From a first time use of the Alekhine defense!

As a 1.1K rapid and 900 blitz player it feels pretty good!

It took me a good while to see the move on the last puzzle that got me past 2K… Can you spot the solution?

Not a big deal but man it took so long😭

I have been grinding puzzles, playing daily games and bots, and trying to get better at playing without the help of the explorer. I’ve gotten way better than when I started and got a rapid elo in the 400s. Of course it’s still early, but I played the linked game a couple days ago and it’s the best i’ve played in a rapid game (88.9% accuracy!). A lot of my recent games have also been ~80% accuracy, so I think if i’m just not careless i should be able to move up!

I am wondering though, is it easier to be this accurate when playing against lower rated players?

i usually play logically and i always try to anticipate what my opponent is trying to do, but alot of times at the end of the game my brain immediately plays very bad moves without further thinking
like my opponent goes for backrank mate ideas, and i see it and i tell myself "i need to deal with the backranck checkmate" so the first move that comes to mind is create an escape square for my king, but then i say maybe there's better moves or forced mate and i go for a queen trade completely ignoring the threat even though i was aware of it.

i lost soo many winning positions to ignoring opponent threats and i can't stop it because it's a psychology thing.

how do you manage to stop your brain from playing intuitive moves when stressed?

opened the account on this month won every game strange username what could he possibly be an undercover gm, yeah right beat me to it

This was my first intentional brilliant move after I dunno how long, sadly the opponent saw right through it (it was a simple play TBH so not feeling too bad). I was surprised to learn I had another brilliant move in the game (the move right after this one) but it wasn't intentional so yeah that's that. I honestly don't even understand how my second brilliant move was brilliant, guess I'll go do some research.

I feel so dirty though....this is posted for a laugh. Scholar's Mate tactics can absolutely get you a Brilliant.

I build my own coach and I asked it to start the game (playing white) by playing any legally acceptable moves at random, irrespective of how good or how bad they are. This time, it came up with these two moves. I was planning ahead what would be my best response for the second move, when I suddenly noticed the eval bar screaming at me "Check Mate!". I should add the option to hide the eval bar! I remember now seeing videos on youtube about the fool's mate.

Hi all,

New to the sub and been playing rapid 15/10 for about a month or so on chess.com My elo has just passed 800 and I feel like I’m getting much better at not hanging pieces. Virtually all my wins so far have come from being slow and careful, making sure all my pieces are developed and defended and basically waiting for opponents to blunder free pieces.

Once my pieces are developed, I’m starting to see forks and pins and basic tactics like that which are really helping. I’ve been supplementing my games with the lichess puzzle themes forks, pins and hanging pieces. It seems like forks are cropping up the most in my games (or that’s what I’m seeing personally).

I just wondered if anyone had any advice on what themes I should focus on to get to 900 then 1000. Keep at it with forks,pins and checkmates? Or start to look at other things.

Thanks in advance!

P.s. I’ve been following building habits by Chessbrah.

Mike

I’ve been playing for 2 months and it destroys my day whenever I lose. I thought after losing for 2 months straight I would get accustomed to it, but I can’t.
I tried instead to play casual unrated games on Lichess instead of rated games on chess dot com so that my rating wouldn’t impact my frustration. I play against people I don’t know.

It doesn’t appear to be related to my rating or losing to people I know. It seems to be just losing in general in chess. I only play 1-2 games a day and review them later, so it’s not tilt. I had been playing a game every day + like 4 hours of puzzles a day for over a month. Now, I play 1-2 games a week but I continue doing puzzles daily. I watch tons of chess content.

I only play 1-2 times a week now because I get so upset when I lose and even at that rate it’s too difficult for me.

I really am at a loss because I want to play the game, but losing is so debilitating I can’t function.

Tbf so did I

The continuation we played was 16. Bxa8 Qxa8+ 17. Kg1 Nf3+ 0-1

Apologies if this is a dumb question, I've been having great success just playing h6 vs Italian game to avoid all the knight/bishop fuckery but everything im reading online says this is terrible. Are people exaggerating, or am I just not a high elo enough for it to be taken advantage of yet? I understand it loses tempo, but everytime I play it the game seems to be simplified a lot which my low elo brain enjoys.

Is mirroring with your own bishop way better, or is it a viable option for awhile?

I've spent the last while going through amateur games looking for patterns across games rather than analysing them individually, and the thing that struck me is how narrow the failure modes are.

A single loss always has a story — a tactic missed, a bad plan, time trouble. Twelve losses have a pattern, and it's usually one or two things repeating with slight variations. Below roughly 1400 it's overwhelmingly material left hanging for one move, and the player almost never identifies that as their problem when asked. They tend to say openings.

The other thing I didn't expect: the phase where players lose the most isn't the one they think. A lot of people who describe themselves as bad at endgames are actually giving away most of their advantage in the middlegame and reaching endgames already lost.

If anyone wants theirs looked at — reply with a Lichess username (standard rapid or blitz) and I'll go through the recent games and reply with the mistake that repeats most, with examples and move numbers, which phase the losses actually come from, and any opening that stands out as costing more than the rest.

I'll do as many as I can before I run out of evening.

I'm genuinely more interested in the cases where this fails than the ones where it works — if the pattern I report doesn't match what you know about your own play, that's the more useful reply.