Testing
I was hoping you would. 
Pretty cool (ty @anon46587892). To embed a game, find the game on chess.com (a little bit of a pain, Iām used to chessgames.com for classic games but I donāt think you can put their 20 year old java applets into iframes but maybe Iām wrong), then click on the share icon:
Select the text Embed text and paste it into your reply
I get: <iframe allowtransparency=ātrueā border=ā0ā frameborder=ā0ā height=ā465ā width=ā603ā src=ā//www.chess.com/emboard?id=6268788ā></iframe>
You wonāt see anything at first, you need to add āhttps:ā to the beginning of src=ā//www.chess.comā¦ā so itās āsrc="https://www.chess.comā¦ā so in the end you get:
Unstuck draws first blood! Look at that queen trap 
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- Nf5+ sac is ? but I wanted him to play gxf5 so I could go 18. Qxd6, computer says I punted any advantage but looks kinda scary, at any rate the finish was reasonably accurate
Anyone use lichess and play blitz? Will add you to follow list or whatever.
I prefer 3-0, obviously for flagging people when they bust my ātacticsā
My MO is to induce blunders by playing utterly mediocre moves very fast.
I remember in 5th grade I was up against the reigning K-5 state champ.
So yeah opps dad apparently comes out, āArgh that Chuckleslovakian is playing fast and smashing the clock every move trying to intimidate.ā Did that right in front of my mom and was so embarrassed when he realized he gave me a few free lessons. Turned out I missed out on winning a piece in that game alas.
Epilogue:Well I some how won the K-8 championship the next two years despite not even being close to highest rated
Iām a dude in his 30ās learning chess for the first time. Itās really humbling. Iāve only really played two games seriously in my life, poker and Magic, and I was fairly successful at both. That isnāt meant as a brag, but to contrast how terrible I am at chess. Iām not sure if Iām especially bad at chess, chess is a really really tough game, or both. But in any case, it is rough going.
Iāve been doing about 10-20 tactics per day, playing five to ten 15+10 games per week, watching some John Bartholomew YouTube videos, and some streams. Currently rated ~1000 in rapid on chess.com and stalled. Just lost 8 in a row and taking a break, feeling quite frustrated.
Thereās a chess club at my school and would like to get good enough to enjoy attending once per week without getting slapped around by freshman kids :D
All beginnings are hard. I like to think Iām decent decent in poker and chess, but in college someone taught me Go and then beat me though he gave me a 9 stone advantage.
Iād advice you to spend some time analyzing your games, but other than that just keep doing what youāre doing.
I started to get better when I began playing against the computer and started watching real time analysis of my moves, playing out the variations of why a certain move is a big mistake. Also if you do have access to a chess program, pay attention to when you start deviating from the opening book, like if by move 3-4 the computer doesnāt recognize the line you are playing then you have basically always made an inaccurate move.
I think chess would be tough to learn in adulthood. Thereās a classic experiment where the experimenters showed positions to both masters and novices for a very short time (like a second or two) and then asked them to recreate the position as best they could. As you might expect, masters were vastly better at this than novices and were generally able to recreate the positions exactly. Then they switched to positions which were just random assortments of pieces on the board, like not even legal chess positions. The masters were then no better than novices. Thatās because when masters look at a chess position, they donāt see a scattering of pieces, they see a set of motifs, like āWhite has a light square pawn center, Black has a queen-bishop battery pressuring the a7-g1 diagonalā, etc.
What Iām saying is, you have to get your brain to the point where it sees positions that way, and the only way to do that is time. Chess is a frustrating game when youāre just trying not to blunder pieces, because during that stage any deeper strategy is inaccessible to you, itās just all top-level tactics.
I guess one piece of advice I have is to check your positions for loose pieces, i.e. pieces not defended by anything. You shouldnāt be aiming for zero loose pieces at all times or anything, but if you donāt know what to do in a position, consider making your pieces safer, especially if you can see ways they might be attacked by opponent pieces in the future. Loose pieces can become the victim of immediate tactics (like forks etc) and also can be a springboard for opponent initiatives, where they can make several moves in a row and youāre forced to just be reactive, defending your pieces.
It depends on what your goals are but I went from ~1300 to ~1800 in my (soon to be over) 30s. With structured study I think I could sniff 2000, which is about as good as I would ever want to get, you know, keep some mystery in it. But Iām talking about online play only.
Thereās definitely such a thing as chess aptitude as well, like separate to general intelligence. Masters can all play blindfold games and most are able to play several simultaneously. A couple years ago a grandmaster played 48 simultaneous blindfold games, scoring 80%. Iāve never tried, but I canāt imagine I could play even a single blindfold game, my powers of visualisation are very bad. Iāll have an opportunity to try in a few weeks time actually, Iāll see how it goes. Anyway that has to be a drag on my ability to play non-blindfolded as well and is probably one reason I much prefer blitz, where I can rely on intuition more than deep calculation.
I watched Magnus Carlsen play three simultaneous blindfold games once, and one thing I found interesting was that at one point he said āRook e1 to d1ā then paused and added āThe rook might be on f1, but it doesnāt matterā. Again, it shows that his brain is only seeing what is important in the position, to the point where irrelevant details become fuzzy to him.
Cool. Thanks, everyone!
I just started this summer also. I bought a Bobby Fischer book but havenāt gotten into it yet. I lose to the Magnus app at 8 year old Magnus level lol. I barely know anything about chess but watch this guyās videos for way longer than I should.
Like I can sort of imagine playing one game blind, I think I can visualize playing "1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 b5 5. Bb3 ā¦ " and I could probably get to the middle game. But thatās just one game and to the middle game at best. 20 games simul, gtfo with that wizardry. Also as you touch on, itās not mere visualization, I can āvisualizeā the bishop on Bb3 but I need to be looking at the board to really appreciate what diagonal itās on and what it is attacking.
I can definitely do it for a number of moves into the game, especially if itās a line Iāve played before. I think circa 10-15 moves things are going to start falling apart though, lol. Iām going away with some friends in late September, we will have a chess board, Iāll pick one of them who isnāt very good and see how far I can get playing blindfold. No way I am going to be able to hold it together against anyone decent, but maybe against someone who will also have trouble handling complications.