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Pedantry alert: As ELO ratings follow a logarithmic curve, "gaining 600 points" is a dimensionless metric. These are good tips for beginner to intermediate gro

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.
- SamBam 5y ago
  > That seems like a meaningful interpretation of "600 points" that applies to anyone It does apply to anyone, but it is more or less meaningful depending on where you start, so the meaningfulness isn't equivalent. It's as if you say you can double your money, but it only works once and with a value < $1. The idea that, say, Magnus could increase his chess playing abilities in 6 months (or even 6 years) to be able to beat the current version of himself 99% of the time would be insane.
  - wpasc 5y ago
    I often wonder if chess players have a natural "peak"/"optimal" age range in the way that professional athletes do. Being a thinking game that requires strong brain functionality combined with accumulated experience, I wonder if there is an age range that is best for most players. Trade offs may be something like in yours teens and early 20's your brain may have the most plasticity and ability to visualize (plan 10+ moves ahead) but you might not have accumulated enough experience. I'm purely speculating here and just wondering aloud. (I bring it up in response to this comment because Magnus' prodigious talent is so noteworthy I wonder when Magnus will stop being able to "beat" Magnus of 1 year ago.
    - sharedfrog 5y ago
      > I wonder when Magnus will stop being able to "beat" Magnus of 1 year ago. While this doesn't answer your question, it's interesting to note Magnus's peak rating was actually 7 and a half years ago, when he was only 23.
      - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
        Then again with how ELO works it doesn’t necessary mean that it was Magnus’s peak only that that the point when the gap between him and the rest of the chess world was the largest. I think others became stronger and he had more competition. Still Magnus himself seems to think he is past his peak in interviews.
        5y ago
- Kranar 5y ago
  Someone who is just learning chess will likely be able to beat the old them with 99% probability after a few days of playing and learning. Someone who is ranked at around 1200 and really commits to improving can likely beat the old them in a couple of months by memorizing a few common openings and practicing drills/working on fundamentals. Someone who is a dedicated chess player and ranked above 1800 may never be able to beat the old them with 99% probability. So if someone says they improved by 600 points, certainly that is meaningful to them as an individual and it means they can basically beat their old self, but it won't be very meaningful to me.
- prionassembly 5y ago
  It means he can beat me with overwhelming odds. That's not nothing.
- narag 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? I don't know what it means in theory. In practice I win and then lose 200 points in lichess in a few days. Some time ago I used to win and lose 100 around the day in a cycle. Maybe ratings aren't adjusted around the globe, so for the same points there are different skill levels as you go through time zones. There's a fact that really annoys me: for my 2+1 bullet, it's harder to be at 1500 than at 1600. Once I'm at 1600, I can reach 1700 with a winning streak. If I fall into 1500, I tend to get stuck there.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
marcusbuffett 5y ago
Extra pedantry: you’re of course right that 600 points is somewhat meaningless, given that it’s harder to improve in the higher ratings, but there’s nothing logarithmic about elo. A 1500 playing a 500 has the same odds as winning as a 2500 playing a 1500, mathematically. You earn the same # of points at higher elo too.
- kthejoker2 5y ago
  No, its scale is directly based on log odds - 10 times more likely to win = 400 points higher on ELO. https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1731991/why-does-the-elo-rating-system-work https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1731991/why-does-th...
- neaden 5y ago
  Extra Extra Pedantry: Lichess doesn't use Elo, it uses Glicko-2 rating system instead.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > there’s nothing logarithmic about elo. A 1500 playing a 500 has the same odds as winning as a 2500 playing a 1500, mathematically. Odds ratios being constant with difference is what you’d expect with a logarithmic scale, with a linear scale you’d expect odds ratios to be constant with the ratio of the ratings. So, you’ve just explained the way in which elo is logarithmic as your evidence that it is not.
  - marcusbuffett 5y ago
    Hm you know what that makes some sense, my bad
msluyter 5y ago
By "Woodpecker method" do you mean this: https://www.amazon.com/Woodpecker-Method-Axel-Smith-Tikkanen/dp/1784830550 https://www.amazon.com/Woodpecker-Method-Axel-Smith-Tikkanen... ? This is why HN is great -- appears to be an amazing book.
- kthejoker2 5y ago
  Yeah, and you can take an interactive course version of it on Chessable https://www.chessable.com/the-woodpecker-method/course/10582/ https://www.chessable.com/the-woodpecker-method/course/10582... And most of the Chessable courses can be "woodpeckered" through the interface.
  - piokoch 5y ago
    Maybe same method could be applied to solving leetcode puzzles for job interview...
robomartin 5y ago
That's too much work. All my kids play. I have been playing since I was a kid myself. It's just a game. Getting into memorization and deep analysis makes it less interesting for me. I've been in the 1800 to 2000 range for a while. Spending too much time getting great at chess is, in my opinion, time that could be better spent getting good at something far more useful in life. Exercise is such an example. My system is very simple: Before I play a game I must complete at least five consecutive puzzles. Yes, this might mean I play 12 or 20 puzzles before I get five in a row. What's interesting about this is that if I get to a dozen or more puzzles and did not solve five in a row, I take it as an indication that my brain isn't in "chess mode" and go do something else. Every time I ignore this indicator I lose games. Just work on puzzles and keep it simple. My kids have a great time with this simple rule. They don't have to memorize anything and they progressively get better and better. Above all, they don't get worked-up about losing at all. Keep it simple and fun.
- mostertoaster 5y ago
  I think this is where it really shows that it becomes just pattern recognition. Sometimes our brains are fuzzy and we slowly match patterns. Other times they’re quick. Though I also think the real value in puzzles is not that they help you win more, but lose less. I often play a puzzle that the advantage gains a piece over one or two lost pawns, and when I play these I love to go then and try to beat stockfish 9, undoing moves freely. I often still lose, but what I learn is how to defend after you blunder and how to avoid blowing an advantage. I think just solving the puzzle as if you are the stronger player taking advantage of a blunder is less beneficial than solving the puzzle as if you were the one who made the blunder and what do you hope they don’t see is better.
- acoard 5y ago
  Where do you play puzzles?
  - llimllib 5y ago
    chesstempo has the best puzzles, but worst interface. chess.com and lichess both have ok puzzles and better interfaces. I prefer lichess, and sometimes go to chesstempo for more focused work, but reasonable people can disagree. Also there are many books of puzzles.
sillysaurusx 5y ago
I love that HN hyper-focused on your 600 points observation. However, 600 points means you went from 1500 (the start) to at least 2100, which is almost universally recognized as "pro" or at least semi-pro for chess. So yes, logarithmic curve and dimensionless pedantry and all that, I'll grant you; but that's missing the trees for the squirrels in the forest, since 600 points means "I went from noob to pro." No one expects Magnus to gain 600 points, since that's quite impossible. I guess you could argue that it's possible for someone to start at 1500, then really suck at chess and drop to 900, and then merely become average again (1500), and claim a 600 point improvement. As with the other observation, I agree, that would be impressively misleading. I'm not sure that's the claim, though. EDIT: I retract every claim. I am in fact an idiot, since the article does say they went from 1200 to 1800, not 1500 to 2100. This is what I get for writing something dumb. At least I admit it right away though. Sorry. At least it's proof that the pedantic-ness wasn't so pedantic. I also take solace in the fact that the actual title of the article was stripped: the title says 1200-1800, not merely 600 points, which in this case is crucial info. But! It was remarkably stupid not to actually click on the link before writing, and this is rather public proof that sometimes I don't. Perhaps that's a strong signal that in the future, I need to be. :)
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  The full headline is 1200-1800 on lichess, which has a mean of 1500. So they started below average, trained up to something like 65 percentile on lichess. Its good improvement yes, but as someone at that rating, I'd be a mediocre club player at best (no more than 1600 FIDE, and probably less)
  - pverghese 5y ago
    He didn't claim to be a pro. He's talking as a beginner..the improvements to be had.
- saurik 5y ago
  I am struggling to understand your point, as this person did not start at 1500: they started at 1200. Imagine if they had started at 900, not gone down and then back up as you posit for some reason?
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> Once you've memorized all the mistakes in the Scandi or London system What's a good book for this?
- kthejoker2 5y ago
  Usually each opening has its own book (or several books!), I prefer just starting with Lichess studies and YouTube videos e.g. https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Alichess.org%2Fstudy+scandinavian+defense+traps https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Alichess.org%2Fstudy+s... Memorizing the 20-30 traps and mistakes in those studies is sufficient for beginners; you can use spaced repetition (I use my own private Lichess study to collect positions) and cover the 20 or so most popular openings in a few months. Again, not enough to win but it helps you punish bad play and learn how to handle aggressive players (since many of the traps are in fact bad play but only with perfect counterplay)
eawoifjaiowepfj 5y ago
Pedantry alert: As Elo ratings are named after a person, they shouldn't be fully capitalized, as they are not acronyms.
ridiculous_fish 5y ago
At OP's level (1800 lichess), there are only two rules of importance: "don't blunder" and "don't give up." Here's one of their recent wins [1]: in this game, OP had black and was completely lost, down a rook and a knight. Black played on, white dropped their guard and blundered, black pounced on it, and black gets the full point, having made the second-to-last mistake. I am 2100 in lichess 5/0. Most of my games are still resolved by blunders on either side. It's rare to get a positional advantage and then grind away; instead someone didn't see that backwards knight or lateral queen move. 1: https://lichess.org/fhnTl1lE/black#72 https://lichess.org/fhnTl1lE/black#72

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.
SamBam 5y ago
> That seems like a meaningful interpretation of "600 points" that applies to anyone It does apply to anyone, but it is more or less meaningful depending on where you start, so the meaningfulness isn't equivalent. It's as if you say you can double your money, but it only works once and with a value < $1. The idea that, say, Magnus could increase his chess playing abilities in 6 months (or even 6 years) to be able to beat the current version of himself 99% of the time would be insane.
- wpasc 5y ago
  I often wonder if chess players have a natural "peak"/"optimal" age range in the way that professional athletes do. Being a thinking game that requires strong brain functionality combined with accumulated experience, I wonder if there is an age range that is best for most players. Trade offs may be something like in yours teens and early 20's your brain may have the most plasticity and ability to visualize (plan 10+ moves ahead) but you might not have accumulated enough experience. I'm purely speculating here and just wondering aloud. (I bring it up in response to this comment because Magnus' prodigious talent is so noteworthy I wonder when Magnus will stop being able to "beat" Magnus of 1 year ago.
  - sharedfrog 5y ago
    > I wonder when Magnus will stop being able to "beat" Magnus of 1 year ago. While this doesn't answer your question, it's interesting to note Magnus's peak rating was actually 7 and a half years ago, when he was only 23.
    - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
      Then again with how ELO works it doesn’t necessary mean that it was Magnus’s peak only that that the point when the gap between him and the rest of the chess world was the largest. I think others became stronger and he had more competition. Still Magnus himself seems to think he is past his peak in interviews.
      - 5y ago
Kranar 5y ago
Someone who is just learning chess will likely be able to beat the old them with 99% probability after a few days of playing and learning. Someone who is ranked at around 1200 and really commits to improving can likely beat the old them in a couple of months by memorizing a few common openings and practicing drills/working on fundamentals. Someone who is a dedicated chess player and ranked above 1800 may never be able to beat the old them with 99% probability. So if someone says they improved by 600 points, certainly that is meaningful to them as an individual and it means they can basically beat their old self, but it won't be very meaningful to me.
prionassembly 5y ago
It means he can beat me with overwhelming odds. That's not nothing.
narag 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? I don't know what it means in theory. In practice I win and then lose 200 points in lichess in a few days. Some time ago I used to win and lose 100 around the day in a cycle. Maybe ratings aren't adjusted around the globe, so for the same points there are different skill levels as you go through time zones. There's a fact that really annoys me: for my 2+1 bullet, it's harder to be at 1500 than at 1600. Once I'm at 1600, I can reach 1700 with a winning streak. If I fall into 1500, I tend to get stuck there.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

marcusbuffett 5y ago

Extra pedantry: you’re of course right that 600 points is somewhat meaningless, given that it’s harder to improve in the higher ratings, but there’s nothing logarithmic about elo. A 1500 playing a 500 has the same odds as winning as a 2500 playing a 1500, mathematically. You earn the same # of points at higher elo too.

kthejoker2 5y ago
No, its scale is directly based on log odds - 10 times more likely to win = 400 points higher on ELO. https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1731991/why-does-the-elo-rating-system-work https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1731991/why-does-th...
neaden 5y ago
Extra Extra Pedantry: Lichess doesn't use Elo, it uses Glicko-2 rating system instead.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> there’s nothing logarithmic about elo. A 1500 playing a 500 has the same odds as winning as a 2500 playing a 1500, mathematically. Odds ratios being constant with difference is what you’d expect with a logarithmic scale, with a linear scale you’d expect odds ratios to be constant with the ratio of the ratings. So, you’ve just explained the way in which elo is logarithmic as your evidence that it is not.
- marcusbuffett 5y ago
  Hm you know what that makes some sense, my bad

msluyter 5y ago

By "Woodpecker method" do you mean this: https://www.amazon.com/Woodpecker-Method-Axel-Smith-Tikkanen/dp/1784830550 https://www.amazon.com/Woodpecker-Method-Axel-Smith-Tikkanen... ? This is why HN is great -- appears to be an amazing book.

kthejoker2 5y ago
Yeah, and you can take an interactive course version of it on Chessable https://www.chessable.com/the-woodpecker-method/course/10582/ https://www.chessable.com/the-woodpecker-method/course/10582... And most of the Chessable courses can be "woodpeckered" through the interface.
- piokoch 5y ago
  Maybe same method could be applied to solving leetcode puzzles for job interview...

robomartin 5y ago

That's too much work. All my kids play. I have been playing since I was a kid myself. It's just a game. Getting into memorization and deep analysis makes it less interesting for me. I've been in the 1800 to 2000 range for a while. Spending too much time getting great at chess is, in my opinion, time that could be better spent getting good at something far more useful in life. Exercise is such an example. My system is very simple: Before I play a game I must complete at least five consecutive puzzles. Yes, this might mean I play 12 or 20 puzzles before I get five in a row. What's interesting about this is that if I get to a dozen or more puzzles and did not solve five in a row, I take it as an indication that my brain isn't in "chess mode" and go do something else. Every time I ignore this indicator I lose games. Just work on puzzles and keep it simple. My kids have a great time with this simple rule. They don't have to memorize anything and they progressively get better and better. Above all, they don't get worked-up about losing at all. Keep it simple and fun.

mostertoaster 5y ago
I think this is where it really shows that it becomes just pattern recognition. Sometimes our brains are fuzzy and we slowly match patterns. Other times they’re quick. Though I also think the real value in puzzles is not that they help you win more, but lose less. I often play a puzzle that the advantage gains a piece over one or two lost pawns, and when I play these I love to go then and try to beat stockfish 9, undoing moves freely. I often still lose, but what I learn is how to defend after you blunder and how to avoid blowing an advantage. I think just solving the puzzle as if you are the stronger player taking advantage of a blunder is less beneficial than solving the puzzle as if you were the one who made the blunder and what do you hope they don’t see is better.
acoard 5y ago
Where do you play puzzles?
- llimllib 5y ago
  chesstempo has the best puzzles, but worst interface. chess.com and lichess both have ok puzzles and better interfaces. I prefer lichess, and sometimes go to chesstempo for more focused work, but reasonable people can disagree. Also there are many books of puzzles.

sillysaurusx 5y ago

I love that HN hyper-focused on your 600 points observation. However, 600 points means you went from 1500 (the start) to at least 2100, which is almost universally recognized as "pro" or at least semi-pro for chess. So yes, logarithmic curve and dimensionless pedantry and all that, I'll grant you; but that's missing the trees for the squirrels in the forest, since 600 points means "I went from noob to pro." No one expects Magnus to gain 600 points, since that's quite impossible. I guess you could argue that it's possible for someone to start at 1500, then really suck at chess and drop to 900, and then merely become average again (1500), and claim a 600 point improvement. As with the other observation, I agree, that would be impressively misleading. I'm not sure that's the claim, though. EDIT: I retract every claim. I am in fact an idiot, since the article does say they went from 1200 to 1800, not 1500 to 2100. This is what I get for writing something dumb. At least I admit it right away though. Sorry. At least it's proof that the pedantic-ness wasn't so pedantic. I also take solace in the fact that the actual title of the article was stripped: the title says 1200-1800, not merely 600 points, which in this case is crucial info. But! It was remarkably stupid not to actually click on the link before writing, and this is rather public proof that sometimes I don't. Perhaps that's a strong signal that in the future, I need to be. :)

joshuamorton 5y ago
The full headline is 1200-1800 on lichess, which has a mean of 1500. So they started below average, trained up to something like 65 percentile on lichess. Its good improvement yes, but as someone at that rating, I'd be a mediocre club player at best (no more than 1600 FIDE, and probably less)
- pverghese 5y ago
  He didn't claim to be a pro. He's talking as a beginner..the improvements to be had.
saurik 5y ago
I am struggling to understand your point, as this person did not start at 1500: they started at 1200. Imagine if they had started at 900, not gone down and then back up as you posit for some reason?

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> Once you've memorized all the mistakes in the Scandi or London system What's a good book for this?

kthejoker2 5y ago
Usually each opening has its own book (or several books!), I prefer just starting with Lichess studies and YouTube videos e.g. https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Alichess.org%2Fstudy+scandinavian+defense+traps https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Alichess.org%2Fstudy+s... Memorizing the 20-30 traps and mistakes in those studies is sufficient for beginners; you can use spaced repetition (I use my own private Lichess study to collect positions) and cover the 20 or so most popular openings in a few months. Again, not enough to win but it helps you punish bad play and learn how to handle aggressive players (since many of the traps are in fact bad play but only with perfect counterplay)

eawoifjaiowepfj 5y ago

Pedantry alert: As Elo ratings are named after a person, they shouldn't be fully capitalized, as they are not acronyms.

ridiculous_fish 5y ago

At OP's level (1800 lichess), there are only two rules of importance: "don't blunder" and "don't give up." Here's one of their recent wins [1]: in this game, OP had black and was completely lost, down a rook and a knight. Black played on, white dropped their guard and blundered, black pounced on it, and black gets the full point, having made the second-to-last mistake. I am 2100 in lichess 5/0. Most of my games are still resolved by blunders on either side. It's rare to get a positional advantage and then grind away; instead someone didn't see that backwards knight or lateral queen move. 1: https://lichess.org/fhnTl1lE/black#72 https://lichess.org/fhnTl1lE/black#72