Yeah, blitz is its own thing, but to have gotten to 1800 live it must have been a semi serious hobby for you, at least for a little while?
Like a few of my friends from HS who were close to me in skill 20 years ago play on chess.com from time to time and they’re 900-1100 players.
I used to play in the London Bank league for a few years for a friend’s Japanese bank team which is where the ratings came from, and also all night with friends once or twice a week.
My limitation is my spatial awareness, though the calculation and memory side was always ok. I get lost very, very easily in unfamiliar places lol.
One of the worst things about chess is knowing all the specific ways I suck but not getting any better at them.
Yeah, I think if I haven’t learned and memorised some technical aspects like particular endings by now then I’m never going to. Even in a game tonight I was struggling to remember which pawn ending I needed to liquidate into to draw and stumbled into it by luck.
Even better than this is me watching hours of YouTube and practicing against the computer and doing daily tactics training and replaying my games to improve …
… and I still just walk face first into a royal fork every once in a while. Oops.
That sense of danger improves over time - you start to recognise quickly which squares you need to keep an eye on.
You’ll still blunder but it will be much less often.
I suck so I just try to remember basic good placement of pieces but there are too many scenarios where you have to remember too many correct moves or you lose a big piece or a checkmate against you is super annoying. at least against bots anyway
Took me a lot of games before I finally started thinking “remember to not get a rook forked by that ****ing knight” and I still suck
Nothing too interesting about the game but highest rated player I’ve beaten in rapid in a while (1968). Budget analysis came back relatively clean, the queenside penetration plan turned out to be sound.
They do love their closed/Anti Sicilians, I’ve noticed.
Also as a white e4 player I face a ridiculous number of Philidors, which I play a trappy line against.
So the first blitz game of the Biden administration starts off in style
Sadly 7… Bc5 is +3 mistake so not perfect, but otherwise 95.1% accuracy. These stuff mates are always fun to do and it’s surprising how often they’re available, although most of the time people resign and don’t let you flex.
Stifle!
Every time I’ve had it forced my oppo has resigned.
That’s a beauty.
I can’t do blitz chess, I just end up leaving pieces hanging.
Decent single page article with two annotated games showing concrete examples of the concepts described.
https://www.chess.com/blog/damafe/chess-strategy-for-beginners#quotes
Some idiot posted a puzzle on Twitter today that said “Black to move, two moves to mate, most beautiful checkmark I’ve ever played.”
I’m struggling hard to figure out how he could have done it. I ask for a hint. The hint: “White makes a terrible move after the first Black move.”
Oh, ok, so two moves to mate as long as White has no idea what’s happening. Thanks for the puzxle, really fun.
Well people that call it a “checkmark” probably shouldn’t be relied on to provide the best puzzles.
I don’t play very often, as most of the time I prefer to watch a 10-20 minute video breakdown/analysis of top-flight play rather than attempt to boost my 1100(?) rating. I generally watch videos created by kingscrusher or agadmator on youtube. If anyone has other suggestions for good content creators in this space, please let me know.
Those two are good for game analysis but if you absorb the strategy ideas in the link I just posted and play more often you’ll probably reach 1400? at least and then more after intermediate lessons.
I read all of the article except for the final move by move analysis play through. I’ll save that for this evening when I’ve got a beer in one hand and a vape in the other. Cheers.
GothamChess
I watch… a lot of Chess YouTube and Twitch.
John Bartholomew makes the best instructive chess content on youtube IMO. It’s more “let’s play a few games and then analyze them” than it is in depth analysis of master games.
Hikaru and GothamChess (Levy Rozman) are both alright in terms of instructive content, but both kind of arrogant douchebags imo.
Daniel Naroditsky has some good content - I’m watching his rating ladder climb right now and it’s probably the best rating climb series I’ve seen. He does a really good job of noting critical positions during games and coming back to analyze them in depth afterwards.
Eric Rosen is solid and seems like the nicest/most normal of the chess personalities - a good mix of theory videos (I have started occasionally playing the Budapest Defense against 1.d4 based on his videos about it) and casual blitz play.
I’ve really enjoyed the content I’ve seen from James Canty and Maurice Ashley when I’ve caught them on Twitch, but their YouTube channels leave a little to be desired IMO.