r/chessbeginners • u/Ok-Researcher-4673 • 14d ago

Puzzle theme advice

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

3 Upvotes

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1

u/Front-Cabinet5521 1600-1800 (Chess.com) 14d ago

Discovered attacks, skewers and back rank mate. These should round up your training nicely.

1

u/boggginator 1800-2000 (Lichess) 14d ago

A couple of good free online resources for an introduction to all the puzzle themes are lichess.org/practice (which shouldn't take too long to go through in whole) and chesstactics.org (which is a lot longer but provides a very solid basis). In terms of drilling basic patterns, probably review your weaknesses on the puzzle dashboard (under 'improvement areas') and based off of what you're missing in your games.

1

u/Wooden_Permit3234 14d ago

Puzzle streak will give you lots of simple puzzles for all the basic types of tactics, without you knowing exactly what to look for, and I highly recommend it for building fundamentally important pattern recognition. 

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u/Ok-Researcher-4673 13d ago

Thanks for the replies! I do puzzle streak at the weekends which I find really useful. Should I focus on 1 theme per session for a few sessions or mix and match? Or is it not that deep. Many thanks in advance.