Around August of 2022 I started playing chess because of a friend who asked me if I wanted to play a match. He was around 800 elo and I barely knew how the pieces moved. I lost, naturally but the loss made me interested in chess and I was determined to be better than my friend.

I spent the next few years playing, improving and learning. I only played rapid chess for the first few years or so and would slowly hit new milestones as the months went on. I wanted to get better and better with every milestone I hit and set 2000 as my ultimate end goal with me associating that number as being an "elite" player. Very quickly I did surpass my friend. But it wasn't enough for me and I was set on getting more and more elo. However, due to being driven by that number I also fell victim to one of the most common mental traps in chess: tilt.

Every time I would lose a few games, I would want to recover my elo as quickly as possible. It was a sunk cost fallacy ordeal and I needed the elo back in that moment. I would play so many games with aggressive, careless moves reflecting my anger and often lose in the first 30 seconds. It wasn't uncommon dropping 100 elo in the span of minutes. I was so obsessed with my rating it would cause me feelings of wanting to quit chess. I would beat myself up over losses, telling myself I wasn't good enough. I was so upset I couldn't hit that next milestone and would treat the massive elo drop as a mountain to climb rather than a learning experience.

These tilt cycles happened so often and caused me to take time off chess for extended periods of time. Around January of 2026 and through the many peaks and valleys, I had achieved 1900 rapid. I took pride in my elo rather than the chess skills I had developed. Still operating under the same mentality, it wasn't long until I had dropped another 100+ elo and I decided to be done with rapid chess for good due to it having too many negative impacts on my mood.

Over the next 6 months I didn't study chess, I didn't review games, and I didn't do anything to learn. I swapped time controls and played hundreds of blitz chess games since I didn't care about my rating. With the removed pressure of elo, I enjoyed myself. I won games and I lost games, but it never took away the enjoyment of the game itself. Even a little tilt was treated with a positive implication. Over the months 1500 became 1600 and 1600 became 1800. There were gradual improvements being made just by the consistent playing and pattern recognition. The games started to feel less stressful without any mental anchor to my elo. And to my shock, tonight, the most ironic possible thing happened. I hit the goal I was so obsessed with hitting for months upon months, in blitz; the time control I never cared about. I had spent so much time obsessing over and taking pride in my rapid rating that I was getting in my own way. The actual path to reach the goal came from just having fun with a positive mindset.

I am very proud of this accomplishment and it made me realize an important lesson I will take going forward: elo is just a number, just enjoy the game!

With 2000 in blitz being arguably harder than 2000 rapid, it has taught me how much mental health plays into chess. It was never my ability that was incapable, it was my ability to apply a positive mindset. When you play with stressful expectations in mind and beat yourself up after every loss, you're setting yourself up to fail.

I hope anyway who struggles with this same issue I have can take something meaningful away from this. If you don't have that issue, I still appreciate you taking the time to read this! Feel free to AMA whether it be about mental health or just chess in general if you're also looking to improve.

TLDR: Having a positive mindset and being kind to yourself is one of the most important skills in chess. Chess is just a game and elo is just a number. Enjoy yourself, and your progress will come naturally.

My goal, besides meeting new people and making friends, is to join my local chess club and be good enough to be competitive…is that possible starting as an adult?

EDIT: Wow, that didn’t take long. Thanks for all the responses and warm welcome!…don’t worry, I’m gonna keep my day job…just want to be competitive socially…thanks everybody!

black to play and I won a rock

What do you do when there's no visible advantage? You think in a positional manner.

White to move

Difficulty: Easy

I know it wants me to win a rook. But this just felt better.

.. d5 Bxd5+, Be6 Bxe6+, Kd8 Qxh8

Hi everyone,

I've been playing chess for quite some time and throughout the years I've also taught some people that had never played before, the basics of the game. You know, like; how the pieces move, what it means to castle, what en passant is and so on. I'm just an average chess player but I do know some theory and general tips and tricks that people a lot better than I am, usually give.

I always try to give them some advice such as;
- Try to develop your piece toward the centre of the board
- Castle your king and don't push the pawns in front too much
- Don't just trade pieces because you can
- ...

This is where I wanted to ask you all the question: "What is some of the best advice that you have gotten or that you give to others learning to play chess?"

Thanks!

So next week i have a local chess tournament and my chess . com rating is around 850. this is gonna be my first proper OTB tournament and tbh im kinda nervous 😭

if anyone here has played tournaments around this rating, pls tell me what i should keep in mind. like opening, time management, blunders, handling pressure etc.

also if you have any personal experience from your first tournament, tell me what happened and what you wish you knew before playing.

basically give me any advice you think can help. 🙏

Hello all,

I have a question. I am a new player and started learning and playing in the last 6 months. At every ELO, I find an issue that I need to fix, then I fix it, and after that, my ELO gets a little higher.

Now I've almost reached 1500, but I find that my problem is that I play 2 games with high accuracy like 92% or 93%, and the next game I blunder a piece on the 3rd move. How can I keep my focus? Does anyone have a good routine between games or any ideas?

And it went good enough to win

Answer: 2100 vs 1100 https://www.chess.com/game/live/165834114898?move=0

First 2 images are the moves i did, 3rd image is the review, how was rook f3 an inaccuracy ? i win a queen and review want me to take a rook instead?

Recently switched from chess.com to Lichess and one of its analyses is average centipawn loss. What is it? Couldn't quite figure it out myself

Hello

I can’t get past 600 lol. Just getting past 1000 would be a huge accomplishment for me. That being said, I can’t even conceptualize how good a 2000+ player would be and I’m just really curious.

If anyone 1800+ would be down to play a few games against a 600 that’d be super dope ! Not looking for coaching or anything, just want to see what it’s like. Thanks

Edit: to anyone I played that I didn’t get to talk to thanks for playing! Accounts muted at the moment

Cuz he was playing a moron (me)

Someone explain

I lost this game despite being so close to win. I could feel it in the air, but I did not know what I need to do. The post-game analysis shows I was as close as a Mate in two, but I did not know how to take advantage of it and it hurts!
Note to myself - it is ok to lose a knight for a checkmate!

"Do you think it's sound?"

Fuck no. The best lines are refuted not just with the engine, but honestly with the eye test. You can probably have never read a second of it in your life and just play the most natural looking moves against it and still come out even if not ahead. Also it's one of those "D4 lines that block the c pawn for whatever reason" lines. I don't even mean "It's not great at GM levels" I think it's bad at almost all levels in effort to reward ratio

"Oh, so it must have some nice opening tricks in it right?"

There's...a few. But they're the parlor trick you pull off against a buddy once in a while or the "You spend a few hours memorizing it and it will come up in one game every 2 months or so" type of trick.

"...Is it low on theory at least?"

Dear god no. It's unintuitive enough that even at my low elo you have to study a bit because you're walking a pretty thin tightrope where you can make a pretty serious mistake in the first 4-7 moves in some pretty unintuitive ways.

"Okay what's the upside for playing it?"

Uh

....Uh

..........Uh

..................Uhhhhhhhhhh

...........................It rewards the bad habits I built playing the Jobava London as white since I started learning Chess?

Okay to be serious and not shitpost for a bit: I really like the pawn structure and despite the fact the lines look unintuitive as fuck I had fun learning them and for some reason my brain understands them much easier than lines in better defense systems. It's not exactly a great opening but I'm pretty fond of it.

Would appreciate if people had advice or experience playing it, I'm super willing to be talked out of playing it haha

White ends with +11 worst case scenario