18 ms·

Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months

331 points by marcusbuffett 5y ago

dragon96 5y ago
One piece of advice I hear a lot is "review your games", but how do you actually do that without a stronger player? I'd sometimes use an engine and it'll point out moves I hadn't considered before, but without understanding the plan or positional ideas behind them, I often find this pretty opaque.
- jdkenney 5y ago
  Before internet chess it was very common to analyze games either at the tournament with a group, or a club later also with a group, both usually having some stronger players around. To do it yourself, the best explanation and framework I think is found in Yermolinsky’s “Road to Chess Improvement”. It’s very helpful in systemizing this and also has thorough explanations of his experience in analyzing his own games.
- nescioquid 5y ago
  I found that bit of advice similarly daunting. However, in trying to understand where things go wrong in a game, you might notice patterns emerging after you've analyzed several of your own games, which should give you something concrete to work on for improvement. At my level, that basically amounted to identifying blind spots I'm a prey to (at one point it was discovered attacks along a particular diagonal). A master, expert, or higher level class player will be concerned with entirely different things when they review their games.
  - webnrrd2k 5y ago
    One thing that helps me is to play a better chess engine, dialed down to close to my skill level, and play for a bit until I really get stuck. Then I take back a bunch of moves and figure out where I went wrong and why, and then play the game out until I get stuck again. Or I'll go back and try to see if I can find a better way to accomplish my goals. In general, creating a low-risk environment to learn, where I try to compare my original thinking to my later thinking has been key. I haven't played more than a handful of games since pre-covid times, so I'm back to being pretty clumsy, and just started "rewinding" games again. It seems to help a lot.
    - webnrrd2k 5y ago
      I forgot to add that simply writing down the moves when I play someone else makes a huge difference in my play. I'm much less likely to blunder, for one thing.
- adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
  My general strategy is to review with a computer, and if I don't understand the move the computer is suggesting, I follow the PV (principal variation) 3 or 4 moves deep. Generally that is enough to either tell me what I should have seen or "oh, the computer is thinking way above my level and I can probably ignore this"
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
  at least on lichess there is a "learn from your mistakes" button where you need to guess a move that doesn't lose points. Try not to just randomly make guesses but think hard when you don't see it.
mrtranscendence 5y ago
Anyone have any tips for someone who's a bit interested in chess but is a complete beginner? As in, I know how the pieces move but I couldn't win a game against a blindfolded dachshund puppy. My ELO would be negative (I'd be so improbably bad that it breaks mathematics). It's just not clear where to start.
- sb636 5y ago
  1) Learn how the pieces move 2) Play along with some beginner chess tutorials on sites like chess.com or Lichess 3) Watch this youtube series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao9iOeK_jvU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao9iOeK_jvU
- wingerlang 5y ago
  There must be at least a million "complete chess beginner" guides on Youtube alone.
- handrous 5y ago
  Drill tactics, like practicing pawns-only exercises and others that get you to use a small group of pieces in concert and without the distraction of a full game, to quickly get a feel for the kinds of moves & patterns that are good for them, and the kinds that are bad. Then, in actual games, apply that while focusing on advancing while keeping all your pieces guarded by at least one other, nearly all the time, while projecting lines of attack as far as possible (queen, bishops, rooks). Then focus on getting good at checkmating—it can be weirdly hard to pin down a king in the late game without practice, and getting better at spotting and exploiting early mate opportunities is one of the biggest level-ups you can get, early on. I wouldn't worry about memorizing openings and such until after you feel like you're hitting a wall with all that.
RobKohr 5y ago
Does anyone have a similar collection of guides on learning Go?
stardenburden 5y ago
Great writeup! I just jumped from 900 to 1200 in rapid within two months. I'll definitely try what he proposed to hopefully get the same rating gain.
someguy101010 5y ago
I gained 200 point when I started practicing blindfolded, also great visualization training! A good way to start this is have someone call out squares on the board and you respond with the color. Next start naming the diagonals. Then start moving around a knight, bishop, and then slowly build up your ability to hold a game in your head. Highly recommend! Thanks for this article. The woodpecker method seems like a nice opportunity for a slack bot.
- dwohnitmok 5y ago
  How long did it take you before you could play a whole game blindfolded?
  - someguy101010 5y ago
    I created a new account on lichess and started playing blindfold games right away. It depends on how long the games are and how complicated the position gets but anywhere from 13 to 50 moves I'll be okay. I won two games so far.
- zz865 5y ago
  Wow, I'd have enough trouble remembering which color I was!
  - dev_tty01 5y ago
    I played once on a board where the pieces were red and blue instead of black and white. I was completely messed up... Funny how the brain works. Or maybe it is just me?
    - retzkek 5y ago
      Some people believe that learning with a colored "rainbow chess" set improves retention and pattern recognition. http://home.hu.inter.net/~prochess/rainbow.htm http://home.hu.inter.net/~prochess/rainbow.htm Sort of like syntax highlighting I suppose.
- 5y ago
black_13 5y ago
I wish there was an alternative to the algebraic notation that was easier to remember
iKlsR 5y ago
Some great tips in there. Will definitely try some of these, I find I'm the best the moment I wake up, I will solve several puzzles quickly and grind a win streak but as the day goes along I get gradually worse, I actually started plotting it to find the best time to play. Any time after 9PM is out tho that doesn't deter me sometimes. I try to focus on classical then go lower and end my sessions with some blitz. What I hate the most about classical is I will be dominating the game and a silly blunder cost me half hour or more so I've taken the sit on my hands method and absolutely no premoving. I also found the best method to improve for me personally was not to shy away from playing higher rated players, it forces you to take the game very seriously as compared to someone with a ?. I used to sit in the lobby and scan for weak looking players and abort games to try and get white but now I will intentionally find someone 100 points higher than me and go black and see how I do. I also actively try to play moves in my head, hard as hell but it's a good exercise to wind down the day in bed. The daily arenas are a great help as well. The final trick I did to improve was "master" two openings for each color and learn the traps and tactics they come with. Good old london. Every variant I immediately dropped to my true rating and I really struggled cracking 1300 - 1400 but using the cues above I easily went from 1600 to 1700 in rapid just the other day. Catch me here https://lichess.org/@/llazlo https://lichess.org/@/llazlo
- edgyquant 5y ago
  I have found the ratings on lichess to be easier than on chess.com. For instance I sit around 12-1300 on lichess but have yet to crack 1000 on chess.com for the same game type (5 and 10 minute games)
jstx1 5y ago
At 1700-1800 I hit a point where I had to study more seriously in order to improve so I lost interest and pretty much stopped playing. Up to that point I could improve just by playing more (with the occasional youtube video but that was more for entertaintment).
- iKlsR 5y ago
  I'm nearing that point as well. My goal is to hit 2000 in a year and it's getting to the point now where I have a book in my cart and some printed pages of matches.
- LanceH 5y ago
  I peaked at 1800 USCF. People above that level could press home an opening advantage that I wasn't prepared for. Below that I could win enough games on a sharp, open game, even if I were technically a bit behind a pawn or fraction from the opening. It felt like up to 1800, everyone is just better at the same game. Above that level there starts to be more coherence to everyone's game. Above 2000 there seems to be a sophistication to the game that can appreciate when I see it, but can build it myself.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  Eh - I'm 1750 and I feel like this is just where people stop blundering obviously as often.
Mizza 5y ago
"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." - Paul Morphy. I started playing anonymous games on LiChess, and playing without ELO anxiety is way, way more fun. It's a game, this is all I need out of it.
- kthejoker2 5y ago
  My only problem with anonymous is you have no idea if the person on the other side is 1100 or 2200 ... I just use Zen mode in Lichess, I know the other person is about my level, but I don't care what the numbers area .....
  - Mizza 5y ago
    This is a good tip, I didn't know about that mode. Cheers.
  - mushishi 5y ago
    Yup, that's good to point out. Zen mode helped me enormously when tackling puzzles, because just seeing how I had fared earlier was making me think about my performance instead of puzzles. And later same thing on competitive games.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    I play like 100 ELO better with Zen mode. I think the effect is actually more that I make fewer careless errors playing worse players than that I am more intimidated by stronger players.
- mttabout 5y ago
  Huh. I didnt know you could do anonymous lichess games. I've always gotten very anxious playing chess as despite being very very bad, I've wanted to cling to every point of ELO i had.
- marcusbuffett 5y ago
  Yeah this is just as valid. I needed something to sink my teeth into, so I’ve been more interested in the improvement and learning side. The bonus is that games get more fun the better you get, until very recently I just found my own play frustrating, hanging pieces and falling for simple tactics.
billfruit 5y ago
Another apporach would be to focus on correspondence matches, where people make fewer blunders. May be some of the habits learned there will transfer over to shorter time controls.
kthejoker2 5y ago
Pedantry alert: As ELO ratings follow a logarithmic curve, "gaining 600 points" is a dimensionless metric. These are good tips for beginner to intermediate growth. The things that definitely help the most are: * Pattern recognition - the best courses for this level are things like "Common traps in <some random opening>", applied with Woodpecker method. Once you've memorized all the mistakes in the Scandi or London system, you can really crush a lot of people who play haphazardly. * Study your own games and games of people at or just above your level. Four simple methods: 1) during the game, write down (Lichess has a notes section on the left) 3 candidate moves for every move in the middle and endgame, why you're making a particular move, and what you think the opponent's response will be 2) use the "Learn from your mistakes" button after each game during analysis 3) check the most common moves in the opening that are different than yours, play through a couple of masters' games to see why those positions are preferred. And my last tip which helped me a lot just with the "meta" of playing chess ... * Use more time. Be okay with losing games because you run out of time thinking. Always, always, always try to play the best move, even if it means spending a lot of time.
- anandoza 5y ago
  Doesn't gaining 600 points mean that you are able to beat the "old you" (or more precisely, people who you used to be even with) with 99% probability? (Or perhaps more meaningfully, you can now beat someone who could beat someone who could beat someone who could beat someone who can beat the old you, all with 80% probability?) (I made up the exact numbers, but the idea is there.) That seems like a meaningful interpretation of "600 points" that applies to anyone -- though the difficulty of actually making this improvement definitely varies with your starting rating.
  - marcusbuffett 5y ago
    Yeah this is exactly right, as far as my understanding of elo goes.
  - lupire 5y ago
    The friendly term for chess newbie is "rapidly improving player". The first 600 points are far far easier than the next 600.
sova 5y ago
Surprised you didn't mention "analyzing games I played to find viable alternatives or understand opponent blunders." The greatest improvements to my score came from reviewing every game and using the "Computer Analysis" feature on Lichess to see other, stronger moves. This helped a lot in breaking out of old patterns and not making the same mistakes twice. There is a famous series of chess textbooks they use to teach kids in Russia, and two of the important "commandments of chess" if you will, are: be able to visualize the board (seems crazy to me, still) and review/learn from your games.
Moodles 5y ago
I think by far the biggest improvement newbies can make is just not hanging pieces and blundering, honestly. Literally the majority of games at <1600 lichess level will be decided by mistakes. But apart from that, it's openings and tactics. I largely agree with the blog post. I used to be quite good as a kid, winning championships and whatnot, and I'm actually glad my grandfather didn't teach me opening theory so much, so I could be trained to think more than memorize. Sadly at the highest level, you do just have to memorize the best opening lines which makes it a lot less fun so I'm not too bothered about not being the best I could be. I think games like Fischer random go some way to addressing this and it's a shame they're not more popular. Some really entertaining Chess youtube channels I like are: GothamChess: https://www.youtube.com/c/gothamchess/about https://www.youtube.com/c/gothamchess/about I think the number 1 on YouTube these days. He explains games in a high level, really entertaining way. He also has other playlists like guess the elo, etc. He's a really entertaining guy. https://www.youtube.com/c/agadmator https://www.youtube.com/c/agadmator I think he number 2 and used to be number 1 most subscribed until very recently. He explains lines in more detail than Gotham, and has quite a few funny meme-able phrases like "captures, captures, captures", "hello everyone!", "bishop pair fully operational", etc. I enjoy his playlists about e.g. the Morphy Saga, AlphaZero, very much. ChessBrah: Kind of broey funny with house music, challenges and whatnot, and actually very high quality chess from GMs too https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXxdkt1d8Uu08NAQP2IUTw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXxdkt1d8Uu08NAQP2IUTw There's some others I don't watch so much but which are also liked by many too, like the Botez sisters, GM Hikaru, Eric Rosen, etc. It's quite a nice community (barring the usual drama all such communities have).
- FPGAhacker 5y ago
  So I don’t mean this is to be snarky , but aren’t all chess games decided by mistakes?
  - Moodles 5y ago
    It is thought that if chess was played perfectly then it is probably a draw, but nobody knows. So if by "mistake" you mean "not exactly the best move to force a draw from move 1 to the final move", then yes. But in chess "mistake" usually means "large inaccuracy" rather than "not the best move". I just mean games at a higher elo are usually decided by pressing a smaller advantage, rather than someone hanging a queen by mistake, so basically just avoiding massive blunders gets the most elo benefit, rather than worrying too much about tactics or opening theory.
toolslive 5y ago
going from 2100 to >2250 on lichess in a year, I can confirm woodpeckering is the way to go for me.
- marcusbuffett 5y ago
  That’s solid improvement, good to know. I may pick back up with the woodpeckering at some point.
macrael 5y ago
I’ve been watching this YouTube “speed run” by a GM who is a great teacher and have gone from 1000 to 1300 so far. He does a great job explaining some basic theory and giving advice for newcomers. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytkf3qZTj74 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytkf3qZTj74
- seanwessmith 5y ago
  I was thinking of developing a website that helps you analyze your games vs naroditsky's games. let me know if you have any ideas on what would be useful.
  - bennyg 5y ago
    I would love that - been thinking about how to automate Youtube's generated closed captions from positions I'm in based on positions he's in. I typically play Caro-Kann and Danish Gambit so it seems likely I probably see common positions in the first half-dozen moves or so.
Townsendin 5y ago
Not every meaningless achievement needs a retrospective blog post. The article starts out: "For some background: I played chess briefly with my friends in high school," No one knows who you are or cares. What kind of person has the time to read that?
- marcusbuffett 5y ago
  Not every meaningless achievement with an unnecessary retrospective blog post needs a derisive comment about its existence, and yet here we are. Some people are interested in the content, you’re obviously not, just ignore it.
  - Townsendin 5y ago
    Take your own advice and ignore my comment then, idiot.
- jimmyvalmer 5y ago
  I am here for your grievance about pointless backstory, but I think OP got to the point soon enough.
greenail 5y ago
I think the author is underappreciating end game. Understanding how drive winning pawn promotions informs much of the other strategy. This sort of thing informs when to make a trade or a sacrifice. If you don't understand it you aren't likely making good trades. The other simple idea is control of the center and evaluating your play to ask yourself how much control did you have?
- gpm 5y ago
  I'm 1878 on lichess rapid, so slightly better than the author. At this level (at least with my play style) the end game rarely decides games, usually one side or the other will gain a decisive advantage earlier than that. It's obvious to me that there will become a point where I need to start really studying endgames if I want to improve forever, but it's not yet. Moreover my opponents also don't understand engames well, and engines don't play them in a human fashion, so it isn't easy to get useful practice in them.
  - greenail 5y ago
    do you play speed, blitz, longer? If you want to play expert or master level I believe you should study end game but the format you play may have some impact on how important you think endgame is. Blunders become much rarer as you play higher level players and early advantage may come down to a few 1/2 tempo win/loss moves.
    - gpm 5y ago
      Rapid (as specified in the rating), specifically 10+5.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
eterm 5y ago
I'm surprised how smooth the curve is, the author never has streaks where he loses a few hundred rating points. In fact I'm struggling to see he ever dips more than 50. I've been on a similar journey over the past year, where I'm now around 1500 rapid on chess.com but in that time I've had streaks where I've been down 250 rating from my peak. I don't know if I tilt super hard or if the author is remarkably resilient to tilt. It might also be a difference in how the different sites do match-making or adjust ratings and k-values. I'd echo the benefit in learning some basic opening theory. It's not worth rote learning theory but it is worth having a consistent approach to games so you learn from the same patterns and can avoid opening traps. If you play the same opening moves then over time you build up a memory of moves that you like in those positions and which will get deeper as you get more experience.
- Etheryte 5y ago
  Not getting into a downward spiral from tilt is fairly straightforward for me, when you lose two or three games in a row simply don't play more that day. In general, I play at most a few games a day and it helps a lot. If you want to just get practice with a specific opening or play out your frustration there's always computer games, too. When I practice with the computer I usually set the difficulty considerably higher than my own level, it helps me find weaknesses in my own play that I would usually get away with at my own rating level. I also don't mind losing to the computer. For some reason there's no emotion in losing to a computer whereas there is in losing to another human player.
- marcusbuffett 5y ago
  I think part of this is the slow time control, it's hard to tilt for more than a few games on rapid, since games can last up to 20 minutes. The other part is I think I was chronically under-rated, because of my ratio of studying to playing games.
ThomasCM 5y ago
Shameless plug: In case you want to track your chess progress and see more statistics on your openings (win rates, etc.), I'm developing a website where you can link your accounts to view stats for all of your games. It's free and currently in Beta: https://www.chessmonitor.com/ https://www.chessmonitor.com/ Here is an example for the current world champion: https://www.chessmonitor.com/u/kcc58R9eeGY09ey5Rmoj https://www.chessmonitor.com/u/kcc58R9eeGY09ey5Rmoj
- kthejoker2 5y ago
  I use ChessMonitor all the time, it's a great site, thanks so much!
- aoeusnth1 5y ago
  I'm getting major dotabuff vibes from the UI. I assume you drew inspiration from them?
  - ThomasCM 5y ago
    Yes, I've played Dota myself and always loved dotabuff. That's where some of the inspiration came from.
register 5y ago
600 points in 6 months is an impressive achievement.
d23 5y ago
I wish the author had discussed a bit about what worked and didn't at a higher level. I don't have the time to get into chess, but I'm quite curious about how I could translate his learning into other games and domains. One that was mentioned as a breakthrough was in learning to think like the opponent. That's quite interesting. I'm not sure what I can takeaway from the puzzle stuff without knowing more about chess. It seemed like some of the puzzles worked better than others, for whatever reason. I'd definitely like to know more.
- marcusbuffett 5y ago
  I think from a higher level there are some interesting things, you're right that I should have gone into it a bit. One of those is that raising my ceiling of play, like challenging myself with super tough puzzles, was actually totally unproductive. Raising the floor of my play, however, was hugely beneficial. I imagine this generalizes somewhat to other pursuits. The other takeaway I've had is how different procedural learning is from declarative learning. Among one of the weird features of it is I don't actually know how much something is helping until I get to the board and play some games afterward. There were exercises I thought were helping a lot in the moment, but had no effect on my play, and vice versa. Also sometimes people that are good at something are the worst to ask for help. For example, if you ask "how can I stop blundering?" (one of the most common questions on forums), common advice (from good players), is to have a mental checklist before making a move: threats, captures, skewers, pins, etc. But nobody actually plays like this, running through some checklist before every move. You just slowly rewire your brain over 100s/1000s of games and puzzles. If my queen and king are lined up now, and there's a rook on the board, that's as obvious as a flashing light on the board saying "hey watch out for pins!", but there's no easy answer to tell a beginner that will get him to that state, so people try to convert that feeling they get into a manual approach, and it just doesn't work. I guess this is like the key feature of procedural learning, that it's resistant to verbal explanation, but that doesn't stop people from trying, so you just need to learn to take it with a huge grain of salt.
  - d23 5y ago
    Could you describe "raising the floor of your play" a bit more? I'm not fully sure what you mean by that.
xyzelement 5y ago
A bit of an aside, I love chess because it forces you to think several moves ahead including game-theorizing what your opponent will do. I want to teach it to my kid for this reason. I never got into timed chess but I can see it be valuable because it forces you to trade off between over-thinking and running out of time and under-thinking and making bad moves. This is also a real life skill. But I know that my personal game will always stay amateur because once you're in the timed game space, you can't get too far without memorizing opening and to me that crosses the line from "fun and overall developmental" to "work."
- mrbungie 5y ago
  Not to tell you how to raise your children, but please only teach your kid if you see he likes it. Disclaimer: I was a kid that lived my mother's dreams/hopes for a time and now I dread every second of that period.
  - xyzelement 5y ago
    I don't need my kid to live my dreams but it's my job to teach him life skills and chess is a good way for teaching what I just talked about.
- retzkek 5y ago
  Maybe you'd like 960 aka Fischer Random Chess, with 960 starting positions there's no opening theory to memorize, just principles and tactics from move one. Not as popular as regular chess but usually no problem finding a game.
raptorraver 5y ago
Interesting article. Wish I had time to try even some of those. I'm nowadays quite casual but still serious player. Have been grinding in Lichess since 2019 but played consistently since highschool (so 15 years now!). I'm bit over 1800 in rapid and around 1700 in blitz. I don't care that much about my rating but it sure feels nice to break my records every now and then. I think my biggest problem is that my work (coding) exhausts my thinking energy and I'm quite tired most of times I play so I make stupid blunders which makes me lose many many winning positions. I don't know what would help here? Lately I've just played mostly 3 minute games. It's not so serious to lose a knight or bishop there because the time factor is there always. I'm dreaming of attending the local chess club once my kids are older but until them, see you on Lichess! Boy I love chess :)
huachimingo 5y ago
Unpopular opinion: Chess needs an update with more moves or randomized pieces (position, etc).
- bikeshaving 5y ago
  Look up Chess960! It’s a lot of fun.
- joshuakarl 5y ago
  Chess already has many flavors, but the main one lasted for centuries and its longevity is partly the reason of its success. The more it last, the more it's played, the more it's a universal game. But if you create a new fork, share it and i will try!
- WJW 5y ago
  This is not actually an unpopular opinion but one that many players (including former world champions like Gary Kasparov) have voiced as well.
GoodJokes 5y ago
chess seems like the new dating. Everyone is measuring it, but really in my recent experience, y'all are nerding this game to death. Not fun anymore.
sabujp 5y ago
you can play "sound" chess using general rules and get to about master level on lichess : * trade a piece (bishop for knight and vice versa) when it's being less effective than the opponent's piece * block opponents bishops * block opponents pawns * don't give opponent's knights a perch (supported by a pawn) on your side of the board, especially near the middle * try to promote edge pawns to the middle or clear the path out of the way of your pawns ..there are many other rules, but you can apply these much more quickly (esp in speed chess) thinking "statistically" to improve your position. The end game is where it gets hard for humans and you actually have to think, especially if there are knights still jumping around, rooks and bishops are easier to visualize and block.
- Bootvis 5y ago
  What is master level to you?
  - sabujp 5y ago
    being able to defeat latest stockfish level 6 and drawing against level 7 or 8
    - Bootvis 5y ago
      I think your claim is wildly optimistic. According to Google, Level 6 is about 1900. That requires more than some simple rule following for most chess players. I don’t have any statistics handy but the folks that cross 1900 are in the minority.
- lupire 5y ago
  It takes longer to enumerate all the chess maxims than you have to pay a whole speed chess game.
neilk 5y ago
I'm quite good at puzzles now, but it doesn't seem to affect my ranking in actual play. I might be asking for the impossible here, but is there a way to get better without turning this into a part-time job, where I have to read a lot of books, study and memorize openings, and so on?
- rantanplan 5y ago
  Search for "Ben Finegold" on YouTube. He has many lectures for beginners and he's one of the funniest GMs. That makes it less boring :)
a13n 5y ago
Note that going from 1200 ELO to 1800 ELO is going from 18th percentile to 74th percentile. Pretty much any form of study over 6 months will get you that progress, because you'll have spent more time on chess than ~74% of players. Going from 1800 ELO to 2400 ELO (74th percentile to 99th percentile) in 6 months would be a lot more interesting, because clearly your study habits are helping you progress faster than others. A lot of being better than X% of people at something is just about spending more time doing it than X% of participants... Most professional video game players have 5,000 to 10,000 hours of experience in their game. Source: https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/rapid https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/rapid
- marcusbuffett 5y ago
  I don’t have hard data to back this up, but I do think that 1200 to 1800 on lichess in six months is very solid improvement, there’s a ton of accounts that have 10x+ my playtime and are rated below. It doesn’t seem to be just a time invested thing.
- cottager2 5y ago
  I have friends that have played on Lichess for years and never reached above 1400. How you study is much more important than how much you study. Analyzing different modes of study, as done in this blog post, is quite useful.
- hcnews 5y ago
  Yeah I got to 1650 rapid chess.com within 6 months (starting from basic knowledge of chess pieces moving). I was kinda told that 1800 rapid chess.com within a year of playing is kind of expected. For people wondering, lichess inflates rating usually at lower level (since it starts at 1500 vs 1200 chess.com). Usually lichess ratings are inflated by 200-300 compared to chess.com which is a bit closer to FIDE ratings.
everyone 5y ago
I keep seeing "after gaining 600 pounds in 6 months"
nbulka 5y ago
I read this as "Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 pounds in 6 months." Thought it was the only activity they had left!
ex3xu 5y ago
I'd say that chess fundamentals is three things: Endgames, tactics, and positional strategy. OP's strategy of studying openings and tactics is a very fun and accessible improvement path for intelligent new players, but it is very fragile, as you become vulnerable the second the opponent gets you out of your opening theory. Studying endgames and positional motifs gives you important decision-making tools in unfamiliar positions. Hiring a chess coach is probably the easiest way to systematically improve in these areas, if you're not a robot immune to the tedium of working through Dvoretsky's endgame manual and Silman's Reassess your Chess. After getting a handle on the fundamentals, the next step is just the accumulation of ideas. GMs use this word all the time in lectures and their post-mortem interviews. Some are common and obvious -- pressuring f2/f7, or yoloing a pawn storm in oppositely castled positions, or outposting an "octopus knight" on the sixth rank, for example. Other ideas require so much genius to see they become famous -- Fischer's Nh4!! at age 13, or Short's king walk, or Shirov's bishop sacrifice, for example. Accumulating ideas is why studying openings can be helpful in the beginning -- you will learn common plans as well as the most dangerous ideas and traps by brute force just by looking at enough theory. But rather than this inefficient approach -- since you'll never remember every single possible move -- I would recommend studying books and lectures that cover common ideas in the setups you prefer. Specifically, work through the pawn structures you like from GM Mauricio Flores Rios's Chess Structures book, and then study grandmasters who match your style or otherwise inspires you in some way -- e.g. Fischer/Tal for tactical wizards, Karpov/Kramnik for positional specialists, Carlsen/Capablanca for endgame grinders, or Rapport/Jobava/Larsen if you are a weirdo -- and watch Youtube videos analyzing their games and/or buy a book with GM commentary of their best hits.
jlturner 5y ago
I would meet with a chess tutor every week for 6 months some years ago. The biggest thing that contributed to my games getting better (which the author didn’t mention as a method they tried) was analyzing my own game. Thinking back on the moves you made, why you made them (ie gaining material, tempo, position), opportunities missed, and blunders made. It did help to have a coach go over my games with me, helps identify what to work on, what to think about when playing and focus on. The biggest thing I wasn’t thinking about is how the moves I made moved the board into the position I wanted to checkmate in — I was too worried about losing the pieces themselves.
sydthrowaway 5y ago
Does learning chess improve other facets of cognition?
- marcusbuffett 5y ago
  Research on this seems to mostly have settled on “no, maybe some accelerated development for kids”. I just know it’s better for my brain to be thinking about chess for 2 hours than to be on Reddit for 2 hours, which is what I was spending the time on before.
  - sydthrowaway 5y ago
    what if you were in r/compsci or r/algorithms
WalterBright 5y ago
I failed at chess because instead of thinking about my next move I'd be designing a program to pick the next move for me.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I bought a copy of "Chess Skill in Man and Machine" https://www.amazon.com/Chess-machine-monographs-computer-science/dp/0387079572 https://www.amazon.com/Chess-machine-monographs-computer-sci... back in the 70's, and it's descriptions of how a game could be mapped into a program was very illuminating to me. I still have a function in the DMD D compiler named evalu8() as tribute to that book. Sadly, I lost my copy somewhere. I just ordered another from Amazon, I'm curious as to how it appears 4+ decades later.
throwaway37284 5y ago
i just got interested in chess and have no idea what i'm doing (1100) or how to improve. i got a lot out of this write up, much appreciated.
glouwbug 5y ago
When I play online chess I load up a grandmaster AI and input my opponents moves
- justusw 5y ago
  Isn’t that called cheating?
noisy_boy 5y ago
I have a genuine question. My long time peeve has been that I suck at Chess and every time I play against anyone/anything, I just lose. It demoralizes me and then after sometime I try again, only to have the experience repeat. I have had decent grades, I code for a living and have been told that the quality of my work isn't bad so I guess I'll risk coming across as arrogant when I think that I'm not absolutely dumb. So the question is, is there anyone who has had the same experience? If so, what did you do to improve? Mind you, I'm not asking folks who put in moderate effort and got results. I'm talking to the ones that keep failing and failing spectacularly but eventually improved. Is it even possible to have anyone like that? If so, what did you do? Is it about just keeping at it?
- caterama 5y ago
  This happened to me. Just get online, play games, and do puzzles and you will improve. One of the tough things is getting started. When you sign up on lichess.org, you start out with 1500 rating which is literally ~50th percentile [1]. You're probably not actually 50th percentile so you're going to loose literally all of your first 10-20 games until you stabilize at a lower rating (it was ~850 for me). It's a little rough, but you just need to get through it. Once your ranking stabilizes, you'll be matched against opponents who you have a chance to win against. From there you'll see improvement over time. Improvement is slow, though. 600 points in 6 months is notably _fast_. I've managed ~800 improvement 3 years. [1] https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz
- silisili 5y ago
  I'll reply, but probably not how you want. I've always been a smart guy at a lot of things, especially math, who never had to try that hard in school. I went to exactly one chess club meeting in high school, as I knew how to play and wanted to learn more. I was defeated in a few moves by a kid who not only laughed at me, but told his friends about whatever rush I just fell for and they all had a good laugh. As you may imagine, I never went to another meeting. Years later I came across Yahoo Chess, and thought I'd give that a try. I was beat by someone from Syria who used his victory to explain to me why Americans are so stupid and cocky. I learned two things about chess - 1) It's not about being gifted or smart, it takes a lot of work and practice. 2) The community can be toxic as hell, so have thick skin. Or don't, I don't even play anymore. Two games were enough to teach me I don't want anything to do with that club.
elilev 5y ago
Visualization is best learned via Chess Vision for iOS https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chess-vision/id1547932501 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chess-vision/id1547932501
tomcooks 5y ago
Related shameless self plug: I went from 600 to ~1100 thanks to my own training method, which I'm transforming into an online service aimed at chess amateurs that want to improve. It's currently being developed, who wants to check out the free beta can sign up here: https://yousuckatchess.com https://yousuckatchess.com
ctrlp 5y ago
lichess.org has really been a game-changer (sorry) for my chess playing. I know some people love chess.com but I think lichess has such a great interface and there is always a large number of players online for games.
zzq 5y ago
What's the equivalent of Puzzle Storm -- rapid drills to improve pattern recognition -- in other domains, e.g. coding?

331 points by marcusbuffett 5y ago

One piece of advice I hear a lot is "review your games", but how do you actually do that without a stronger player? I'd sometimes use an engine and it'll point out moves I hadn't considered before, but without understanding the plan or positional ideas behind them, I often find this pretty opaque.

jdkenney 5y ago
Before internet chess it was very common to analyze games either at the tournament with a group, or a club later also with a group, both usually having some stronger players around. To do it yourself, the best explanation and framework I think is found in Yermolinsky’s “Road to Chess Improvement”. It’s very helpful in systemizing this and also has thorough explanations of his experience in analyzing his own games.
nescioquid 5y ago
I found that bit of advice similarly daunting. However, in trying to understand where things go wrong in a game, you might notice patterns emerging after you've analyzed several of your own games, which should give you something concrete to work on for improvement. At my level, that basically amounted to identifying blind spots I'm a prey to (at one point it was discovered attacks along a particular diagonal). A master, expert, or higher level class player will be concerned with entirely different things when they review their games.
- webnrrd2k 5y ago
  One thing that helps me is to play a better chess engine, dialed down to close to my skill level, and play for a bit until I really get stuck. Then I take back a bunch of moves and figure out where I went wrong and why, and then play the game out until I get stuck again. Or I'll go back and try to see if I can find a better way to accomplish my goals. In general, creating a low-risk environment to learn, where I try to compare my original thinking to my later thinking has been key. I haven't played more than a handful of games since pre-covid times, so I'm back to being pretty clumsy, and just started "rewinding" games again. It seems to help a lot.
  - webnrrd2k 5y ago
    I forgot to add that simply writing down the moves when I play someone else makes a huge difference in my play. I'm much less likely to blunder, for one thing.
adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
My general strategy is to review with a computer, and if I don't understand the move the computer is suggesting, I follow the PV (principal variation) 3 or 4 moves deep. Generally that is enough to either tell me what I should have seen or "oh, the computer is thinking way above my level and I can probably ignore this"
X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
at least on lichess there is a "learn from your mistakes" button where you need to guess a move that doesn't lose points. Try not to just randomly make guesses but think hard when you don't see it.

mrtranscendence 5y ago

Anyone have any tips for someone who's a bit interested in chess but is a complete beginner? As in, I know how the pieces move but I couldn't win a game against a blindfolded dachshund puppy. My ELO would be negative (I'd be so improbably bad that it breaks mathematics). It's just not clear where to start.

sb636 5y ago
1) Learn how the pieces move 2) Play along with some beginner chess tutorials on sites like chess.com or Lichess 3) Watch this youtube series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao9iOeK_jvU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao9iOeK_jvU
wingerlang 5y ago
There must be at least a million "complete chess beginner" guides on Youtube alone.
handrous 5y ago
Drill tactics, like practicing pawns-only exercises and others that get you to use a small group of pieces in concert and without the distraction of a full game, to quickly get a feel for the kinds of moves & patterns that are good for them, and the kinds that are bad. Then, in actual games, apply that while focusing on advancing while keeping all your pieces guarded by at least one other, nearly all the time, while projecting lines of attack as far as possible (queen, bishops, rooks). Then focus on getting good at checkmating—it can be weirdly hard to pin down a king in the late game without practice, and getting better at spotting and exploiting early mate opportunities is one of the biggest level-ups you can get, early on. I wouldn't worry about memorizing openings and such until after you feel like you're hitting a wall with all that.

RobKohr 5y ago

Does anyone have a similar collection of guides on learning Go?

stardenburden 5y ago

Great writeup! I just jumped from 900 to 1200 in rapid within two months. I'll definitely try what he proposed to hopefully get the same rating gain.

someguy101010 5y ago

I gained 200 point when I started practicing blindfolded, also great visualization training! A good way to start this is have someone call out squares on the board and you respond with the color. Next start naming the diagonals. Then start moving around a knight, bishop, and then slowly build up your ability to hold a game in your head. Highly recommend! Thanks for this article. The woodpecker method seems like a nice opportunity for a slack bot.

dwohnitmok 5y ago
How long did it take you before you could play a whole game blindfolded?
- someguy101010 5y ago
  I created a new account on lichess and started playing blindfold games right away. It depends on how long the games are and how complicated the position gets but anywhere from 13 to 50 moves I'll be okay. I won two games so far.
zz865 5y ago
Wow, I'd have enough trouble remembering which color I was!
- dev_tty01 5y ago
  I played once on a board where the pieces were red and blue instead of black and white. I was completely messed up... Funny how the brain works. Or maybe it is just me?
  - retzkek 5y ago
    Some people believe that learning with a colored "rainbow chess" set improves retention and pattern recognition. http://home.hu.inter.net/~prochess/rainbow.htm http://home.hu.inter.net/~prochess/rainbow.htm Sort of like syntax highlighting I suppose.
5y ago

black_13 5y ago

I wish there was an alternative to the algebraic notation that was easier to remember

iKlsR 5y ago

Some great tips in there. Will definitely try some of these, I find I'm the best the moment I wake up, I will solve several puzzles quickly and grind a win streak but as the day goes along I get gradually worse, I actually started plotting it to find the best time to play. Any time after 9PM is out tho that doesn't deter me sometimes. I try to focus on classical then go lower and end my sessions with some blitz. What I hate the most about classical is I will be dominating the game and a silly blunder cost me half hour or more so I've taken the sit on my hands method and absolutely no premoving. I also found the best method to improve for me personally was not to shy away from playing higher rated players, it forces you to take the game very seriously as compared to someone with a ?. I used to sit in the lobby and scan for weak looking players and abort games to try and get white but now I will intentionally find someone 100 points higher than me and go black and see how I do. I also actively try to play moves in my head, hard as hell but it's a good exercise to wind down the day in bed. The daily arenas are a great help as well. The final trick I did to improve was "master" two openings for each color and learn the traps and tactics they come with. Good old london. Every variant I immediately dropped to my true rating and I really struggled cracking 1300 - 1400 but using the cues above I easily went from 1600 to 1700 in rapid just the other day. Catch me here https://lichess.org/@/llazlo https://lichess.org/@/llazlo

edgyquant 5y ago
I have found the ratings on lichess to be easier than on chess.com. For instance I sit around 12-1300 on lichess but have yet to crack 1000 on chess.com for the same game type (5 and 10 minute games)

jstx1 5y ago

At 1700-1800 I hit a point where I had to study more seriously in order to improve so I lost interest and pretty much stopped playing. Up to that point I could improve just by playing more (with the occasional youtube video but that was more for entertaintment).

iKlsR 5y ago
I'm nearing that point as well. My goal is to hit 2000 in a year and it's getting to the point now where I have a book in my cart and some printed pages of matches.
LanceH 5y ago
I peaked at 1800 USCF. People above that level could press home an opening advantage that I wasn't prepared for. Below that I could win enough games on a sharp, open game, even if I were technically a bit behind a pawn or fraction from the opening. It felt like up to 1800, everyone is just better at the same game. Above that level there starts to be more coherence to everyone's game. Above 2000 there seems to be a sophistication to the game that can appreciate when I see it, but can build it myself.
whimsicalism 5y ago
Eh - I'm 1750 and I feel like this is just where people stop blundering obviously as often.

Mizza 5y ago

"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." - Paul Morphy. I started playing anonymous games on LiChess, and playing without ELO anxiety is way, way more fun. It's a game, this is all I need out of it.

kthejoker2 5y ago
My only problem with anonymous is you have no idea if the person on the other side is 1100 or 2200 ... I just use Zen mode in Lichess, I know the other person is about my level, but I don't care what the numbers area .....
- Mizza 5y ago
  This is a good tip, I didn't know about that mode. Cheers.
- mushishi 5y ago
  Yup, that's good to point out. Zen mode helped me enormously when tackling puzzles, because just seeing how I had fared earlier was making me think about my performance instead of puzzles. And later same thing on competitive games.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  I play like 100 ELO better with Zen mode. I think the effect is actually more that I make fewer careless errors playing worse players than that I am more intimidated by stronger players.
mttabout 5y ago
Huh. I didnt know you could do anonymous lichess games. I've always gotten very anxious playing chess as despite being very very bad, I've wanted to cling to every point of ELO i had.
marcusbuffett 5y ago
Yeah this is just as valid. I needed something to sink my teeth into, so I’ve been more interested in the improvement and learning side. The bonus is that games get more fun the better you get, until very recently I just found my own play frustrating, hanging pieces and falling for simple tactics.

billfruit 5y ago

Another apporach would be to focus on correspondence matches, where people make fewer blunders. May be some of the habits learned there will transfer over to shorter time controls.

kthejoker2 5y ago

Pedantry alert: As ELO ratings follow a logarithmic curve, "gaining 600 points" is a dimensionless metric. These are good tips for beginner to intermediate growth. The things that definitely help the most are: * Pattern recognition - the best courses for this level are things like "Common traps in <some random opening>", applied with Woodpecker method. Once you've memorized all the mistakes in the Scandi or London system, you can really crush a lot of people who play haphazardly. * Study your own games and games of people at or just above your level. Four simple methods: 1) during the game, write down (Lichess has a notes section on the left) 3 candidate moves for every move in the middle and endgame, why you're making a particular move, and what you think the opponent's response will be 2) use the "Learn from your mistakes" button after each game during analysis 3) check the most common moves in the opening that are different than yours, play through a couple of masters' games to see why those positions are preferred. And my last tip which helped me a lot just with the "meta" of playing chess ... * Use more time. Be okay with losing games because you run out of time thinking. Always, always, always try to play the best move, even if it means spending a lot of time.

anandoza 5y ago
Doesn't gaining 600 points mean that you are able to beat the "old you" (or more precisely, people who you used to be even with) with 99% probability? (Or perhaps more meaningfully, you can now beat someone who could beat someone who could beat someone who could beat someone who can beat the old you, all with 80% probability?) (I made up the exact numbers, but the idea is there.) That seems like a meaningful interpretation of "600 points" that applies to anyone -- though the difficulty of actually making this improvement definitely varies with your starting rating.
- marcusbuffett 5y ago
  Yeah this is exactly right, as far as my understanding of elo goes.
- lupire 5y ago
  The friendly term for chess newbie is "rapidly improving player". The first 600 points are far far easier than the next 600.

sova 5y ago

Surprised you didn't mention "analyzing games I played to find viable alternatives or understand opponent blunders." The greatest improvements to my score came from reviewing every game and using the "Computer Analysis" feature on Lichess to see other, stronger moves. This helped a lot in breaking out of old patterns and not making the same mistakes twice. There is a famous series of chess textbooks they use to teach kids in Russia, and two of the important "commandments of chess" if you will, are: be able to visualize the board (seems crazy to me, still) and review/learn from your games.

Moodles 5y ago

I think by far the biggest improvement newbies can make is just not hanging pieces and blundering, honestly. Literally the majority of games at <1600 lichess level will be decided by mistakes. But apart from that, it's openings and tactics. I largely agree with the blog post. I used to be quite good as a kid, winning championships and whatnot, and I'm actually glad my grandfather didn't teach me opening theory so much, so I could be trained to think more than memorize. Sadly at the highest level, you do just have to memorize the best opening lines which makes it a lot less fun so I'm not too bothered about not being the best I could be. I think games like Fischer random go some way to addressing this and it's a shame they're not more popular. Some really entertaining Chess youtube channels I like are: GothamChess: https://www.youtube.com/c/gothamchess/about https://www.youtube.com/c/gothamchess/about I think the number 1 on YouTube these days. He explains games in a high level, really entertaining way. He also has other playlists like guess the elo, etc. He's a really entertaining guy. https://www.youtube.com/c/agadmator https://www.youtube.com/c/agadmator I think he number 2 and used to be number 1 most subscribed until very recently. He explains lines in more detail than Gotham, and has quite a few funny meme-able phrases like "captures, captures, captures", "hello everyone!", "bishop pair fully operational", etc. I enjoy his playlists about e.g. the Morphy Saga, AlphaZero, very much. ChessBrah: Kind of broey funny with house music, challenges and whatnot, and actually very high quality chess from GMs too https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXxdkt1d8Uu08NAQP2IUTw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXxdkt1d8Uu08NAQP2IUTw There's some others I don't watch so much but which are also liked by many too, like the Botez sisters, GM Hikaru, Eric Rosen, etc. It's quite a nice community (barring the usual drama all such communities have).

FPGAhacker 5y ago
So I don’t mean this is to be snarky , but aren’t all chess games decided by mistakes?
- Moodles 5y ago
  It is thought that if chess was played perfectly then it is probably a draw, but nobody knows. So if by "mistake" you mean "not exactly the best move to force a draw from move 1 to the final move", then yes. But in chess "mistake" usually means "large inaccuracy" rather than "not the best move". I just mean games at a higher elo are usually decided by pressing a smaller advantage, rather than someone hanging a queen by mistake, so basically just avoiding massive blunders gets the most elo benefit, rather than worrying too much about tactics or opening theory.

toolslive 5y ago

going from 2100 to >2250 on lichess in a year, I can confirm woodpeckering is the way to go for me.

marcusbuffett 5y ago
That’s solid improvement, good to know. I may pick back up with the woodpeckering at some point.

macrael 5y ago

I’ve been watching this YouTube “speed run” by a GM who is a great teacher and have gone from 1000 to 1300 so far. He does a great job explaining some basic theory and giving advice for newcomers. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytkf3qZTj74 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytkf3qZTj74

seanwessmith 5y ago
I was thinking of developing a website that helps you analyze your games vs naroditsky's games. let me know if you have any ideas on what would be useful.
- bennyg 5y ago
  I would love that - been thinking about how to automate Youtube's generated closed captions from positions I'm in based on positions he's in. I typically play Caro-Kann and Danish Gambit so it seems likely I probably see common positions in the first half-dozen moves or so.

Townsendin 5y ago

Not every meaningless achievement needs a retrospective blog post. The article starts out: "For some background: I played chess briefly with my friends in high school," No one knows who you are or cares. What kind of person has the time to read that?

marcusbuffett 5y ago
Not every meaningless achievement with an unnecessary retrospective blog post needs a derisive comment about its existence, and yet here we are. Some people are interested in the content, you’re obviously not, just ignore it.
- Townsendin 5y ago
  Take your own advice and ignore my comment then, idiot.
jimmyvalmer 5y ago
I am here for your grievance about pointless backstory, but I think OP got to the point soon enough.

greenail 5y ago

I think the author is underappreciating end game. Understanding how drive winning pawn promotions informs much of the other strategy. This sort of thing informs when to make a trade or a sacrifice. If you don't understand it you aren't likely making good trades. The other simple idea is control of the center and evaluating your play to ask yourself how much control did you have?

gpm 5y ago
I'm 1878 on lichess rapid, so slightly better than the author. At this level (at least with my play style) the end game rarely decides games, usually one side or the other will gain a decisive advantage earlier than that. It's obvious to me that there will become a point where I need to start really studying endgames if I want to improve forever, but it's not yet. Moreover my opponents also don't understand engames well, and engines don't play them in a human fashion, so it isn't easy to get useful practice in them.
- greenail 5y ago
  do you play speed, blitz, longer? If you want to play expert or master level I believe you should study end game but the format you play may have some impact on how important you think endgame is. Blunders become much rarer as you play higher level players and early advantage may come down to a few 1/2 tempo win/loss moves.
  - gpm 5y ago
    Rapid (as specified in the rating), specifically 10+5.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

eterm 5y ago

I'm surprised how smooth the curve is, the author never has streaks where he loses a few hundred rating points. In fact I'm struggling to see he ever dips more than 50. I've been on a similar journey over the past year, where I'm now around 1500 rapid on chess.com but in that time I've had streaks where I've been down 250 rating from my peak. I don't know if I tilt super hard or if the author is remarkably resilient to tilt. It might also be a difference in how the different sites do match-making or adjust ratings and k-values. I'd echo the benefit in learning some basic opening theory. It's not worth rote learning theory but it is worth having a consistent approach to games so you learn from the same patterns and can avoid opening traps. If you play the same opening moves then over time you build up a memory of moves that you like in those positions and which will get deeper as you get more experience.

Etheryte 5y ago
Not getting into a downward spiral from tilt is fairly straightforward for me, when you lose two or three games in a row simply don't play more that day. In general, I play at most a few games a day and it helps a lot. If you want to just get practice with a specific opening or play out your frustration there's always computer games, too. When I practice with the computer I usually set the difficulty considerably higher than my own level, it helps me find weaknesses in my own play that I would usually get away with at my own rating level. I also don't mind losing to the computer. For some reason there's no emotion in losing to a computer whereas there is in losing to another human player.
marcusbuffett 5y ago
I think part of this is the slow time control, it's hard to tilt for more than a few games on rapid, since games can last up to 20 minutes. The other part is I think I was chronically under-rated, because of my ratio of studying to playing games.

ThomasCM 5y ago

Shameless plug: In case you want to track your chess progress and see more statistics on your openings (win rates, etc.), I'm developing a website where you can link your accounts to view stats for all of your games. It's free and currently in Beta: https://www.chessmonitor.com/ https://www.chessmonitor.com/ Here is an example for the current world champion: https://www.chessmonitor.com/u/kcc58R9eeGY09ey5Rmoj https://www.chessmonitor.com/u/kcc58R9eeGY09ey5Rmoj

kthejoker2 5y ago
I use ChessMonitor all the time, it's a great site, thanks so much!
aoeusnth1 5y ago
I'm getting major dotabuff vibes from the UI. I assume you drew inspiration from them?
- ThomasCM 5y ago
  Yes, I've played Dota myself and always loved dotabuff. That's where some of the inspiration came from.

600 points in 6 months is an impressive achievement.

d23 5y ago

I wish the author had discussed a bit about what worked and didn't at a higher level. I don't have the time to get into chess, but I'm quite curious about how I could translate his learning into other games and domains. One that was mentioned as a breakthrough was in learning to think like the opponent. That's quite interesting. I'm not sure what I can takeaway from the puzzle stuff without knowing more about chess. It seemed like some of the puzzles worked better than others, for whatever reason. I'd definitely like to know more.

marcusbuffett 5y ago
I think from a higher level there are some interesting things, you're right that I should have gone into it a bit. One of those is that raising my ceiling of play, like challenging myself with super tough puzzles, was actually totally unproductive. Raising the floor of my play, however, was hugely beneficial. I imagine this generalizes somewhat to other pursuits. The other takeaway I've had is how different procedural learning is from declarative learning. Among one of the weird features of it is I don't actually know how much something is helping until I get to the board and play some games afterward. There were exercises I thought were helping a lot in the moment, but had no effect on my play, and vice versa. Also sometimes people that are good at something are the worst to ask for help. For example, if you ask "how can I stop blundering?" (one of the most common questions on forums), common advice (from good players), is to have a mental checklist before making a move: threats, captures, skewers, pins, etc. But nobody actually plays like this, running through some checklist before every move. You just slowly rewire your brain over 100s/1000s of games and puzzles. If my queen and king are lined up now, and there's a rook on the board, that's as obvious as a flashing light on the board saying "hey watch out for pins!", but there's no easy answer to tell a beginner that will get him to that state, so people try to convert that feeling they get into a manual approach, and it just doesn't work. I guess this is like the key feature of procedural learning, that it's resistant to verbal explanation, but that doesn't stop people from trying, so you just need to learn to take it with a huge grain of salt.
- d23 5y ago
  Could you describe "raising the floor of your play" a bit more? I'm not fully sure what you mean by that.

xyzelement 5y ago

A bit of an aside, I love chess because it forces you to think several moves ahead including game-theorizing what your opponent will do. I want to teach it to my kid for this reason. I never got into timed chess but I can see it be valuable because it forces you to trade off between over-thinking and running out of time and under-thinking and making bad moves. This is also a real life skill. But I know that my personal game will always stay amateur because once you're in the timed game space, you can't get too far without memorizing opening and to me that crosses the line from "fun and overall developmental" to "work."

mrbungie 5y ago
Not to tell you how to raise your children, but please only teach your kid if you see he likes it. Disclaimer: I was a kid that lived my mother's dreams/hopes for a time and now I dread every second of that period.
- xyzelement 5y ago
  I don't need my kid to live my dreams but it's my job to teach him life skills and chess is a good way for teaching what I just talked about.
retzkek 5y ago
Maybe you'd like 960 aka Fischer Random Chess, with 960 starting positions there's no opening theory to memorize, just principles and tactics from move one. Not as popular as regular chess but usually no problem finding a game.

raptorraver 5y ago

Interesting article. Wish I had time to try even some of those. I'm nowadays quite casual but still serious player. Have been grinding in Lichess since 2019 but played consistently since highschool (so 15 years now!). I'm bit over 1800 in rapid and around 1700 in blitz. I don't care that much about my rating but it sure feels nice to break my records every now and then. I think my biggest problem is that my work (coding) exhausts my thinking energy and I'm quite tired most of times I play so I make stupid blunders which makes me lose many many winning positions. I don't know what would help here? Lately I've just played mostly 3 minute games. It's not so serious to lose a knight or bishop there because the time factor is there always. I'm dreaming of attending the local chess club once my kids are older but until them, see you on Lichess! Boy I love chess :)

huachimingo 5y ago

Unpopular opinion: Chess needs an update with more moves or randomized pieces (position, etc).

bikeshaving 5y ago
Look up Chess960! It’s a lot of fun.
joshuakarl 5y ago
Chess already has many flavors, but the main one lasted for centuries and its longevity is partly the reason of its success. The more it last, the more it's played, the more it's a universal game. But if you create a new fork, share it and i will try!
WJW 5y ago
This is not actually an unpopular opinion but one that many players (including former world champions like Gary Kasparov) have voiced as well.

GoodJokes 5y ago

chess seems like the new dating. Everyone is measuring it, but really in my recent experience, y'all are nerding this game to death. Not fun anymore.

sabujp 5y ago

you can play "sound" chess using general rules and get to about master level on lichess : * trade a piece (bishop for knight and vice versa) when it's being less effective than the opponent's piece * block opponents bishops * block opponents pawns * don't give opponent's knights a perch (supported by a pawn) on your side of the board, especially near the middle * try to promote edge pawns to the middle or clear the path out of the way of your pawns ..there are many other rules, but you can apply these much more quickly (esp in speed chess) thinking "statistically" to improve your position. The end game is where it gets hard for humans and you actually have to think, especially if there are knights still jumping around, rooks and bishops are easier to visualize and block.

Bootvis 5y ago
What is master level to you?
- sabujp 5y ago
  being able to defeat latest stockfish level 6 and drawing against level 7 or 8
  - Bootvis 5y ago
    I think your claim is wildly optimistic. According to Google, Level 6 is about 1900. That requires more than some simple rule following for most chess players. I don’t have any statistics handy but the folks that cross 1900 are in the minority.
lupire 5y ago
It takes longer to enumerate all the chess maxims than you have to pay a whole speed chess game.

neilk 5y ago

I'm quite good at puzzles now, but it doesn't seem to affect my ranking in actual play. I might be asking for the impossible here, but is there a way to get better without turning this into a part-time job, where I have to read a lot of books, study and memorize openings, and so on?

rantanplan 5y ago
Search for "Ben Finegold" on YouTube. He has many lectures for beginners and he's one of the funniest GMs. That makes it less boring :)

a13n 5y ago

Note that going from 1200 ELO to 1800 ELO is going from 18th percentile to 74th percentile. Pretty much any form of study over 6 months will get you that progress, because you'll have spent more time on chess than ~74% of players. Going from 1800 ELO to 2400 ELO (74th percentile to 99th percentile) in 6 months would be a lot more interesting, because clearly your study habits are helping you progress faster than others. A lot of being better than X% of people at something is just about spending more time doing it than X% of participants... Most professional video game players have 5,000 to 10,000 hours of experience in their game. Source: https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/rapid https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/rapid

marcusbuffett 5y ago
I don’t have hard data to back this up, but I do think that 1200 to 1800 on lichess in six months is very solid improvement, there’s a ton of accounts that have 10x+ my playtime and are rated below. It doesn’t seem to be just a time invested thing.
cottager2 5y ago
I have friends that have played on Lichess for years and never reached above 1400. How you study is much more important than how much you study. Analyzing different modes of study, as done in this blog post, is quite useful.
hcnews 5y ago
Yeah I got to 1650 rapid chess.com within 6 months (starting from basic knowledge of chess pieces moving). I was kinda told that 1800 rapid chess.com within a year of playing is kind of expected. For people wondering, lichess inflates rating usually at lower level (since it starts at 1500 vs 1200 chess.com). Usually lichess ratings are inflated by 200-300 compared to chess.com which is a bit closer to FIDE ratings.

everyone 5y ago

I keep seeing "after gaining 600 pounds in 6 months"

nbulka 5y ago

I read this as "Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 pounds in 6 months." Thought it was the only activity they had left!

ex3xu 5y ago

I'd say that chess fundamentals is three things: Endgames, tactics, and positional strategy. OP's strategy of studying openings and tactics is a very fun and accessible improvement path for intelligent new players, but it is very fragile, as you become vulnerable the second the opponent gets you out of your opening theory. Studying endgames and positional motifs gives you important decision-making tools in unfamiliar positions. Hiring a chess coach is probably the easiest way to systematically improve in these areas, if you're not a robot immune to the tedium of working through Dvoretsky's endgame manual and Silman's Reassess your Chess. After getting a handle on the fundamentals, the next step is just the accumulation of ideas. GMs use this word all the time in lectures and their post-mortem interviews. Some are common and obvious -- pressuring f2/f7, or yoloing a pawn storm in oppositely castled positions, or outposting an "octopus knight" on the sixth rank, for example. Other ideas require so much genius to see they become famous -- Fischer's Nh4!! at age 13, or Short's king walk, or Shirov's bishop sacrifice, for example. Accumulating ideas is why studying openings can be helpful in the beginning -- you will learn common plans as well as the most dangerous ideas and traps by brute force just by looking at enough theory. But rather than this inefficient approach -- since you'll never remember every single possible move -- I would recommend studying books and lectures that cover common ideas in the setups you prefer. Specifically, work through the pawn structures you like from GM Mauricio Flores Rios's Chess Structures book, and then study grandmasters who match your style or otherwise inspires you in some way -- e.g. Fischer/Tal for tactical wizards, Karpov/Kramnik for positional specialists, Carlsen/Capablanca for endgame grinders, or Rapport/Jobava/Larsen if you are a weirdo -- and watch Youtube videos analyzing their games and/or buy a book with GM commentary of their best hits.

jlturner 5y ago

I would meet with a chess tutor every week for 6 months some years ago. The biggest thing that contributed to my games getting better (which the author didn’t mention as a method they tried) was analyzing my own game. Thinking back on the moves you made, why you made them (ie gaining material, tempo, position), opportunities missed, and blunders made. It did help to have a coach go over my games with me, helps identify what to work on, what to think about when playing and focus on. The biggest thing I wasn’t thinking about is how the moves I made moved the board into the position I wanted to checkmate in — I was too worried about losing the pieces themselves.

sydthrowaway 5y ago

Does learning chess improve other facets of cognition?

marcusbuffett 5y ago
Research on this seems to mostly have settled on “no, maybe some accelerated development for kids”. I just know it’s better for my brain to be thinking about chess for 2 hours than to be on Reddit for 2 hours, which is what I was spending the time on before.
- sydthrowaway 5y ago
  what if you were in r/compsci or r/algorithms

WalterBright 5y ago

I failed at chess because instead of thinking about my next move I'd be designing a program to pick the next move for me.

WalterBright 5y ago
I bought a copy of "Chess Skill in Man and Machine" https://www.amazon.com/Chess-machine-monographs-computer-science/dp/0387079572 https://www.amazon.com/Chess-machine-monographs-computer-sci... back in the 70's, and it's descriptions of how a game could be mapped into a program was very illuminating to me. I still have a function in the DMD D compiler named evalu8() as tribute to that book. Sadly, I lost my copy somewhere. I just ordered another from Amazon, I'm curious as to how it appears 4+ decades later.

throwaway37284 5y ago

i just got interested in chess and have no idea what i'm doing (1100) or how to improve. i got a lot out of this write up, much appreciated.

glouwbug 5y ago

When I play online chess I load up a grandmaster AI and input my opponents moves

justusw 5y ago
Isn’t that called cheating?

noisy_boy 5y ago

I have a genuine question. My long time peeve has been that I suck at Chess and every time I play against anyone/anything, I just lose. It demoralizes me and then after sometime I try again, only to have the experience repeat. I have had decent grades, I code for a living and have been told that the quality of my work isn't bad so I guess I'll risk coming across as arrogant when I think that I'm not absolutely dumb. So the question is, is there anyone who has had the same experience? If so, what did you do to improve? Mind you, I'm not asking folks who put in moderate effort and got results. I'm talking to the ones that keep failing and failing spectacularly but eventually improved. Is it even possible to have anyone like that? If so, what did you do? Is it about just keeping at it?

caterama 5y ago
This happened to me. Just get online, play games, and do puzzles and you will improve. One of the tough things is getting started. When you sign up on lichess.org, you start out with 1500 rating which is literally ~50th percentile [1]. You're probably not actually 50th percentile so you're going to loose literally all of your first 10-20 games until you stabilize at a lower rating (it was ~850 for me). It's a little rough, but you just need to get through it. Once your ranking stabilizes, you'll be matched against opponents who you have a chance to win against. From there you'll see improvement over time. Improvement is slow, though. 600 points in 6 months is notably _fast_. I've managed ~800 improvement 3 years. [1] https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz
silisili 5y ago
I'll reply, but probably not how you want. I've always been a smart guy at a lot of things, especially math, who never had to try that hard in school. I went to exactly one chess club meeting in high school, as I knew how to play and wanted to learn more. I was defeated in a few moves by a kid who not only laughed at me, but told his friends about whatever rush I just fell for and they all had a good laugh. As you may imagine, I never went to another meeting. Years later I came across Yahoo Chess, and thought I'd give that a try. I was beat by someone from Syria who used his victory to explain to me why Americans are so stupid and cocky. I learned two things about chess - 1) It's not about being gifted or smart, it takes a lot of work and practice. 2) The community can be toxic as hell, so have thick skin. Or don't, I don't even play anymore. Two games were enough to teach me I don't want anything to do with that club.

elilev 5y ago

Visualization is best learned via Chess Vision for iOS https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chess-vision/id1547932501 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chess-vision/id1547932501

tomcooks 5y ago

Related shameless self plug: I went from 600 to ~1100 thanks to my own training method, which I'm transforming into an online service aimed at chess amateurs that want to improve. It's currently being developed, who wants to check out the free beta can sign up here: https://yousuckatchess.com https://yousuckatchess.com

ctrlp 5y ago

lichess.org has really been a game-changer (sorry) for my chess playing. I know some people love chess.com but I think lichess has such a great interface and there is always a large number of players online for games.

zzq 5y ago

What's the equivalent of Puzzle Storm -- rapid drills to improve pattern recognition -- in other domains, e.g. coding?