I've hit the brick wall and now I am beating my head against it. I am sure this is a common occurrence when people hit their first and sometimes final plateau at chess. I've reached about 1400 at Rapid and about 1700 at Classical in the last 3 months or so. Before that I hardly played chess for 40 years and back then I was no good either to be honest. Obviously, I am old now. Honestly, please don't look at my games. It's enough that I have the pain of analysing them. My play is atrocious and the numbers of blunders are laughable. I sometimes resign in disgust at my worst blunders.
I actually won more games a little while ago when I didn't care and played crazy gambits and crazy moves. As soon as I tried to play sensible chess, I got worse results. That too may be a common occurrence, I don't know. I've found I cannot stop blunders, only postpone them a bit until time trouble and then I blunder more.
I know this has all been asked before. Should I cut right back on games and just train, train, train at puzzles and book theory (openings, middle games, endings). Might that work? Of course, we all have to face the fact we have a limit somewhere but it is hard to enjoy the game without a little encouraging improvement. Maybe I am expecting too much being old (68) and so long away from the game. If you haven't guessed yet I have a low frustration threshold too. Man, I am getting frustrated by my endless mistakes and blunders.
As an aside, my son and I had an interesting discussion about how blundering, erratic-ness and unpredictably are part of how humans are built and this is an evolved trait. Clearly, our evolution favoured fuzzy logic, not clear logic. In the real world (which is impossibly complex and un-analysable) fuzzy logic calculators like human brains are better suited to survival. So in trying to play a logical, formal (mathematical-geometric-algorithmic) game we are really going against part of our basic nature. Most of us anyway.
We will always blunder. A recent Lichess blog article has pointed this out. The issue is this. How do we blunder the least number of times possible? Training hints and playing hints? Final question, do people use the arrows to analyse and spotlight threats when they are playing? I haven't done this yet. Is it okay to do? Does it help?
Do puzzles. At your level it is mostly about spotting your opponents blunders
I got a lot of benefit from the simple identification of attacks/checks/captures analysis of each position. I did it in puzzles, where there was no opponent to annoy if I sat there for minutes without moving. Then I decided that blunders during time trouble don't count. Sure, they count for win/loss, but I won't beat myself up over them. If I've switched from analyzing to guessing, then it's not evaluating what I care about. Instinct comes with time, and comes after analyzing the same patterns over and over again. Not through guessing correctly.
Finally, if I get in time trouble a lot, then I slow down the time control. If you're playing rapid and classical, you're probably there too.
I think it's okay, and probably helpful to use the arrows. If you plan to also play OTB, have a plan to wean off them. Otherwise, I don't see a downside.
You needn't train at book theory until you've solved the blunder problem. If you enjoy it, go ahead. I sure don't. Games are supposed to be FUN.
I have also hit a wall, thank you for the help
Please don't hit a wall. Don't hurt yourselves.
@Autofill said in #2:
> Do puzzles. At your level it is mostly about spotting your opponents blunders
From my experience that is true. I've lost count of the number of games I've lost because I didn't spot an opponent blunder which needed just a two move reply (a simple combo) to easily win material. I've also lost count of the times I've blundered due to tunnel vision. I am only looking at my attacks in one quadrant of the board. I am not looking at the opponent's possible surprise replies and I am not maintaining awareness of the whole board, of long range moves and of backward captures.
I can tell myself to remember all this before a game and then during a game all of it goes out the window under pressure. I often gain advantages and then lose them. I've lost a game a queen for a knight up. I've lost a game with a knight outpost and enemy backward pawn: same game, same semi-open file. I have no idea how to prosecute an advantage. Either that or I think I have an advantage when I don't. I am sure I am prone to that too. Only I can secure a knight outpost on d5 and then the knight sits there hitting only empty squares and I can conjure no attack, no combination to press an advantage. Only I can blockade and then attack a backward pawn only to have it march forward and destroy my position. These are skills, just not the right skills. ;)
Only answer is more puzzles I guess, an anti-blunder protocol and the slowest time limits possible on Lichess.
I hit the wall a long time ago when I was about 1600-1700. I then bought some books to learn some "proper openings", and when I tried to play them, my results were no better. So I kind of know where you are coming from. After some 5-10 years of no progress, I just decided to play chess for fun and to stop worrying about my rating. My reasoning was simple: even if I lost rating points, I could easily get them back just by playing in a more normal way for a few days. So I played sacrifices and gambits that I thought were interesting, rather than what was stereotypical or "sound". I was shocked to find that my rating did not suffer from playing in this crazy, but more enjoyable way. How could that be? I am no master, how can I know whether or not a speculative sacrifice is going to work and why was I not being punished brutally for it?
The point is that I was playing the game in a way that tapped into another part of my brain. It was like I was bringing some new dimension of play into my game. My opponents who were mostly rated at about the same level were just as perplexed at my crazy moves as I was. So over time, I just learned what of my crazy ideas worked, and what didn't. It essentially grew my imagination. And that eventually turned into real strength improvement (I'm now about 1900 blitz on Llichess).
But that doesn't tell the whole story. If you are on a drive for self-improvement, and like me, you can't justify the expense of a full-time coach, you need to find a way to give yourself a direction. I consume a lot of chess media (podcasts, online lectures, tournament commentaries, etc), and a few things have stuck out to me: 1) IM Lawrence Trent says that below 2400 nothing matters more than tactics. 2) Hikaru says he trained himself in chess largely by playing blitz and bullet (exactly the kind of chess that the older generation GMs would complain that it rots your brain). 3) Many GMs have said, that if you don't review your games, you can never improve.
For me, I've decided to take those elements and turn them into a recipe book. 1) To work on my tactics I do a lot of chess puzzles, especially "Puzzle Racer" on this site. This has done *wonders* for me, and probably has gotten me more than 50 rating points since this feature was introduced on Lichess. The Qa5+ tactic to win a stray unprotected Bishop or Knight that has lunged onto the 5th rank by itself must have gotten me 20 rating points. Also after every game that I think I lost "badly", I get the computer to do an analysis and I do the "Learn From Your Mistakes" thing -- I don't want to just be shown my mistakes, I need to try to figure them out for myself. 2) I just play the faster time controls (bullet and blitz) these days so that I can get more games in per day -- I need to work on my instincts, not waste hours trying to create a masterpiece using my meager skills. 3) At my level I sometimes encounter people who have studied their "pet lines" in some openings that lead to very quick defeats for me. So in games where I feel like I was outplayed right in the opening, I get the computer to analyze it and point out my first mistake. I then ask it to play a few moves after the correct moves for both sides, and I record that as a game fragment for my opening book ("my file" as Caruana calls it). I've been slowly but surely building up my own opening repertoire made entirely out of these "improved lines" relative to what I've been playing naturally. More recently, I've been trying to use the opening explorer to pit the computer against the most popular responses in all the lines I've been recording.
These, of course, are just generic ideas that describe my overall approach. I can give you some more concrete examples, though. In trying to improve my tactics, at some point, I noticed that a lot of the hardest puzzles (for me, at my level) include an "in-between move". These are when you delay completing an "automatic move combo" (like an exchange, or retreating/blocking an attack) to insert another move that "raises the stakes" before you complete the move combo. I've worked hard on always looking for those in my game, knowing that players at or below my level have a hard time with these moves too. The point is that my system for self-improvement always leads to a specific thing that I am trying to do in my games to get better.
Now, as a 1300-ish player, my approach probably won't precisely work for you. Your tactics are probably too rough, and if you run the "Learn From Your Mistakes" thing, you will rarely find the right move. But the 3 points I gave above will still apply to you. You *do* need to work on puzzles. I think anyone under 2000 should be doing puzzles all the time, just to learn to recognize patterns. Remember that all the puzzles on Llichess are taken from real games, so if you train yourself to recognize the ideas in them, they will eventually show up in your real games. But like me, I would concentrate on a few specific kinds of tactics that you feel you tend not to see. Are you good at the "undermining" tactic? If not, then I would just concentrate on that one. If not that, then how about the "Greek Gift" sacrifice, or similar kinds of Bxh3/h6 moves meant to expose the King to an unstoppable attack? Whatever it is, just find a tactical idea that has come up more than once but often fail to execute yourself. Then just commit yourself to looking for these tactics in your games. And do one of the "Puzzle Streak", "Puzzle Storm", or "Puzzle Racer" on a regular basis. I would also recommend playing the fastest time control you feel comfortable playing. Most of the moves in your games will not be worth obsessing over, but most games will have one or two moments where it is really worth contemplating how you could have played better. By playing faster time controls you can invest less time overall in finding these crucial moments that you can learn from. The computer will always be able to tell you the truth, and it's not charging you by the hour to do so. Even though "Learn From Your Mistakes" might be frustrating, you should at least "View Solution" to see what you actually missed. As for openings, I am not sure what to recommend to a 1300. I think it's best just to try to channel "Morphy" -- get your pieces developed, and involve as many as possible in your subsequent play. Any time you feel like you got "punked" in the opening, just run the computer on it, look for your first mistake, and try to memorize the computer's suggested improvement.
No don't give up! I know of some sites that could help your chess, but since I should stick with free stuff for example Hanging Pawns on youtube should be good for you. (Since I don't want mod trouble.)
All in all... you're just another hit in the wall - :]
@Ikonoclast said in #1:
> I've hit the brick wall and now I am beating my head against it. I am sure this is a common occurrence when people hit their first and sometimes final plateau at chess. I've reached about 1400 at Rapid and about 1700 at Classical in the last 3 months or so. Before that I hardly played chess for 40 years and back then I was no good either to be honest. Obviously, I am old now. Honestly, please don't look at my games. It's enough that I have the pain of analysing them. My play is atrocious and the numbers of blunders are laughable. I sometimes resign in disgust at my worst blunders.
>
> I actually won more games a little while ago when I didn't care and played crazy gambits and crazy moves. As soon as I tried to play sensible chess, I got worse results. That too may be a common occurrence, I don't know. I've found I cannot stop blunders, only postpone them a bit until time trouble and then I blunder more.
>
> I know this has all been asked before. Should I cut right back on games and just train, train, train at puzzles and book theory (openings, middle games, endings). Might that work? Of course, we all have to face the fact we have a limit somewhere but it is hard to enjoy the game without a little encouraging improvement. Maybe I am expecting too much being old (68) and so long away from the game. If you haven't guessed yet I have a low frustration threshold too. Man, I am getting frustrated by my endless mistakes and blunders.
>
> As an aside, my son and I had an interesting discussion about how blundering, erratic-ness and unpredictably are part of how humans are built and this is an evolved trait. Clearly, our evolution favoured fuzzy logic, not clear logic. In the real world (which is impossibly complex and un-analysable) fuzzy logic calculators like human brains are better suited to survival. So in trying to play a logical, formal (mathematical-geometric-algorithmic) game we are really going against part of our basic nature. Most of us anyway.
>
> We will always blunder. A recent Lichess blog article has pointed this out. The issue is this. How do we blunder the least number of times possible? Training hints and playing hints? Final question, do people use the arrows to analyse and spotlight threats when they are playing? I haven't done this yet. Is it okay to do? Does it help?
3 month is no time in chess.
You also dont get progressivly better, it happens in leaps.
No one knows when they come, but all of a sudden things will make sense to you and you become better.
But giving up never helps.
You have to be Patient.
