Chess can be pretty infuriating for even seasoned players.
It’s a game where you can make 50 good moves, one bad move, and lose the game. It’s quite brutal actually.
You have to keep at it, a LOT, and let your brain naturally absorb what works well and what doesn’t.
The ability to play online bullet/lightning chess is a huge help because you can play many, many more games.
Decide to open either e4, d4 or c4 for now to restrict the number of openings you need to learn and learn the first 6-8 or so moves of a small number of openings; then spend longer on the endings.
Play through some well-annotated GM games.
That’s a fun checkmate. One of my fav’s.
I don’t know, Stockfish. Don’t you think that might be a bit nitpicky here?
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Brag: blew past my PB on 3-0 blitz on chess com. Previous was 1928 from 2 years ago.
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Solid brag. I switched from lichess to chess com and am currently rated 1741. At first I thought chess com had way stronger players or something but I forgot lichess starts everyone on 1500 rather than 1200. My lichess 1930 rating was only good for like 85th percentile, but 1741 is good for 96th percentile on chess com, so I assume lichess player pool is actually stronger. It might be my imagination but it seems like people are more aggressive on average as well. Anyway if anyone wants a game (I’m playing pretty much entirely 5 0) my handle is Strayaningen.
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Also Nakamura’s bullet stats are inhuman. wtf.
I picked up chess at the beginning of the COVID lockdown and I’m not particularly good yet. Played on Lichess primarily for a while, and got my rating up to about 1500-1550 before deciding to try chess.com where I’ve been hovering between 1200-1250.
I’m pretty certain that I’ve got more wins against 1600+ people at lichess than I do against 1300+ people on chess - seems like the chess.com player pool is stronger to me, or at least the ratings don’t mean the same thing at all between the sites.
Edit: my user is therealcatface on chess.com, I mostly play 15+10 if anyone wants to add me
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People also cheat like crazy on chess.com i think - but yea I think the player pool is better. I got up to about 1600 and was just getting slaughtered so I kind of put it down.
If you like blitz it’s a really good anti-cheater format.
Definitely. That’s why I only play 3 0 now (quite badly). I thought there was even cheating there at 5 0 by players probably using an engine to get a big advantage at the cost of some time to try to liquidate into winning positions themselves.
I was playing a guy on lichess once in a tournament (5 0) and he was like 1200, which is low there (like 900-1000 on chess com maybe) and he found a couple moves where I was like “dude, there is just no way, this guy has to be cheating”. One of them was where he found quite a complex zwischenzug rather than making a routine recapture. Anyway, shortly thereafter our game ended because he got banned for cheating in the middle of the game. So it does go on, but I haven’t had the sense it’s endemic at either site.
I cheated myself one time. My opponent mouse slipped or something early in the game, I don’t remember the details, and asked for a takeback and I granted it. Then the same thing happened to me later in the game, I requested a takeback and he declined it. I was like “really?”, asked again and he declined again. So I loaded up an engine and wiped him off the board.
lol oh dear.
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I use this site for comparing Lichess, Chess com, USCF, and FIDE at different time controls. Especially with covid I’ve been curious to know roughly what my otb rating might be now. Not sure what their sample size is, but anecdotally it’s been pretty accurate for me.
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lol xiong
Highly recommend watching that 9:27 to 12:20. Nakamura playing blindfold. Chatting about random bullshit then just insta whips out Bg5. I thought he blundered at first. What a freak of nature.
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1984 is your highest win
I like GothamChess aka American IM Levy Rosman but he only occasionally does agadmator style game recaps. He sometimes does recap videos of a day’s play in a tournament but he’ll recap any critical positions from all the games normally. He’s a Twitch streamer and does sub battles with Nakamura, definitely recommend watching those (on YouTube), they’re pretty funny. They have a friendly wager like 20 Twitch subscriptions on the line and they go from having 2000+ rated subscribers play to having like 500 level guys play at the end. It’s pretty funny seeing a guy like Nakamura react to the total chaos those games descend into. From memory this one had a couple funny games.
For agadmator-style recaps GM Jan Gustaffson is really good, you can seek out his “grandmaster analysis” videos on YouTube and Chess24. He’s likeable and more insightful than agadmator (I am close to as strong as Antonio and sometimes he gives reasons why a player made a move and I’m like “dude wtf no what are you talking about”). But of course he doesn’t knock out daily videos, you’ll have to go through his old stuff, but nothing wrong with that.
Yeah I just watched the final game of that sub battle, can confirm it will melt your brain lol
I stream some chess from time to time. Not sure if posting the link here is spammy, but you can find it in my profile.