@derkleineJo said in #39:
> You won't spend days after an online defeat thinking about why you couldn't hold a rapid game. But you will DEFINITELY think about it if you have suffered for hours in a REAL (league) game.
Now the key question is if it's really a matter of a difference between OTB and online or rather a matter of time control, game circumstances and your overall attitude to it. For me, it's certainly easier to forget most of my losses in OTB rapid games (which I couldn't even analyze) than most of my losses in 4545 League or some other online tournaments with similar time control.
All you need is something like Chess X and create a good Database of games book files, and Youtube. ypou can get all the PGN files you need at chess mentor. But if you think you will imrove just by playing speed chess you are wrong.
@mkubecek said in #41:
> Now the key question is if it's really a matter of a difference between OTB and online or rather a matter of time control, game circumstances and your overall attitude to it. For me, it's certainly easier to forget most of my losses in OTB rapid games (which I couldn't even analyze) than most of my losses in 4545 League or some other online tournaments with similar time control.
I can only speak from my personal experience - beginning at age 46 with zero DWZ (DWZ = german rating, quite similar to FIDE ELO) to eye-level on 1700 DWZ in OTB play in 3 years.
Of course there are soooo many other ways to improve, but that's what I from a practical viewpoint (as a honestly not very talented player) can say about this topic so far.
EDIT: In addition to that - speaking about clubs => Having stronger palyers around you, that point you to the right direction is just priceless. The OP said that he wants to first get to a certain level, because he don't want to lose to the stronger club players. That's imho just the wrong mindset for improvement. Of course the OP said, that he has to ride a long route to the next club, but that's just what I did, when I wanted to improve at tabletennis in my younger years. Most times there is a way, if you really really want.
How's the coaching with CSKA_Moscou (I'm not surprised if it never took place)
@Monnt said in #40:
> The problem with Australians is that we're not very big on chess; it's an hours drive to my 'local' chess club and I'm fairly sure they only have a public 15+8 rapid session on Sundays.
I just want to share a bit of my chess journey here.
I vividly remember the excitement I felt upon learning about a chess competition near my hometown, not long after I began playing chess. It required a 1.5-hour drive one way. Upon arriving at the venue, I befriended several players and eagerly sought chess improvement tips. Some of them had ratings 500 points higher than mine. That single trip was incredibly helpful and boosted my confidence significantly, especially since I was just a 1500-rated rapid player at the time.
I believe you've made the right decision in seeking feedback on your chess strategy. However, remember, this journey is uniquely yours, complete with its own set of memories. It might be best to approach it with the intent to make it something worth remembering.
@Cedur216 said in #44:
> How's the coaching with CSKA_Moscou (I'm not surprised if it never took place)
Good, he's already given me multiple very beneficial tips.
@Monnt said in #31:
> ... I just don't want to play OTB yet or get destroyed at my local chess club yet but instead convert to OTB when I'm at least 1800 Lichess. ...
"... Waiting until you are 'good' to play in events is ... a common error; you won't improve as quickly without consistent live competition; locking yourself in a closet to just study is rarely the optimum path. Taking your lumps is a necessary part of the learning process and the younger you start, the better chance you have. Most really good players play hundreds of tournaments over a period of years during their improvement phase. ..." - NM Dan Heisman (2012)
web.archive.org/web/20140627045357/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman133.pdf"... tournament play offers that rich, 'all-weekend' chess experience where you congregate with other players, eat and talk chess during meals and in-between games, and benefit from the entire ambiance. ..." - NM Dan Heisman (2013)
"... most people do not like to lose games, and take defeat badly. This is not right. People who want to improve should take their defeats as lessons, and endeavour to learn what to avoid in the future. ..." - Capablanca
"... easy for him to say :)" - NM MrPushwood (2024)
lichess.org/forum/general-chess-discussion/how-do-you-keep-from-being-humiliated-after-losing-a-game-and-just-dropping-chess-altogether?page=2There are indeed many understandable reasons for not finding it easy to go to an in-person event. I just want to say that waiting for 1800 seems a little demanding. My experience is that most events have a fair number of participants who are just starting out. Apart from the educational value, there is also the simple enjoyment of meeting lots of other chess enthusiasts. I once knew one guy who liked to pass the time between games by juggling chessboards. There was another who talked about his plan to work his way through Basic Chess Endings at the rate of one page per day. And there was the dedicated 1 g4 player. ...
By the way, those book samples (~12 hours ago) were just intended to provide additional information about some of the books that others were suggesting.
My 2 cent worth of advice (from a 1500+ OTB player): (1) Housekeeping and (2) Practical.
(1) Housekeeping:
Create a spreadsheet and list all the tasks you could do on a given day. Assign to each task a value/worth in the range 0 to 5. Total up the maximum 'score' you could achieve in one day, then total up what you actually achieve on a daily basis. This will give you a daily '% of effort', which you can easily create a graph of as a time series. This has two purposes; to keep you on track and avoiding doing the easy stuff and by-passing the difficult stuff, and two, you will most certainly change your assignment of the worth of the tasks as you go along. The spreadsheet will most importantly stop you drifting into doing easy/enjoyable stuff with little benefit. Note, 'worth' is very subjective and will vary from person to person, the value of 'worth' should an expression of time spend v. perceived/actual benefit.
(2) You need to find some way to measure 'task benefit'! There are lots of ways to do this and none are likely to be accurate on short timescales giving the natural of chess. But if you don't even attempt to measure benefit you'll more than likely end up wasting your time/efforts. You need to be pretty ruthless with how you spend your time! Personally I don't think Lichess - or any other platform - elo rating is all that good for measuring 'task benefit' - or to be more exact progress, the variability in the players base is far to great and hides one's own variability in gameplay. Better would be rating bots like the Lichess Maia Bots or LucasChess's bots or something else that is convenient and always available at regular intervals. You need a solid invariant benchmark to measure yourself against, this is easy enough with tactical puzzles but very limited otherwise.
My personal preference is to use old second-hand chess computers where you can pretty much fix the playing strength that you find suitable without discouragement* - many have built in elo rating systems and/or self-adaptive levels. If you are aiming for 1800 elo I would recommend something like the Mephisto Turbo Advanced Trainer - of which there are very many extremely cheap Radiostack clones - but there are loads of others available for very small sums. I feel this avenue of improvement is totally ignored by the chess community as a key place to deploy 'training' games and provide objective measures. That said I have over 30 of these old chess computers so probably a bit bias - but they are, for me, far more fun to play than anonymous people on on-line platforms, the games are almost always decent to analyse if you give yourself infinite time and thus remove random play errors due to time constraints - your errors become far more visible and collectable in a notebook or via FEN problem/puzzle files.
Lastly, it's vital to constantly think in terms of task-to-benefit - that said, there is no harm in setting aside some time for 'entertainment'.
Well not quite, lastly, a suggestion no one has so far mentioned; have you considered the Chess King platform? They have some very good quite cheap courses - they often have sales - which mostly take the form of interactive versions of physical books. CT-ART which is a pure tactical/puzzle course is highly recommended, about 2500+ puzzles sorted by theme and difficulty, selected by a top Soviet coach - all with a built in time-series elo performance metric. I have been very impressed by this course and another on Endgames. I believe with tactics you have to be repetitive and concentrated and the CT-ART puzzles are definitely high quality (and quite difficult without being impossible!).
Would be good to know what tasks you consider (or find)to be) of the highest benefit for my own planning schedule.
Grr more. If you do the spreadsheet idea, I would start off with just one task ( the one you think is the most important given your weaknesses, atm) and each subsequent week add in a single new task based on the 'most benefit' principle. You do seem to be taking on a lot of work at once and as such will be very difficult to assess benefit. There seems to be a suggestion if you do lots things you must or will get better, I suspect this is false! Target worst weakness, hammer it into improvement, subsequently refresh to maintain learning and move on to the next weakness, is my belief/guess. I have found it takes about 2 to 3 months to correct most playing weaknesses, everyone is different of course :) At my level I have found most OTB losses are due mostly to lazy thinking resulting in missed tactics. There is a lot to be said for developing toughness and stamina when playing chess that is rarely mentioned in chess books and courses! I try to use long chess computer training games to counter this - it's a bit like building muscle in a gym - but I think people are not objective enough to accept they have been lazy and blame lack of knowledge/training/skill as an guilt-free excuse.
*For me, I go for 75% wins to 25% losses (I'm a very bad loser!), however the recommended from the 'experts'/research is 75% losses.
Hello everyone! Thankyou very much for your advice, I take it to heart and I'll try to go to my local chess club next month. I also developed a new strategy, which is recording all of my mistakes in an excel spreadsheet which hopefully I can use to eradicate a majority of my blunders. LMK what you think about this new idea, and thankyou very much again for your advice. :)
