will only work when you know how to exploit something small in opponent's opening like a miss of tempo or wrong reply, which I think is above the skill of sub 1700. All the players above 1000 know basic principles like mobility of pieces and developing centre.
  - iamcreasy 6y ago
    > The opening strength will only work when you know how to exploit something small in opponent's opening like a miss of tempo or wrong reply That's exactly what I am saying. If one person knows the strength of an opening and the other person don't then the person who knows the opening has a clear advantage. I agree with @skulk's argument though - the time is better spent on learning tactics and analyzing games over learning many opening given the player is sticking to some particular openings.
idealism 6y ago
I understand what you're saying and agree, although I may suggest that 1700 number come down a bit to maybe 1200. I'm around the 1000-1200 range (just picked it up again recently) and I'd say most of my peers on Chess.com around that range have definitely studied openings and present sneaky traps consistently in the first ~5-15 moves. Playing as black for me is the real driving force for me to study openings because my black game suffers the most from actual Theory openings around 1200. It's not crucial to winning to study the openings because you can often get by with just basic positional play and simple deduction, but a cursory understanding of the most popular openings is a big bang-for-your-buck way to improve in the low 1k range, IMHO.
- birken 6y ago
  It is a question of opportunity cost. If you are studying openings at the expense of doing tactical puzzles and sharpening your tactics, it is not the most efficient use of your time at the 1200 level. If you have a 1200 level tactics skill and 1500 level openings skill, you are going to be about a 1200 rated player. If you have a 1500 level skill in tactics, you are going to be about a 1500 rated player regardless of whether you've studied openings. Remember: Being able to calculate tactics better helps with openings! Just because your opponent has memorized something and you haven't doesn't mean you can't just calculate on the fly and avoid falling into obvious traps.
  - hornd 6y ago
    Yeah I'm not so sure though. I'm 1900 rated tactics on lichess but a middling 1300 on normal games. Perhaps it might be due to playing blitz where I don't have lots of time to think.
- bluGill 6y ago
  But you only need to get a bit better to see through the common traps even the first time. The very first time I saw a scholars mate attempted against me I thought the moves were weird and made the obvious tactical response, only end up down a pawn. I was annoyed at being down a pawn afterwards and looked it up the opening, and only then did I discover the so called trap that I unknowingly didn't fall into because there are several good defenses that someone who knows even a little tactics will discover. Now at the 2500 level you get into sequences where you need to see a trap 15 non-forced moves in advance to not fall into it with seemingly natural moves. These can only be found in advance.
lacker 6y ago
I found openings to be very useful for players rated 1000-1500 when working with my high school chess team. The main benefit is that by understanding the typical moves of an opening, you make it a lot easier to avoid dropping a piece in the first 10 or 15 moves, or ending up massively behind in development because something tricked you. You avoid a decent amount of losses that way.
georgiecasey 6y ago
> Below 1700 or so On what rating system? USCF? Lichess? Chess.com?
SoSoRoCoCo 6y ago
The problem with tactics training is that there is always a "best answer" because they have been picked to have a best answer. What got me playing over 1700 (lichess rating grin) were two things: 1) deepening my mental checklist: 1) am i being attacked, 2) are there unprotected pieces, 3) am I about to be forked/pinned, 4) can I fork/pin my opponent ... and increase how far down you can BFS this without getting a headache. And avoiding endgames because those are just logical grinds. 2) playing with an analysis engine like stockfish. For me, memorizing defenses was not feasible because it is so broad, but I learned two openings (scotch and queens pawn) and at least know the defenses there because i know the openings. a little bit. I'll keep at it, memorizing defenses, but I'm old and probably won't cram more into my brain. EDIT: I used to go to a sunday-night chess meetup before COVID. 1700 on Lichess is nowhere near 1700 FIDE rating (of course, it was at a bar, so I'm usually a few pints in). I stopped going because I got tired of getting my ass kicked, there weren't enough mediocre players there.
- EarthIsHome 6y ago
  As an unrated player who plays occasionally, I've also found the mental checklist you've listed in 1) to be more helpful than memorizing chess openings. I've had a pretty high "win rate" when playing non-chess enthusiasts around my workplace or friend group. The issue I've encountered with memorizing openings is that it assumes both sides are playing perfect openings that complement each other. In reality, in my "lower rated" games, my opponent is likely to make suboptimal moves against the opening I memorized. There are ways to punish their moves, but I would've needed to memorized that. So, I have to come up with changes to the memorized opening on the spot. Going through the checklist allows me to play without memorizing movesets even though the moves I make are not the "best".
  - SoSoRoCoCo 6y ago
    > There are ways to punish their moves, but I would've needed to memorized that. So, I have to come up with changes to the memorized opening on the spot. This is a good way to put it. I don't yet understand what makes an opening such a personality. Like, what the "attitude" of an opening is beyond "white tries to dominate the center with a fiancetto from the king-side and crush the opponents defenses through pressure on f7" (this is like how every Wikipedia entry on openings is written). Great, thanks! I think this is probably one of the things that separates enthusiasts from naturals, because while I get the basic point of the sentence, I don't see how that plays out for 10 moves. Or maybe I'm overthinking it. I keep waiting for it to "click" one day. But yes, seeing someone deviate from a memorized opening doesn't help me win either!
yodsanklai 6y ago
> Below 1700 or so, openings are mostly a waste of time Why? I'm not at that level but I'm sure it can't hurt. I'm not talking about spending hours studying openings, but simply being able to name things is helpful. That way you can pick new ideas along the way, memorize past mistakes more easily, communicate with other players. And it doesn't take much time to know the first few moves of the most common openings.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ummonk 6y ago
  I think the problem happens that a lot of players start learning theoretical opening lines 10+ moves deep, when they really should be focused on just the first few moves and basic patterns / ideas from there along with traps.
pacomerh 6y ago
I'm not experienced with Chess, how do you know when you reach a certain level?. Is there an "official" way of knowing when you hit 1700?
- Buttons840 6y ago
  All the major chess websites and organizations use a similar Elo-like rating system where 1500 is about the 50th percentile. So, roughly speaking, 1700 probably means "when you're at the 70th percentile of active chess players". One example: https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz
  - jmgao 6y ago
    Ratings on chess sites are massively inflated compared to USCF/FIDE ratings. 1700 on lichess is probably somewhere around 1200 USCF.
    - toolslive 6y ago
      I bet "The queen's gambit" Netflix series is causing inflation as well.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        I'd guess that's also why this is on the front page.
    - jeremysalwen 6y ago
      Actually looks like it's around 1500 USCF. https://chessgoals.com/rating-comparison/#Lichess_Rating_vs_FIDE_and_USCF https://chessgoals.com/rating-comparison/#Lichess_Rating_vs_...
    - maeln 6y ago
      It is not really inflated, they just use a different middle point. Lichess start you at 1500 and therefore, 1500 will be the median point of the distribution, Chess.com start you at 1200 so this will tend to be the median point. It is really obvious when you look at the stats for classical or rapid for example: https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/classical https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/classical
BurningFrog 6y ago
Agreed on the main point. Wasting time on memorizing openings instead of playing chess is probably the most common rookie mistake. Though I do well avoiding Sicilian by playing Alapin (e4 c5 c3).
ummonk 6y ago
You can get pretty decent payoffs tactically just from learning common opening traps as well as common plans of development / attack though. Particularly if you are weak tactically, you're going to walk into opening traps / blunders if you aren't aware of them.
Nemerie 6y ago
By the way, if the goal is to get better at chess and not just have some fun, a huge waste of time is playing blitz and not analyzing your games. There are so many people who played thousands of blitz games online with no improvement whatsoever.
- aquateen 6y ago
  Blitz and even bullet are great for tactics and pattern recognition, especially for < 2000 rated players.
oldstrangers 6y ago
Openings easily start to matter at 1400-1500. A '1700' player can usually overcome not knowing the opening lines with better tactical ability against players under 1600 or so, but it's not guaranteed. It's a rather antiquated idea that openings are reserved only for players over a certain level, especially these days given the immense amount of tools and training available to new players. At the very least, all players need an understanding of opening fundamentals.
JohnL4 6y ago
Study joseki, lose two stones, eh?
blastro 6y ago
Nice! Validation for my training. I always play D4, and French if possible. As a hobbyist it give me options.
Oreb 6y ago
The King's Indian as a way to avoid theoretical preparation? Seriously? That's one of the most difficult and theory heavy openings in all of chess. I abandoned it because it was just too much work.
- mpol 6y ago
  At the higher level you are right. At my level, 1500 FIDE, it is considered an opening where you can develop slowly and quietly and it gives black a lot of options.
ArneVogel 6y ago
I disagree with you. I think learning openings will help you just as much as tactics even at a level way below 1700. I posted about this on my site [1] but the tl:dr is that opening principles are not always enough to get to a good position and learning openings the right way will help you develop at later stages. [1] https://listudy.org/en/blog/when-to-learn-chess-openings https://listudy.org/en/blog/when-to-learn-chess-openings
blub 6y ago
The only players I've seen in online blitz that didn't know openings were the 1200s (i.e. complete noob). Anyone rated over 1700 will know openings and middlegame and endgame and tactics and strategy. For blitz openings are essential and the difference between playing into a solid middlegame position in 10 seconds versus wasting one minute reaching an almost equal position.

eachro 6y ago

how does one study tactics?

kwertyops 6y ago
Tactics trainers: https://lichess.org/training/ https://lichess.org/training/ https://chesstempo.com/chess-tactics/ https://chesstempo.com/chess-tactics/ https://www.chess.com/puzzles https://www.chess.com/puzzles
- cactus2093 6y ago
  I'm curious if anyone has advice on how to interpret the ratings in the tactics trainers. Should they map roughly to your in-game rating? I'm pretty new to chess and still pretty bad (just under 1000 online, I make a lot of blunders and/or fall for opponents' tactics) but my rating is 1750 on the tactics trainer. I would imagine at some point the tactics are not the bottleneck and I should be working on something else instead (openings, endgames, or studying mid-game strategy?) but just wondering where that point is.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    You can make grandmaster studying only tactics and playing games. However most branch out long before then because there are other useful things to learn as you get good.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    > Should they map roughly to your in-game rating? For lichess at least, they don't. I'm a 2100 tactics and nowhere near that in actual rating (around 1500).
  - Nemerie 6y ago
    > Should they map roughly to your in-game rating? For a typical player, the chess.com puzzles rating is at least 500 points higher than the blitz rating on this site. I think tactics shouldn't be on focus only for very strong players, such as FMs or IMs, but you definitely don't need to choose one instead of another. It's fine to learn some tactics, then some strategy, then some endgames, isn't it?
  - drw 6y ago
    Among chess.com players who have played 10+ blitz games and 10+ puzzles, the average difference between their blitz rating and puzzle rating is 45 (blitz rating higher). The standard deviation of the difference is 374. Among players who have played 100+ games/100+ puzzles, the difference is -205: puzzle rating substantially higher, standard deviation 320. I'm not sure that it's ideal for ratings to be identical across the domains, but they should correlate to some degree.
lcuff 6y ago
As I mention in my own comment, Winning Chess by Fred Reinfeld and Irving Chernev. BEST book I've encountered by far of the dozens I've owned.

TameAntelope 6y ago

To add to this, the advice I've been given as a new/low rating chess player is to study endgames, if you must study something specific.

opportune 6y ago
Specifically for endgames you pretty much only need to know two patterns that are rather algorithmic: How to close a game where you’re up a rook or a queen (without stalemating). How to close a game where you’re up one pawn, if it’s not a forced stalemate. Two bishops is maybe something you want to learn. Theoretically knight + bishop as well. I play a lot of bullet chess and pretty much never see these though. The rest you can really only learn with practice and pattern recognition, like how to move your pawns and how to use a minor piece to secure a win. Well, you can try to learn it algorithmically but I wouldn’t recommend it. After learning those I would move onto tactics, because those are generally how you gain a material or positional advantage that doesn’t rely on a very trivial mistake like leaving a piece uncovered.
- sverona 6y ago
  There's an old story about a GM who wound up with bishop + knight versus king and realized he'd forgotten how to do it.
  - ll931110 6y ago
    Even Women's Chess Champion forgot it once: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFF5ibgB6eA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFF5ibgB6eA
- hengri 6y ago
  I have ~3000 blitz games in Lichess and I have never once had to play 2 bishops or bishop knight end games.
  - lcuff 6y ago
    I had to play B + N over the board early in my career, so it's definitely YMMV. It takes very little study: For B + N knowing that you mate in the corner that matches the color of the bishop, and that the knight needs to 'lead' in the effort to corral the king is all you really need to know. A half day of practice would cement it, I suspect.

iamcreasy 6y ago

> Below 1700 or so, openings are mostly a waste of time Here is a counter argument - below 1700, someone who knows the strength of an opening would outperform those who do not.

skulk 6y ago
The amount of opening preparation that's useful for a sub-1700 is minimal; diminishing returns due to not understanding middlegame positional ideas and shaky tactics hit really hard. When I was really into chess as a kid ~15 years ago, I spent a ton of time reading opening preparation but it was definitely time that I should have spent simply analyzing high level play in all stages of the game because my opponents either didn't know the theory (so while they technically deviated into "worse" lines, I had no hope of understanding why they are "worse" in the general case) or more rarely, they know how to avoid common theory. I think the most important opening prep for a novice is learning what lines to avoid at all costs. A lot of this, though, can be established with the basics: develop pieces, castle early, control center. Any time your opponent tempts you into violating any of these, think thrice.
YetAnotherNick 6y ago
The opening strength will only work when you know how to exploit something small in opponent's opening like a miss of tempo or wrong reply, which I think is above the skill of sub 1700. All the players above 1000 know basic principles like mobility of pieces and developing centre.
- iamcreasy 6y ago
  > The opening strength will only work when you know how to exploit something small in opponent's opening like a miss of tempo or wrong reply That's exactly what I am saying. If one person knows the strength of an opening and the other person don't then the person who knows the opening has a clear advantage. I agree with @skulk's argument though - the time is better spent on learning tactics and analyzing games over learning many opening given the player is sticking to some particular openings.

idealism 6y ago

I understand what you're saying and agree, although I may suggest that 1700 number come down a bit to maybe 1200. I'm around the 1000-1200 range (just picked it up again recently) and I'd say most of my peers on Chess.com around that range have definitely studied openings and present sneaky traps consistently in the first ~5-15 moves. Playing as black for me is the real driving force for me to study openings because my black game suffers the most from actual Theory openings around 1200. It's not crucial to winning to study the openings because you can often get by with just basic positional play and simple deduction, but a cursory understanding of the most popular openings is a big bang-for-your-buck way to improve in the low 1k range, IMHO.

birken 6y ago
It is a question of opportunity cost. If you are studying openings at the expense of doing tactical puzzles and sharpening your tactics, it is not the most efficient use of your time at the 1200 level. If you have a 1200 level tactics skill and 1500 level openings skill, you are going to be about a 1200 rated player. If you have a 1500 level skill in tactics, you are going to be about a 1500 rated player regardless of whether you've studied openings. Remember: Being able to calculate tactics better helps with openings! Just because your opponent has memorized something and you haven't doesn't mean you can't just calculate on the fly and avoid falling into obvious traps.
- hornd 6y ago
  Yeah I'm not so sure though. I'm 1900 rated tactics on lichess but a middling 1300 on normal games. Perhaps it might be due to playing blitz where I don't have lots of time to think.
bluGill 6y ago
But you only need to get a bit better to see through the common traps even the first time. The very first time I saw a scholars mate attempted against me I thought the moves were weird and made the obvious tactical response, only end up down a pawn. I was annoyed at being down a pawn afterwards and looked it up the opening, and only then did I discover the so called trap that I unknowingly didn't fall into because there are several good defenses that someone who knows even a little tactics will discover. Now at the 2500 level you get into sequences where you need to see a trap 15 non-forced moves in advance to not fall into it with seemingly natural moves. These can only be found in advance.

lacker 6y ago

I found openings to be very useful for players rated 1000-1500 when working with my high school chess team. The main benefit is that by understanding the typical moves of an opening, you make it a lot easier to avoid dropping a piece in the first 10 or 15 moves, or ending up massively behind in development because something tricked you. You avoid a decent amount of losses that way.

georgiecasey 6y ago

> Below 1700 or so On what rating system? USCF? Lichess? Chess.com?

SoSoRoCoCo 6y ago

The problem with tactics training is that there is always a "best answer" because they have been picked to have a best answer. What got me playing over 1700 (lichess rating grin) were two things: 1) deepening my mental checklist: 1) am i being attacked, 2) are there unprotected pieces, 3) am I about to be forked/pinned, 4) can I fork/pin my opponent ... and increase how far down you can BFS this without getting a headache. And avoiding endgames because those are just logical grinds. 2) playing with an analysis engine like stockfish. For me, memorizing defenses was not feasible because it is so broad, but I learned two openings (scotch and queens pawn) and at least know the defenses there because i know the openings. a little bit. I'll keep at it, memorizing defenses, but I'm old and probably won't cram more into my brain. EDIT: I used to go to a sunday-night chess meetup before COVID. 1700 on Lichess is nowhere near 1700 FIDE rating (of course, it was at a bar, so I'm usually a few pints in). I stopped going because I got tired of getting my ass kicked, there weren't enough mediocre players there.

EarthIsHome 6y ago
As an unrated player who plays occasionally, I've also found the mental checklist you've listed in 1) to be more helpful than memorizing chess openings. I've had a pretty high "win rate" when playing non-chess enthusiasts around my workplace or friend group. The issue I've encountered with memorizing openings is that it assumes both sides are playing perfect openings that complement each other. In reality, in my "lower rated" games, my opponent is likely to make suboptimal moves against the opening I memorized. There are ways to punish their moves, but I would've needed to memorized that. So, I have to come up with changes to the memorized opening on the spot. Going through the checklist allows me to play without memorizing movesets even though the moves I make are not the "best".
- SoSoRoCoCo 6y ago
  > There are ways to punish their moves, but I would've needed to memorized that. So, I have to come up with changes to the memorized opening on the spot. This is a good way to put it. I don't yet understand what makes an opening such a personality. Like, what the "attitude" of an opening is beyond "white tries to dominate the center with a fiancetto from the king-side and crush the opponents defenses through pressure on f7" (this is like how every Wikipedia entry on openings is written). Great, thanks! I think this is probably one of the things that separates enthusiasts from naturals, because while I get the basic point of the sentence, I don't see how that plays out for 10 moves. Or maybe I'm overthinking it. I keep waiting for it to "click" one day. But yes, seeing someone deviate from a memorized opening doesn't help me win either!

yodsanklai 6y ago

> Below 1700 or so, openings are mostly a waste of time Why? I'm not at that level but I'm sure it can't hurt. I'm not talking about spending hours studying openings, but simply being able to name things is helpful. That way you can pick new ideas along the way, memorize past mistakes more easily, communicate with other players. And it doesn't take much time to know the first few moves of the most common openings.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ummonk 6y ago
I think the problem happens that a lot of players start learning theoretical opening lines 10+ moves deep, when they really should be focused on just the first few moves and basic patterns / ideas from there along with traps.

pacomerh 6y ago

I'm not experienced with Chess, how do you know when you reach a certain level?. Is there an "official" way of knowing when you hit 1700?

Buttons840 6y ago
All the major chess websites and organizations use a similar Elo-like rating system where 1500 is about the 50th percentile. So, roughly speaking, 1700 probably means "when you're at the 70th percentile of active chess players". One example: https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz
- jmgao 6y ago
  Ratings on chess sites are massively inflated compared to USCF/FIDE ratings. 1700 on lichess is probably somewhere around 1200 USCF.
  - toolslive 6y ago
    I bet "The queen's gambit" Netflix series is causing inflation as well.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      I'd guess that's also why this is on the front page.
  - jeremysalwen 6y ago
    Actually looks like it's around 1500 USCF. https://chessgoals.com/rating-comparison/#Lichess_Rating_vs_FIDE_and_USCF https://chessgoals.com/rating-comparison/#Lichess_Rating_vs_...
  - maeln 6y ago
    It is not really inflated, they just use a different middle point. Lichess start you at 1500 and therefore, 1500 will be the median point of the distribution, Chess.com start you at 1200 so this will tend to be the median point. It is really obvious when you look at the stats for classical or rapid for example: https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/classical https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/classical

BurningFrog 6y ago

Agreed on the main point. Wasting time on memorizing openings instead of playing chess is probably the most common rookie mistake. Though I do well avoiding Sicilian by playing Alapin (e4 c5 c3).

ummonk 6y ago

You can get pretty decent payoffs tactically just from learning common opening traps as well as common plans of development / attack though. Particularly if you are weak tactically, you're going to walk into opening traps / blunders if you aren't aware of them.

Nemerie 6y ago

By the way, if the goal is to get better at chess and not just have some fun, a huge waste of time is playing blitz and not analyzing your games. There are so many people who played thousands of blitz games online with no improvement whatsoever.

aquateen 6y ago
Blitz and even bullet are great for tactics and pattern recognition, especially for < 2000 rated players.

oldstrangers 6y ago

Openings easily start to matter at 1400-1500. A '1700' player can usually overcome not knowing the opening lines with better tactical ability against players under 1600 or so, but it's not guaranteed. It's a rather antiquated idea that openings are reserved only for players over a certain level, especially these days given the immense amount of tools and training available to new players. At the very least, all players need an understanding of opening fundamentals.

JohnL4 6y ago

Study joseki, lose two stones, eh?

blastro 6y ago

Nice! Validation for my training. I always play D4, and French if possible. As a hobbyist it give me options.

Oreb 6y ago

The King's Indian as a way to avoid theoretical preparation? Seriously? That's one of the most difficult and theory heavy openings in all of chess. I abandoned it because it was just too much work.

mpol 6y ago
At the higher level you are right. At my level, 1500 FIDE, it is considered an opening where you can develop slowly and quietly and it gives black a lot of options.

ArneVogel 6y ago

I disagree with you. I think learning openings will help you just as much as tactics even at a level way below 1700. I posted about this on my site [1] but the tl:dr is that opening principles are not always enough to get to a good position and learning openings the right way will help you develop at later stages. [1] https://listudy.org/en/blog/when-to-learn-chess-openings https://listudy.org/en/blog/when-to-learn-chess-openings

blub 6y ago

The only players I've seen in online blitz that didn't know openings were the 1200s (i.e. complete noob). Anyone rated over 1700 will know openings and middlegame and endgame and tactics and strategy. For blitz openings are essential and the difference between playing into a solid middlegame position in 10 seconds versus wasting one minute reaching an almost equal position.