I want to make a post saying the best way to get good at chess, but that would be a lie, because it isn’t the best way. It is the best way to troll the shit out of your opponents though. Read this book, then read it again in your head (like, go through the entire book’s positions and variations in your head without a board):
You will get very good at attacking and will have your higher-level opponents getting big mad and accusing you of sandbagging. 2000-rated people do not like to get mated in 25 moves over and over. Then they will figure out that if they just fend off the attack, usually by way of clock advantage (I only play 1+0), they will win because you have no idea what you’re doing with just a rook and some pawns. I think you’re supposed to move them back and forth until somebody hangs a piece, or try to get a queen or something, I never really got around to that boring part.
Here’s an example of a game I played this morning, opponent Black was rated almost 1500 on Lichess. I don’t think that 1400+ players on chess.com surrender the center so easily at the start.
Yes this game is a particularly good example of why development matters. Villain still had every piece other than his pawns sitting on the back row as of move 20.
I think it’s more of a player pool difference than a time difference? Idk, I switched from 10+0 to 5+5 about six months ago. My 10+0 was around 1500 and it took me about 4-5 months to consistently stay above 1300 at 5+5.
yep 1500 rapid is equivalent to around 1200-1300 blitz. Someone who has never played in their life and is still learning how the pieces move isn’t going to start off playing blitz chess, they are going to start off at 10+0 rapid, which means the player pool at rapid is going to be significantly weaker esp at the lower/intermediate levels.
Bullet is way harder as well. I’m around 1700 to 1750 blitz on chesscom and am currently 1400 at 1+1 bullet, on a downswing. It’s volatile, I have been up over 1600 but probably belong at about 1500.
I feel like I learned a few things, misapplied those things, and had worse results. Now I’m applying them better and winning a bit more. 7.5/9 over the last 3-4 days of Rapid games. Feels good man.
Been picking it up a bit again. Just played a game where I had mate in one, missed it, blundered three times to about bring it back to even, but thankfully my opponent didn’t want to win either so he blundered three times to hand me the win. I think my rating is probably like 1200 standard or so
I am similarly low rated and have games like this all the time. The converse is also true - I sometimes blunder a minor piece in the opening but its nice to know that isn’t game over because equally mediocre opponents will give the piece right back sometimes.
Also what’s happening is that when you drop a piece in the opening you often gain a couple of tempi which materialises as a decent development edge and pressure on his position, resulting in a counter-blunder.
Yep, for sure. You can kind of see the compensation sometimes when reviewing games, like I might lose a knight for a pawn but the engine says I’m only -1.4 or something like that. I’m assuming that means the engine is seeing some structural advantage that compensates the pure material loss.
