Sort of a vicious cycle where I generally end on a loss that sticks out to me. I have plateaued at 1500 for several years, will often sink down to 1300 and back up again. Haven't studied chess or made any real attempts to improve on 1500. Not sure my continued chess playing is much more than a (bad) habit. Anyone else still playing while being pretty unfulfilled throughout the process?
As a 1500 I only remember my losses. If I lose it's my fault, and if it's bad enough I will stop playing. I never remember my wins because it's the other players fault (undeserved/they blunder etc) and I hit next game.
MiscellaneousI feel like I needed to hear this today, man
Great comment. I was just thinking today (I'm 1100 btw) that I only seem to win when my opponent blunders or misses. I feel like I should only win when I've outplayed my opponent and everything else seems cheap.
But I guess the point is you still have to convert if your opponent misses so in the end don't sell myself short.
We don't know if this is true, but it's certainly a possibility.
Why expect fulfilment if you say you make no attempts to improve?
You can't win at chess, your opponent can only lose.
Why do you keep doing something that brings you no happiness? Don't waste your time on Earth mate.
This is it.
It's a game with perfect knowledge. Both players know everything every piece can do, they know every piece the opponent has, and they know where every piece on the board is. The only way to win is for your opponent to use that knowledge less well than you.
I found it helpful to make a confidence booster database. Whenever I win a good game, I put it in there. So now I have a database with only good memories, so if I really need get reminded that I can play well, I look through the database.
What I found interesting is that I have tons of games from when I had 1600-2000 in rating, and very few from recent years. Maybe I just played more fun chess back then, more gambits and less technical, or maybe my opponents just lost to more fun tactics than now, where every game is more of a grind (in a good way, but it doesn't get me aroused in the same way as a mating attack)
I just created a lichess study of all my son‘s scholastic tournament wins for him to look back on later.
The OPs problem is that they never get to win a „good“ game. They internalise losses and externalise wins. So any wins are not due to them playing well, but to their opponents playing badly.
May I ask, how have you built this database? In practical terms, how do you do it related to, for example, a game you played on chesscom. I'd love to create something similar myself.
I build it in chessbase. Great game -> into database, perhaps annotate the game to explain why it was so genius.
Chess.com has the library, which I believe is selfmade game collections as well
Lichess has studies, which is also selfmade game collections, this is always free and I like the ability to annotate there
If you think about it, all wins are the opposition making suboptimal moves somewhere. It's about who is less bad. Any clever/brilliant strategy you come up with only works because either your opponent was already in a worse position and you found it, or they made sub-optimal moves after you started your strategy.
Chess is a pretty fair game. If you win it’s because you played better than your opponent. If they win it’s because they played better. Not much else to it.
Sounds like you’re dealing with some kind of reverse self-serving bias. https://www.simplypsychology.org/self-serving-bias.html
I like to go back and analyse my wins from time to time, to remind myself I can play decent chess (and also learn what I can improve).
If you win it’s because you played better than your opponent. If they win it’s because they played better. Not much else to it.
I don't know if I fully agree with this. It's definitely true the large majority of the time. But not always. For example you might have played better 99% of the game but the one instant you slacked off leads to an error that happens to be game losing. It's an interesting artifact of how some positions are much sharper than others.
Separately there is a concept of practical luck: both players can go into a line- the better player having calculated deeper/better and concluding its better for them, but as the moves get played a hidden resource appears that changes the evaluation that the weaker player can use. This can happen even though neither player was aware of this hidden resource before ending up in the forced variation. In essence the weaker player got lucky. Can we really say they were playing better?
Online there are also effects due to disconnections, lag, and mouseslips (but we can call the mouseslips lack of skill).
I go out on a limb here. I think we remember more mistakes (although in general we do not work on them/analyse them) because normally mistakes would kill you (or ruin your life) in a society that is not post scarcity.
It is something to not repeat often.
Wins instead, those you can repeat a lot, they are good.
The link that is missing is that society (or our instinct) barely tells you "if it hurts, stop and reflect on it". A lot of people do this also in chess (and similar games), they don't stop analyzing things. Even wins may be worth the analysis. One never wins in a perfect way.
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3mo
by who makes the first or more severe mistakes
You are correct but as Savielly Tartakowe said: The winner is the one who makes the next-to-last mistake.
But this is how every game of chess is decided. If you look at for example Caruana's Blitz games where he loses it's going to be because of one or two garbage moves. Okay, his garbage moves are better than your garbage moves but this is still how it always goes; One player is going to do something silly at some point and if the other guy takes advantage then they will win.
I teabag on my opponents online and OTB after every win. It can be in a tournament, in the park, in a restaurant with a nice view.
What was your question?
Join a real club. Play OTB. Not only will this make it a social thing, but with longer time controls you will see that it's not all about mistakes, or at least that those mistakes aren't entirely spontaneous.
I think the introduction of engines really ruined chess for a lot of people. You opponent likely aren't playing that bad! Your wins aren't just them blundering, but will include a lot of slow out playing until your opponent cracked. Engines might say this move was bad because of some line, but you objectively looked at the board and found a response your opponent couldn't find a response too. That's still skillful!
Yes, I know that feeling rather well and it sucks. And I’m over 2000 FIDE. However it seems to me its causes have nothing to do with chess and more with your psychological configuration. It may be possible that you experience something similar elsewhere in your life and you may want to consider finding the roots of this.
Chess related consequences I‘ve encountered are a tendency to overestimate my opponents and underestimate my own position. And a lack of resilience. One way you could address this is to look at games played by fearless attackers like Tal in the one hand, or to study some books about tenacious defence. Work on your optimism and resilience. But don’t expect any miracles. I‘ve struggled with this for decades and still do, but it’s gotten somewhat better.
Oh, one last thing: For me it got to the point that I stopped analyzing my own games as I was constantly so disgusted by them. This has bad consequences of course. It’s better to try to make peace and study them. When doing that, try to put focus on points where you lost faith in the position. Categorize your mistakes and try to figure out in which circumstances you are prone to make a specific kind of mistake.
Tell me you only analyze your games with an engine without telling me....
Yes, objectively speaking chess is a draw (yes, it is a draw. If someone is going to reply with the "bUt We HaVeN't PrOvEd It YeT" stuff, just shut up) so any deviation from that result will come from a mistake. Your mission as a chess player is to force your opponent into making a mistake and then capitalizing from it. You will never make a mistake unless your opponent causes some sort of trouble that forces you to defend precisely (and fail in the effort).
Yes, objectively speaking what changed the evaluation is the wrong move your opponent made, but the build-up into that spot is just as important as the final move itself.
Least condescending r/chess user
There's a Ben Finegold lecture somewhere on youtube all about blunders. You should watch it - it might put things into perspective. And as others have already said, mistakes are what chess is all about.
Play longer time controls
Good game design requires players to start on equal footing. This means that in a turn based decision making game, if every player were to make the best decision, it would end in a draw. I consider this a good thing.
When we analyze games and we look at how “good” or “bad” our play was, we don’t treat it like any other real-time sport, but we absolutely should! Especially when there’s a clock, But even just considering tempo.
Endurance is a MASSIVE part of the game. Are you managing your time well? Are you putting pressure on and getting your opponent to calculate under time pressure? Are you forcing them to think about more and more things on the board?
I’m only 1600, but I feel like most of my improvements 1200-present have been endurance based. Am I managing my time well? Am I keeping pressure up? Do they have to work harder than me to survive? I play mostly rapid but I consider myself to be playing well when the games are consistently ending in time trouble for my opponents.
Hey, maybe you’re just losing interest in the game, but I love watching my opponents collapse. At 1500 you’re better than 95% of players, your opponents aren’t meat bags, they are decent players who are collapsing. Feel good about that!
Just so you know, it will always be like this. The rating system is designed to optimize for a 50% win rate for everyone. So unless you are literally Magnus Carlsen, you should expect to keep losing a lot of games.
And even if you are Magnus Carlsen, you should expect to keep losing a lot of games against the computer!
You cause you opponents to make mistakes...even at a simple level.
Let's say you forked your opponent...that's a result of you; YOU caused your opponent to make a mistake. Look for things like that, and it should help change your mindset
It's a bit unusual to decrease 200 points in rating. I just believe that your strength hasn't completely sunk in 1500 level yet.
Chess is a two player competition based on who makes the least amount of mistakes, or the least severe mistakes, and not a competition between who makes a mistake and who does not make a mistake.
A game without mistakes is practically impossible unless the opponent blunders in the early game or unless you are a super GM. Embrace the mistakes. Learn from them. Minimize them. Don't be afraid of them. Mistakes are an integral part of chess because without mistakes there is no chess as it is a game with perfect information.
What helped me is having a genuine sit down and sorting through what I enjoy about Chess, what I wanted out of Chess, the time I could sacrifice to improve at Chess, what I would realistically achieve in Chess given the other information and, finally, if it was worth it.
In the end I decided to take a pretty big step back from the game. But I'll still study, do puzzles and play as I want. But making that decision to only take the game as seriously as I have fun doing really helped me.
As to your problem. Yes, essentially every game boils down to who makes the least mistakes while also capitalizing on their opponents mistakes. On a surface level, this sounds lame. But this summary misses out on all the skills, knowledge and discipline it takes to execute that simple premise. Not making mistakes is practically impossible for a human, so is spotting every mistake.
It's because those things are impossible that Chess is an undeniable game of skill. You are putting your knowledge of the board and your skill set against your opponent everytime you play. Everytime your opponent makes a mistake and you capitalize, you are out playing your opponent.
This becomes more obvious the more skilled you become. When the mistakes aren't quite as obvious, you really begin to respect the skill it takes to spot them and take advantage.
Bro its 100% IMPOSSIBLE to win at chess if your opponent doesn't make a mistake so don't sweat it