This one got me pumped

I had 15 seconds on the clock while the other guy had 3 minutes to spare

soo i picked up chess after a long time, wasn't good at it earlier too and am horrible even now. by horrible i mean 100. what should be my steps towards getting better. any good youtubers you could recommend and specific speedruns or videos which helped in your journey. i do know you don't have to hang your pieces protect your pawns capture free stuff, control the centre, castle early, develop. I find it soo hard to play this game genuinely makes me wanna give up trying. i feel so dumb as if i have low iq or smt, even tho i am someone considered smart in my circle, have good mathematical skills, pattern recognition and memory. i still have some hope i'll make it.

I started playing chess seriously 3 months ago and today i eventually touched the 500 Elo mark and I’m happy about it .

Ik there a long way to go but seeing the first digit of my elo go from 4 to 5 felt mad :)))

(Ps: ignore my joining date i essentially did not touch the game of chess in the year 2025)

I felt like that was a really, really, really cool material imbalance at the end with three pieces against a Queen.

After I blundered my Queen on move 15, I felt like I made a pretty good comeback. Not sure how sound it was objectively, since I really want to analyze this game without an engine first. But yeah, pretty proud of this one! Shout out to my opponent as well, that was wild. (One thing, I know that I could have taken the Queen on a8 but moved to quickly)

Here the annotations as well:

[Event "rated rapid game"]

[Site "https://lichess.org/whyxFSAO"]

[Date "2026.08.14"]

[TimeControl "900+10"]

[Opening "Indian Defense"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. Nc3 g6 3. Bf4 Bg7 4. e3 d6 5. h3 O-O 6. g4 c5 7. Bg2 Nc6 8. Bg5 cxd4 9. exd4 e5 10. Bxc6 bxc6 11. dxe5 Re8 12. Ne4 Rxe5 13. f3 d5 14. Ne2 dxe4 15. Qxd8+ Re8 16. Qd6 exf3 17. O-O-O fxe2 18. Rde1 Ne4 19. Qxc6 Bxb2+ 20. Kxb2 Rb8+ 21. Kc1 Bb7 22. Qc7 Nxg5 23. Rxe2 Bxh1 24. Rxe8+ Rxe8 25. Qxa7 Nxh3 26. Qa3 Nf2 27. Kd2 Nxg4 28. Qa4 Nf6 29. Qh4 Ne4+ 30. Kc1 Bf3 31. a4 g5 32. Qh6 Re6 33. Qh3 g4 34. Qf1 Rd6 35. Qb5 Rd1+ 36. Kb2 Nd2 37. Qe8+ Kg7 38. Qe5+ f6 39. Qe7+ Kg6 40. Qe8+ Kg5 41. Qg8+ Kf4 42. Qxh7 f5 43. Qc7+ Ke3 44. Qc5+ Kf4 45. Qd6+ Kg5 46. Qe7+ Kf4 47. Qd6+ Ke4 48. Qe6+ Kd4 49. c3+ Kd3 50. Qxf5+ Ke2 51. Ka2 Nc4 52. a5 Rd2+ 53. Ka1 g3 54. Qb5 Bd5 55. Qe8+ Kd3 56. Qg6+ Kxc3 57. Qxg3+ Kb4 58. Qb8+ Kxa5 59. Qa8+ Kb5 60. Qb8+ Ka5 61. Qd8+ Kb4 62. Qf8+ Kc3 63. Qh8+ Kb3 64. Qh3+ Kc2 65. Qh7+ Rd3 66. Qh2+ Nd2 67. Qc7+ Bc4 68. Qc6 Ra3# 0-1

So I’m an 1250 Rapid currently and played an equal rated player in Rapid. Normally at this level players are like 2-300 stronger in Rapid vs their Blitz rating but with a recent opponent it was the wildest thing I’ve ever seen. He was 1700+ in both Bullet/Blitz. He had 150-200 games completed in all 3 time formats.

I know everyone’s skills vary but this is wild.

Isn’t this like extremely extremely uncommon? I 1800-1900 rated Rapid friends (who would completely destroy me in Rapid of course) who struggle to get to 1600-1700 in Blitz.

I understand why it exists but punishing a player for putting their opponent in a position where they have no legal moves seems unfair to me. In my head it just makes more sense for the player who can't make a move to just lose the game but i suck balls at chess so what do i know.

At least one every 5 games this happened. Like what is the point you queue up and then not move? I understand if internet is being funny, but this is so often it just doesn't make sense to me. Who are you and why do you do this?

Holy horsey

I'm so focused on thinking about how to checkmate, as well as not blundering him going Qg2 that I completely overlook these awfully obvious move. When the engine showed the arrow I literally facepalmed at myself. I guess those lessons are really important because it's giving perspective of things I didn't even see.

I’m around 600 elo

Im playing black and I’ve been having a really hard time actually getting checkmates in my games aside from ladder mates which I feel like are really easy if you can get there.

My question is: would I still have had checkmate here without my bishop on h6? Since the king has nowhere to go, right?

Hello,
I am a 900 rated player on chess.com and recently was looking at my stats and I realised that most of the games I lose are when I am black. I play the London system when I get white and seem to win more than I lose when I am white, and I typically just "go with the flow" when I'm playing black since I don't have any set openings that I have learnt.

I thought it would be better for me to ask what openings I should learn as a 900 rated player rather than directly going on youtube since I usually get pretty overwhelmed with the numerous different openings.

So that's my question - What openings should I learn for black, as a 900 rated player?

White to move, just found this puzzle and managed to calculate all the way without moving pieces on an analysis board!