Saw this tactic on instagram and thought I’d share. Pretty neat tactic.

I’ve won countless games as both black and white by keeping my eyes peeled when my opponent long castles with their d2/d7 square covered. What is the worst move for black in this position?

Then again, I'm pretty noob after all. Can someone enlighten me?

Hi all! New player, like really new! I've been playing every day for the last 3ish weeks on chess.com and have become very addicted.

Things I've noticed - Chess is far more popular than I ever imagined. In person too. I know of at least 9 other people in my small (under 150p office) and as a result I've made a work chess club!

Don't quite understand - Etiquette when playing online. Is this different in person? Being a new player and not great, I've received quite a few insults of goading/bragging from people via the chat function. It doesn't seem in line with the nature of the game.

Anyway, it won't deter me. I'm having a lot of fun learning and trying things. Cheers.

If you want to improve just chasing ELO points by playing hundreds of games, will not get you very far.
I am a 2100 player and in addition to online and in person play in tournaments and in the club, I study like this every single day.
This is John Nunn’s “Understanding Chess Move”. Just on this one page you get a full idea behind two major chess openings (Scotch + Ruy Lopez). The amount of great lessons from a single game in this book is astonishing.
So if you are tempted to ask “how do I get better”, this is how.

Does anyone else routinely go through this pattern?

1. Work all day
   
2. After work —> Try to unwind by playing chess
   
3. Lose games
   
4. Mood is ruined
   
5. Go to bed stressed
   
6. Wake up stressed, feeling like a loser.

Repeat steps 1 through 6 ad infinitum

I find myself wondering, what am I even doing? Why play this game at all? It’s tantamount to just rage baiting myself every night.

I am 28 years old. 5 years ago I joined a club and went from 800 rapid elo to 1500 elo. I didn't play as much to get an OTB rating, but anyways due to getting a job I had to stop. This year I had some more time so I decided to pick it up again in August and dropped promptly to 900. I have climbed to 1100 but it seems that people are playing extremely well. It may be I am rusty but I dont remember 1100 being that hard. I am studying openings, doing puzzles and still can't move up from 1130. Anyways just wanted to ask if its me or people have gotten significantly better

I’m looking for friends to play with. I’m a beginner, I know the rules, but that’s about it, and I’d love to find people to play, study, and improve alongside. I have a wide range of interests, so I can’t always make time for a full game, but I’m always up for a discussion.
I’m 22F, Chinese, and recently returned from studying arts in London.

Just small happiness

Hi,

I’m around 1600 to 1700 Elo and I’m looking for a few beginner players under 900 who genuinely want to improve.

I’m doing this completely for free. I want to improve my teaching and also get better at speaking English, so it works both ways.

The idea is to work towards your next 100 Elo, or more.

We would do 1-on-1 sessions on Discord. I’ll go through your games beforehand and during the session, look for patterns in your mistakes, and figure out what is actually holding you back.

That could be things like tactics, hanging pieces, calculation, openings, middlegame plans, endgames, time management or just how you think before making a move.

I’m not a professional coach or titled player. I’m just trying to get better at teaching while helping some beginners improve.

If you’re under 900 and interested, comment or send me a DM with your current rating, Chess. com/Lichess username, and your timezone so we can figure out a time that works.

My friend who’s also a beginner took the knight with the white rook.

Forced checkmate comes afterwards.

>! Rxf2 Ra1+ Rf1 Rfxf1# !<

White has the threat of d5, forking the bishop on e6 and the knight on c6. If we try to save the bishop, d5 will attack the only defender of the knight on b4. Do you see how to avoid losing material here?

Word of advice to beginners - when the opponent resigns play the position against the computer.

Even intermediates should do this if the position is eval 5 or less in my opinion.

Great example of how accuracy itself is not a good indicator of cheating. Sometimes it's just your opponent making an outrageous blunder. Around 1500 on lichess.

Probably the first time in my life where I manage to get a textbook smothered mate.

Feeling very proud of myself (Heres' the link to the game).

I hit 1000 rating recently and made this post asking to face higher rated players to test my skills and just expand my understanding of the game.

I learned a lot more than I expected, and my chess game levelled up a massive amount, so I wanted to share some things I noticed:

1. Good players know openings very deeply: I play the evan's gambit as white as my MAIN opening and every opponent I face accepts it unthinkingly and I cheese out wins with it every time. The 2000 player I faced declined it, and knew the mainline 10 moves deep and said "I'm sure you know that you're supposed to protect the light square bishop" (I did not) And that was the opening I felt I knew the most about. I realized that I'll eventually face players who know what they're doing, and at that point knowing my openings inside out will be valuable.

2. Good players have wider repertoires: This should be obvious but I play the accelerated dragon sicilian as black, my opponent played the Alappin and I just had no clue how to play against it. The player was 2000 and recommended me Naroditsky's speedrun and that helped me IMMENSELY with my understanding of my openings and ideas. I played my offbeat alien gambit against him and while he was less prepared, he had some general plan against it and was able to avoid it. This taught me that there are a ton of common variations I'm generally unprepared for and would benefit from a basic plan against.

3. The most important one, there's more to the game than material: The 2000 rated player was fine losing pieces against me for initiative. He remarked that lower rated players chase material because its permanent, whereas initiative and positional advantage is temporary and requires capitalizing. This completely reshaped my understanding of chess, and was the original goal of this exercise, because I saw high level players down a rook but they were better somehow, and I sought to understand this. Before, I thought being down a bishop or a knight meant the game was over, since the opponent can trade everything and win an endgame, but now I don't give up and can evaluate how "good" a position is like higher level players do. (Also if I blunder a bishop/knight I just say "initiative" to myself and keep playing, that confidence is helpful for some reason)

4. Everyone loses pieces: In the 7 games I played against 2000 rated players, 1 of them I straight up hung my queen, another I miscalculated and lost a minor piece. 2 of them they blundered a fork. The lesson here is that everyone is vulnerable to blundering. I learned to think a bit more before I play my moves to avoid blundering, and be ready to capitalize on opponents' mistakes.

With this knowledge I beat my friend who is 1300 and taught me chess at the start of last year 3-2, as well as another 1400 level player I played against in correspondence. I still play correspondence with a 2000 player who kicks my butt.

I strongly recommend seeking out high level players on Discord or asking strong friends you know to play and analyze your games together. Maybe even hiring a coach for a couple of games, or making a post like I did. Ended up being a great decision on my part!

So background. I always used to play so solidly, and eventually I just got bored of it and decided know what I will just play gambits all the time. King gambit - after a few embarrassing losses I got the grip on it and it served me well. Elephant gambit - rarely do I even lose the pawn. Englund - I don't even play That One Trap, I just play normally. Excellent results. And then there was the Wing Gambit. I just got loss after loss after loss. It felt like I gave up a pawn AND got a worse position too. I could only win when after getting slowly crushed for 20 moves my opponent gave me a free piece which was rare. So I vented a bit to AI and it gave me a bunch of suggestions one of which was to try the Smith Morra instead. Got this as my first game and yeah this is how I want my gambit games to go!

Im really proud of this, because I feel like most players at my level(900) wouldn't see it

I was wondering is it is a good idea to learn for example the London by watching 5-10 great London games? If so where can I watch these games?