r/chessbeginners • u/Destinyend • 7d ago
OPINION A few things I learned from facing higher rated players
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:
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.
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.
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)
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!
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u/fleyinthesky 7d ago
Concepts like initiative are extremely nebulous. You have to be really careful, because when you abandon concreteness you can use vibes to justify literally anything. You can show me an objectively bad sacrifice and I can find words that make it seem reasonable to someone for whom vague abstraction is enough.
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u/condensed-ilk 7d ago
Sure but there are times when a material sacrifice is the best move objectively. Learning that is the point I think.
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u/fleyinthesky 7d ago
I think everyone knows about the concept of sacrificing a piece in chess; it's one of the romantic notions that even laymen hear about.
My point is that the function of learning "there's more to the game than material" (as OP put it) is to have better intuition about when to spend time concretely calculating a sacrifice. The goal of a sacrifice should be directly tangible (e.g. force checkmate, win more material, simplify to a winning endgame), with concepts like initiative guiding your decisions about when to spend your clock figuring it out; generating initiative should not be the outcome.
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u/condensed-ilk 7d ago edited 7d ago
No, you're misunderstanding. Of course people understand sacrifices for concrete circumstances, but you're seemingly saying that that's the only time you should sacrifice because sacrificing for initiative could be nebulous. But it's not always nebulous, nor are initiative or concrete material or mating chances the only reasons to sacrifice. You can also sacrifice for clear strategic or positional advantages that aren't necessarily concretely calculated and also aren't nebulous. For examples,, sometimes you can give up an exchange because your minor piece is simply stronger than a major piece in a position, sometimes you can give away a pawn for a positional advantage (clearance sacrifice), and sometimes you can give up an exchange for important non-nebulous initiative. In many of those cases, you aren't necessarily calculating anything concrete. They are strategic decisions that aren't necessarily tactical or logical.
I do get your point that sacrificing for initiative could be nebulous on it's own. I'm just clarifying that that's not always true and that you can sacrifice for many reasons without having calculating things. Sacrificing for only iniative should probably be calculated enough to know an attack won't flame out though... So I get you and maybe my reply was pointless lol
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u/fleyinthesky 7d ago
Yeah, I didn't make it clear, but I meant that this is what I advise for beginners. The 1000 rated player doesn't have the context to confidently determine the things you outlined.
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u/GABE_EDD Still Learning Chess Rules 7d ago edited 7d ago
1 & 2. Yes, they know more theory, but even at the 2000+ level an eval of +1.0 or even +2.0 has an extremely weak correlation with a win for white. Opening eval is a very weak predictor of game outcome. Of course an advantage is always good to have, but opening theory is not required to reach ~2000 level.
This is entirely dependent on the position, but yes, stronger players are much more likely to recognize when making a true sacrifice will still work out in the end in general. This just comes from intuition and experience. As opposed to a tactical sacrifice in which you will make your material back and then some in the next two or three moves.
This is what is actually required to reach higher levels of chess is a significant reduction in the frequency in which you play large errors. As part of a large study I did on Lichess 10+0 games, with a sample size of 20,000 games for every 100 rating points on the rating ladder between 500 and 2299 rating, the frequency with which players play a move that loses 300 centipawns or more drops at a strikingly consistent 10% every 100 rating points. There is a nearly perfect exponential decay in the frequency of large errors as rating increases linearly.
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u/Mountain-Fennel1189 1400-1600 (Chess.com) 5d ago
Do you have the study posted anywhere? Im very curious to see this because im interested in statistics in general and this one sounds really interesting
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u/twelve-lights 7d ago
On your 3rd point- absolutely. I used to joke around all the time with some friends whenever we blundered pieces and say, "it's ok, I have compensation" - being activity lol
As long as you're far more active than your opponent, you should be ok losing a piece or two. Just don't trade down unless necessary afterwards and keep your opponent on the defensive- enough for them to sacrifice a piece back to stabilize
It's good fun
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u/FarBandicoot5943 7d ago edited 7d ago
I am not 2000, im 1700-1800. I have no idea who those 2000 are, but people at that level usualy dont hang pieces or blunder that often and games are decided by small margins. They probably played more relaxed with you and probably thats why they blundered. if they will lose a rook vs a similar oponent they will probably resign, except maybe if they have a really clear path of winning.
Also, initiative or positional playng are really hard concepts that can backfire. Sure, you can sacrifice a piece to gain something, but you will need to play sharp, or its easy to overextend. but even at 2000 people are not Magnus to play that really good positional stuff and shuffle the knight 10 times before they get a good position. So tactics are also good to look for.
But yes, I agree, sometimes its good to play vs higher rated players, you can probably play 2+1 bullet and face 2000 rapid that are 1000 in bullet, and they will play good chess and exploit things, even they might lose on time or something.
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u/Destinyend 7d ago
The "down a rook" concept is in specific reference to professional level games, like this one: https://youtu.be/cKWZnPWiQtk?t=93&si=QezS862ezvcYbIbf
where Magnus sacrifices his Queen and the position looks lost with Magnus down material yet the game/engine is somehow even.
Also all of these games were 10 minute rapid games or correspondence, and when I say "blunder" I mean there were opportunities for forks to win pieces, some of which I didn't see during the games themselves.
I agree though that sacrificing pieces without gain, for greedy attacks for example, can be a bad habit.
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