How I got 1700 on Chess.com
Hello, everybody! Great news — I achieved my goal of 1700 rating points on chess.com.
I want to share my new conclusions with you.
Here is a list of articles about my chess exploration.
Exercises
Have you tried exercises on chess.com? Or theory lessons? It was so boring for me. I don’t know why.
Because of that I was thinking that exercises are not useful for me. Before I received advice from Joel Loo to try lichess.org. Thanks, buddy.
I found these exercises more challenging and interesting for me. You should give it a try.
There are two main benefits:
- You learn how to move figures in specific situations. That’s important in the endgame. I am always losing my advantage in the endgame.
- You warm up your brain. Try to play right after exercising. You’ll see that your vision of the board and potential moves is higher than usual.
Conclusion: find exercises which will be a good fit for you, solve them and you’ll improve your playing skill.
Theory
“Don’t make mistakes”. Or make fewer mistakes at least — I add. That rule is so simple but it has a really deep meaning. And it really works.
When I play chess, I want to attack my opponent’s king and win a game by mate. I make so many mistakes on my way.
There is a feature on chess.com — game analyzer. And every analysis shows that I make mistakes and blunders. When I started to control my moves more carefully and worry about mistakes, I found that I make less mistakes. Now I have several games without mistakes and blunders in the analyzer. And yes, it got me more wins.
A blunder is a move when you lose your figure or a game right after that move.
By the way, there are fewer mistakes after exercising because vision of the board is higher.
Conclusion: theory rules are essential wisdom of many generations of chess players. Make them part of your playing.
Thirst to play
I found that I play chess in two situations:
- I really want to play;
- I have free time, don’t know what to do, and launch chess app;
When did I get better results? I bet you know the answer.
I try to stop playing just because I’m bored. I try to play it rarely. I start reading and try speed reading. But that’s another story.
Conclusion: the more you want to play, the better result.
Luck
Or not so luck. I received a message from chess.com that my opponent cheated. I got 7 points. It’s a nice trifle.
Conclusion: It’s just luck. Don’t count on luck. Be a better player.
What’s next?
Next goal is 1800 rating points. I think it would take more time than achieving 1700.
Exercising more on lichess.org. That’s a whole new world for me.
Theory. I’m going to dive deeper in theory. For sure, I’ll find useful information there.
