Really frustrated - need to vent

Hi all,

Kind of a long post, but I need to vent. Any advice is welcome and thanks for reading.

In February I finally had my first chess game after a few years of watching youtube videos and doing tactics exercises on and off. My rating quickly stabilised around 750 on Chess.com.

I decided that I was going to take this opportunity to finally learn chess. Not to be a good player, mind you, but to at least not be terrible. I figured a 1300 lichess rating target was attainable. Wanting to be efficient and not simply play over and over hoping to get better, I wanted to spend a good chunk of my time reading and doing exercises, as well as analysing each of my games.

I discovered chessable, and have been diligently studying and doing my spaced repetitions every day for 3 months now. First, I did a few opening courses, and felt it really helped me be quicker and more serene in the opening.

Since I had no idea what to do once the opening phase was done, I then started studying "the chess toolbox" to give me some strategic ideas.

Seeing no improvements still and reading on forums that beginners should really focus on tactics, I then bought a tactics for beginners book on chessable and have been devouring it for the last few days. And the results have been... pretty bad: I suppose because I try to find tactical combination during games, I end up behind on time and my rating has cratered.

Bottom line, I have been studying, reading, analysing and playing chess every day for next to three months, as a complete beginner, and my rating hasn't moved at all! I was at 750 on chess.com, and now am at 1050 since switching to lichess, and this is really making me frustrated.

Any advice or tips is welcome.

(I play 5+3 blitz games)

there is no better help than practicing

you began studying tactics, your time management plummeted immediately. that's simply because you're learning a new skill, tactics. i would expect your time management will improve after a month or so, provided you continue studying tactics, which is the skill you say you want to improve. you should probably try longer time controls, in addition to blitz. i don't think there's any way blitz is a good tool to learn chess, particularly the serious thinking part.

three months is absolutely nothing, btw. learning anything is a marathon. thinking that it is not will probably be frustrating at best.......

Maybe mix it up a bit with games one after the other. Sometimes we can overprepare for things and miss the whole point. Not to say preparation isn't good but you don't want to be like a musician who can only play what they can read, you also need to train your ear and instinct by playing with it and not being scared of mistakes. Anything you lose from rushing will be bought back later once you've had some consistent mistakes drummed out of you.

Play longer time controls - at least 10+0, ideally 15+10. You need to learn to think about a position, and learn from your mistakes when things go wrong. A large part of chess involves calculation skills, as well as being able to assess a position - which you will not be able to develop playing 5+3 games.

Learn to crawl before you start walking. You’re trying to run while you haven’t developed enough to crawl.

Good luck.

Follow me on this site, maybe I can arrange some training games with you and show you where you can improve (I’m no expert but maybe I can point you in the right direction).

I'll break it down like this. I looked at your most recent game and saw these glaring mistakes. I didn't use a computer to figure out what you should be doing, I did this based on my own intuition. These are my notes. dxc4 is a mistake, should develop pieces
Nd5 allows fork
Attacking without improving his pieces, rooks should be on open files.
Losing an exchange on e5
Rook on a should be on C, Rook on F on D
Blundered rook captured by the bishop

Conclusion: first thing, in my opinion, is to focus on developing pieces, and try your best to not launch an attack early until you have your knights developed, bishops on nice diagonals, your pawn structure well developed, and as the game progresses to try to put your rooks on open files. Of course, if your opponent makes a direct threat, then deal with that, and then go back to improving your pieces. Then after you have done that, start looking for tricks, or finding weaknesses in your opponent's position. Main idea is to look where you can position a piece to make a double threat. Any move that does 2 things at once is a strong move. Or follow this line of thought. In the middle game look for checks in 1 or 2 moves, captures on both sides, attacks on the queen in 1 or 2 moves, lesser pieces that can harass bigger pieces (in value), or if nothing else, see about improving your pieces (pawn chains, controlling diagonals, files, looking for weak squares, weak colors etc).

Oh, and make sure to check for these things on both sides. See what your opponent can do, and what you can do in the position. You will need to play longer time controls until you can intuitively see the right move without much thought, then you can play blitz. Long time controls discourage cheating because cheaters are impatient, and want to whip through a bunch of games and pump their rating up, so a 30 minute game or longer will be good practice for you, and nearly ensure you are playing a human.

There are thousands of tactic, opening, middle and endgame or positional chess in the world. You cant learn all of it because it was too much. But just select few of it that can stabilize your games. Balancing may the key..⚖️

Play classical and rapid only.
Use all your time.
The first priority is to free your game from blunders.
Activate move confirmation in your profile: think about your move, play it, check it is no blunder, confirm.

1) Stop playing blitz at least for few months because you get bad habits of "hope" chess. Play longer time controls with increment: 10+5, 15+10 or even longer.
2) Always think for your opponent too: what's his best reply, what does it mean for my candidate move.