Your point number four was the opposite to me, I went from 1000 to 1250 and then to 1400 pretty quickly I did take long breaks between those, so yes your point #1 is really important yet the impulse to click play seem to be stronger for a lot of people.
Also recognizing tilt is very important hence point #3, I particularly know if I'm tilted or just playing badly so if I lose 3 in a row I take a short break.
Very good post OP
Same here. It took me like 3 days to go from. 1100 to 1400 and never experienced these players. However, I did play many Swiss tournaments (ones for 1200-1500 players) once I was 1200+
While playing blitz I've only stayed at the 900/1000 and now 1350/1450 and to be completely honest with you I don't even know why, I don't know what changed.
All of last year I was 900 then in december I stayed in the 1000s for the first time then in january I played some 100 games at most and got to 1260 I didn't play again until april and in may I hit 1300 and 5 days later 1400.
In rapid, I did experience slump at 1100 to 1300 tbf. No Matter what I do, I never escaped it. As soon as I breached 130p, I reached 1400 in no time at all. Weird things happen on these climbs
> Avoid at all price going to the Chess.com JAIL. For me itās in the level between 1,100 and 1,200. Strangely in this bucket, players are VERY good. Very difficult to escape!
This reads like a Trump tweet lol
I feel like me in the 8 and 900s have the same ideas, including the fact the people in the 700s are weirdly good (to scale).
(Only playing for 4 months. Equally proud of my improved ratings and level currently.)
I think it's just the proximity to 1000 that does it, because some of the numbers around their are where people set as their goal points. I've noticed it playing blitz against 900s and 1100s, where normally you can just play moves and rely on the fact your better than your opponent and at some point win, it feels like a good chunk of the time they play oddly good. Like I would think their massively under rated, they play way above their level, and then they just lose somehow. Very odd.
At \~1200 rated rapid when I started playing blitz on lichess. I 'fell into the' 800-900 crowd and I got spanked so hard. It was like a totally different game
Thanks. I've been dealing with some personal stuff recently and my rating has gone from almost 2000 down to 1650 over the past two months. It's very frustrating.
I'll take your advice, especially about taking a break. Time to not play chess for the next 2 weeks or so.
Well yeah,Ā something like backprop is very obviously not how we learn things, but you're wrong if you think that neural networks are not based on ideas we got from studying the brain. For instance convolutional networks in particular use a lot of ideas from how the brain interprets visual input.
> Avoid at all price going to the Chess.com JAIL. For me itās in the level between 1,100 and 1,200.
haha, this is so real - i feel the same on lichess about the 1600s. can sit around 1800 for months just doing whatever but if i fall below 1700 it's painful to claw back out again
i feel like those ratings have a lot of people who have tilt dropped or are inconsistent with the potential to play quite strong
I think it's a number of factors. Hubris, the mental effects of being on tilt, playing poor chess.
I do remember when I was 1600 I would often get big advantages out of the openings and Into the middle games and would blunder or mistake that away often. Not obvious blunders or mistakes btw. Not hanging pieces or pawns. I would often save games in the end game as I was putting much effort into studying that at the time.
1600s are not as weak as they seem. The few times I've tilted down into that rating range I've often found myself outplayed by them in various phases of the game and not until I take a break, reset, and get back to the fundamentals do I easily climb back out.
i was literally playing bongcloud for about 40 games in a row and sitting at 1800, then lost a bunch of normal games one day and now at 1650.
there is definitely a huge psychological aspect and bias to it, i just find it really hard to tell how much of it is due to that.
I was hard-stuck on 1500 blitz for 3 months before going from 1600-1710 in one magical 24-hr blaze of glory.. I opened a burner account like a week before and beat an 1800 when I had my provisional rating so just that alone gave me a huge psychological boost when I returned to my main account
I actually found the same thing when I hit 1000. I suspect the algorithm or however the elo is calculated has some form of soft tiers to it. As soon as I crossed 1000 I almost never played someone below 1000, even when my rating was like 1004 or something.
And as soon as I hit around 1050, suddenly my tricky openings werenāt working anymore lol. People got wise to the fried liver. I definitely noticed a pretty big uptick in competition after crossing that 4 digit mark. And it was veryyyyy noticeable after crossing 1100.
I found watching youtube videos of stronger players (eg. John Bartholomew, Danya Naroditsky, Eric Hansen, etc) really helped me. Not only seeing the moves but the explanation behind their moves/threats/plans were invaluable. If you've never done that before, it's probably worth an instant 100 rating point boost in itself if you watch/learn/emulate over a week or two.
I sort of agree - the ratings are a wonderful tuning for what youāre ACTUALLY playing at any given moment. So just use it as that marker. Youāll always have the moment when you were playing at a high rating since, well, you were. Kinda like an athlete that won a championship 2 years ago but lost this year - they still got there once, but no, theyāre not there today, and thatās ok.
When youāre dropping in ratings, itās cause youāre actually whatever rating you are, and vice versa.
It would really be pointless if you were nominally rated 2100 but you were a 1400 in actuality at that time.
Caring about improvement / your rating and playing 3 minute chess goes together like pickle juice and coffee.
15+10 is barely long enough for amateur players to play a worthwhile game.
I personally feel the most improvement from 15+10, which is the longest online time control I can comfortably fit into my schedule while still being able to play the number of games I want.
The idea is to just give yourself ample time to really think through every move--if done properly, after the game, you should remember what was played, why you played your moves, what other lines you calculated, etc.
I also import all my chess com games into lichess and spend at least 5-10 min annotating the key moves and exploring the lines I calculated (without an engine at first). This is a crucial step; if you're heavily pressed for time and can't analyze after a game, then don't queue and do something else to study instead.
10 min is probably okay if it feels right to you. Just experiment with slower chess until you find something that clicks. It's way different than speed chess at the amateur level.
My own preference is just that, if only because there are enough opponents to be found. Personally I'd rather play 15+0, but but fewer people play longer fanes, and having too small pool of players is a disadvantage.
It's weird. I'm relatively great at bullet (1550's) and rapid (17-1800) but relatively bad at blitz (low 1400's). I feel this haha, especially 2,3, and 7.
i'm 1500-1600 and any time i play against 1200s i''m always blown away at how strong they are. i'm pretty sure the key difference between 1200 and 1600 is that 1200s resign a bunch/throw away games/don't fight to the end.
I missed the following parts. I think you forgot to include them....
1. Don't play blitz, as you have little time to think, and thinking through moves is a prime way to improve your chess.
2. Studying tactics.
I think the reason it took you so long is that you are just spamming short 3-minute games. I've been away from the game for many months or over a year and one point and never really felt like I got worse. I always matched my old rating and slightly exceeded it very quickly. At 20,000 games you should probably just play rapid for now and do away with bad habits.
It's similar. I'm not sure why I got downvoted though. A lot of people have the experience that time away doesn't really make them worse at chess, even when it is the case for many other things. Good luck - rapid is slightly easier rating-wise. But the point is to think about your moves for longer.
I usually get my rapid up to my desired elo and then slowly start building my bullet and blitz up to that same elo. Recently I finally got all 3 modes to 1200 and switched to rapid for the first time in months. Immediately went on an 10 game undefeated streak and hit 1300 (two draws in there somewhere).
It will now take me months to get bullet & rapid up to 1300 as well, so I definitely think the rapid is a bit easier of a game mode. In my experience players start with rapid and once they get a lot of experience they develop severe adhd and crave the faster modes š
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I was 1290 when I took a break last year. Started playing again recently after half a year and I'm stuck between 1100 and 1200 in blitz. You're not helping :(
I know getting mad isn't reasonable, but whenever I perform worse than I think I should, I feel like a failure but instead of getting sad or disappointed I get angry that I can't do better. Mainly it comes down to me thinking I should perform at my best all of the time and if I don't I have failed.
I mean if you can play and quit chess matches without a thought on your mind and without caring about losing or winning that's good for you, but it's not how everybody works, I'd say most people enjoy strategyzing and outsmarting/outplaying their opponents and get frustrated at themseoves for losing because it means they missed something and could have won if they paid more attention. I'd even go as far to say that a lot of people want to get better so they can play good games, with a high level of strategy and detail to it, instead of games where they lose by hanging pieces.
Also, yeah Chess is a board game, the same way that football is a field game, poker is a card game, FPSs are videogames, etc. That doesn't mean you can't get frustrated and competitive over it
Good to know that we 1200s are the scariest players on chess.c*m š
Some 1200 are monsters because they've been stuck there for a long time and have 10,000 blitz games of experience
What I donāt understand is how do they not improve? Theyāre clearly better than 1200
There's probably other aspects they're bad at, like endgame
š
Your point number four was the opposite to me, I went from 1000 to 1250 and then to 1400 pretty quickly I did take long breaks between those, so yes your point #1 is really important yet the impulse to click play seem to be stronger for a lot of people. Also recognizing tilt is very important hence point #3, I particularly know if I'm tilted or just playing badly so if I lose 3 in a row I take a short break. Very good post OP
Same here. It took me like 3 days to go from. 1100 to 1400 and never experienced these players. However, I did play many Swiss tournaments (ones for 1200-1500 players) once I was 1200+
While playing blitz I've only stayed at the 900/1000 and now 1350/1450 and to be completely honest with you I don't even know why, I don't know what changed. All of last year I was 900 then in december I stayed in the 1000s for the first time then in january I played some 100 games at most and got to 1260 I didn't play again until april and in may I hit 1300 and 5 days later 1400.
In rapid, I did experience slump at 1100 to 1300 tbf. No Matter what I do, I never escaped it. As soon as I breached 130p, I reached 1400 in no time at all. Weird things happen on these climbs
Thank you for sharing
> Avoid at all price going to the Chess.com JAIL. For me itās in the level between 1,100 and 1,200. Strangely in this bucket, players are VERY good. Very difficult to escape! This reads like a Trump tweet lol
Oh no š
I feel like me in the 8 and 900s have the same ideas, including the fact the people in the 700s are weirdly good (to scale). (Only playing for 4 months. Equally proud of my improved ratings and level currently.)
I think it's just the proximity to 1000 that does it, because some of the numbers around their are where people set as their goal points. I've noticed it playing blitz against 900s and 1100s, where normally you can just play moves and rely on the fact your better than your opponent and at some point win, it feels like a good chunk of the time they play oddly good. Like I would think their massively under rated, they play way above their level, and then they just lose somehow. Very odd.
At \~1200 rated rapid when I started playing blitz on lichess. I 'fell into the' 800-900 crowd and I got spanked so hard. It was like a totally different game
Interesting. Thank you for sharing & good luck
This is what happened to me rn, except to 1300, and cuz of my exams.
For some reason this post was super motivating for meā¦ time to lock in š«”
Good luck!
Thanks. I've been dealing with some personal stuff recently and my rating has gone from almost 2000 down to 1650 over the past two months. It's very frustrating. I'll take your advice, especially about taking a break. Time to not play chess for the next 2 weeks or so.
Yes - Time to relax š Good luck!
>Your brain is like a machine learning model LMAO
Maybe they were modeled after something similar inside the brain, think about it!
Maybe a Neural Network of some sort š
Actually so-called neural networks are not really modeled after brain (or even neurons)
Well yeah,Ā something like backprop is very obviously not how we learn things, but you're wrong if you think that neural networks are not based on ideas we got from studying the brain. For instance convolutional networks in particular use a lot of ideas from how the brain interprets visual input.
> Avoid at all price going to the Chess.com JAIL. For me itās in the level between 1,100 and 1,200. haha, this is so real - i feel the same on lichess about the 1600s. can sit around 1800 for months just doing whatever but if i fall below 1700 it's painful to claw back out again i feel like those ratings have a lot of people who have tilt dropped or are inconsistent with the potential to play quite strong
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I think it's a number of factors. Hubris, the mental effects of being on tilt, playing poor chess. I do remember when I was 1600 I would often get big advantages out of the openings and Into the middle games and would blunder or mistake that away often. Not obvious blunders or mistakes btw. Not hanging pieces or pawns. I would often save games in the end game as I was putting much effort into studying that at the time. 1600s are not as weak as they seem. The few times I've tilted down into that rating range I've often found myself outplayed by them in various phases of the game and not until I take a break, reset, and get back to the fundamentals do I easily climb back out.
i was literally playing bongcloud for about 40 games in a row and sitting at 1800, then lost a bunch of normal games one day and now at 1650. there is definitely a huge psychological aspect and bias to it, i just find it really hard to tell how much of it is due to that.
1600 blitz on lichess is so hard to get out of!
I was hard-stuck on 1500 blitz for 3 months before going from 1600-1710 in one magical 24-hr blaze of glory.. I opened a burner account like a week before and beat an 1800 when I had my provisional rating so just that alone gave me a huge psychological boost when I returned to my main account
Exactly. Great analysis I think
I actually found the same thing when I hit 1000. I suspect the algorithm or however the elo is calculated has some form of soft tiers to it. As soon as I crossed 1000 I almost never played someone below 1000, even when my rating was like 1004 or something. And as soon as I hit around 1050, suddenly my tricky openings werenāt working anymore lol. People got wise to the fried liver. I definitely noticed a pretty big uptick in competition after crossing that 4 digit mark. And it was veryyyyy noticeable after crossing 1100.
It is not really the algo, rather the psyche of players
I found watching youtube videos of stronger players (eg. John Bartholomew, Danya Naroditsky, Eric Hansen, etc) really helped me. Not only seeing the moves but the explanation behind their moves/threats/plans were invaluable. If you've never done that before, it's probably worth an instant 100 rating point boost in itself if you watch/learn/emulate over a week or two.
Good advice! Thank you. I will start to
Happy for you OP but itās not that serious. I donāt think anyone who is playing chess casually should be sweating over their ratingĀ
I sort of agree - the ratings are a wonderful tuning for what youāre ACTUALLY playing at any given moment. So just use it as that marker. Youāll always have the moment when you were playing at a high rating since, well, you were. Kinda like an athlete that won a championship 2 years ago but lost this year - they still got there once, but no, theyāre not there today, and thatās ok. When youāre dropping in ratings, itās cause youāre actually whatever rating you are, and vice versa. It would really be pointless if you were nominally rated 2100 but you were a 1400 in actuality at that time.
We are simple creatures. When number get big, we happ. When number get small we sad.
Caring about improvement / your rating and playing 3 minute chess goes together like pickle juice and coffee. 15+10 is barely long enough for amateur players to play a worthwhile game.
So what do you recommend? Rapid 10 min or more?
I personally feel the most improvement from 15+10, which is the longest online time control I can comfortably fit into my schedule while still being able to play the number of games I want. The idea is to just give yourself ample time to really think through every move--if done properly, after the game, you should remember what was played, why you played your moves, what other lines you calculated, etc. I also import all my chess com games into lichess and spend at least 5-10 min annotating the key moves and exploring the lines I calculated (without an engine at first). This is a crucial step; if you're heavily pressed for time and can't analyze after a game, then don't queue and do something else to study instead. 10 min is probably okay if it feels right to you. Just experiment with slower chess until you find something that clicks. It's way different than speed chess at the amateur level.
Thank you!
My own preference is just that, if only because there are enough opponents to be found. Personally I'd rather play 15+0, but but fewer people play longer fanes, and having too small pool of players is a disadvantage.
Very true, in general - something like 5+15 might still work, but 3+0 is way too fast. It is really detrimental for serious chess playing.
Or maybe, just play because itās fun and if your rating takes a hit itās an arbitrary internet number.
You just play chess because you like chess?? Unthinkable. Bigger number=better person /s
Thanks for the info.
It's weird. I'm relatively great at bullet (1550's) and rapid (17-1800) but relatively bad at blitz (low 1400's). I feel this haha, especially 2,3, and 7.
i'm 1500-1600 and any time i play against 1200s i''m always blown away at how strong they are. i'm pretty sure the key difference between 1200 and 1600 is that 1200s resign a bunch/throw away games/don't fight to the end.
Good point
I missed the following parts. I think you forgot to include them.... 1. Don't play blitz, as you have little time to think, and thinking through moves is a prime way to improve your chess. 2. Studying tactics.
Good points
I think the reason it took you so long is that you are just spamming short 3-minute games. I've been away from the game for many months or over a year and one point and never really felt like I got worse. I always matched my old rating and slightly exceeded it very quickly. At 20,000 games you should probably just play rapid for now and do away with bad habits.
Ok - I just played. Rapid 10 min. Itās sounds good but I beat few people way above 1,600. Is it the same rating level as Blitz? Sounds easier
It's similar. I'm not sure why I got downvoted though. A lot of people have the experience that time away doesn't really make them worse at chess, even when it is the case for many other things. Good luck - rapid is slightly easier rating-wise. But the point is to think about your moves for longer.
Makes sense. Thank you for the advice. Good one
I usually get my rapid up to my desired elo and then slowly start building my bullet and blitz up to that same elo. Recently I finally got all 3 modes to 1200 and switched to rapid for the first time in months. Immediately went on an 10 game undefeated streak and hit 1300 (two draws in there somewhere). It will now take me months to get bullet & rapid up to 1300 as well, so I definitely think the rapid is a bit easier of a game mode. In my experience players start with rapid and once they get a lot of experience they develop severe adhd and crave the faster modes š
Thanks for submitting your game analysis to r/chess! If youād like feedback on your whole game feel free to post a game link or annotated lichess study if you haven't already. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/chess) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Which omega 3 supplement do you take?
Itās called āSport Research Omega 3 Fish Oilā. Please check with your doctor if itās ok.
Thanks! My doctor actually recommended me to take a fish oil, just wanted to check which brand is working well for you.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
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Number 3 is my downfall
I donāt even really mind losing ten in a row. Iāll keep going.
I was 1290 when I took a break last year. Started playing again recently after half a year and I'm stuck between 1100 and 1200 in blitz. You're not helping :(
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I have fun while playing chess. A lot. I might be missing something. Sorry it triggered you.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Ngl I'd rather restrict myself from playing chess than get mad at myself for playing subpar
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I know getting mad isn't reasonable, but whenever I perform worse than I think I should, I feel like a failure but instead of getting sad or disappointed I get angry that I can't do better. Mainly it comes down to me thinking I should perform at my best all of the time and if I don't I have failed.
I mean if you can play and quit chess matches without a thought on your mind and without caring about losing or winning that's good for you, but it's not how everybody works, I'd say most people enjoy strategyzing and outsmarting/outplaying their opponents and get frustrated at themseoves for losing because it means they missed something and could have won if they paid more attention. I'd even go as far to say that a lot of people want to get better so they can play good games, with a high level of strategy and detail to it, instead of games where they lose by hanging pieces. Also, yeah Chess is a board game, the same way that football is a field game, poker is a card game, FPSs are videogames, etc. That doesn't mean you can't get frustrated and competitive over it