Summary: 1. Get a coach if you can afford one. 2. 10% of playing time on blitz. Throw bullet out of the window! 3. Stop and reflect after each game; avoid rematches unless they are pre-arranged. Reflection should be based on master games, and self-analysis. Only use an engine if you get stuck. 4. Spend 30% of your time on longer games, 15+10 or longer. 40+40 or similar is great for practice e.g. Lichess league. Playing people around 100 to 200 points higher than you is ideal. Avoid players more than 50 points lower than you if you can. 5. Spend some 60% of your time practicing tactics, openings, endgames and analysing your own games deeply. It is easier to do this with a coach but books are the second best option.
Awesome video. One thing i would like to add, what you can really train in Blitz games: BLUNDER CHECKS! I've started playing my Blitz games with one singular purpose, which is to reduce the amount of obvious blunders, keeping up my concentration, and checking for 1-2 move threats constantly. I don't care if i loose on time, openings are whatever, but just focusing on not blundering pieces has made such a huge difference for me, i'm about 1700-1800 OTB. It helps train the "mental endurance" that you need in an actual game, and just trains your brain to constantly watch out for basic stuff, which, at least for me, is how i loose most of my games even in longer time controls!
1. recommendation to ditch bullet - i tell myself this all the time, yet late at night i find myself playing throwaway games because it is super addictive as you've pointed out
Same! 850 online player and have been playing with the goal of improvement for two weeks. Looking forward to the videos! Goal is 1500 online by year end. Thank you for these videos 👍🏼
Great video! Couple questions about OTB chess: for me personally I live in Des Moines Iowa and there are no chess clubs around me to speak of at all. What are good online goals to really shoot for or should I be looking for opportunities in the future to travel instead to locations that have a chess club(ie. St. Louis)? Last question I had for you is where can you find these leagues and how can you join them? Do you need to be a certain rating level/pay-in structure etc. Thanks again for your time and for the awesome videos!
Online goals should (and and could only ) be rating related . It’s good to aim high but also within reason. For lichess 40-40 just contact one of the lichess mods. I would have to research the rest.
Hi Andras, Josh, for the lichess 45-45 league, go to lichess4545.com and there will be instructions. You can either join as an individual or as a team (Board 1 to Board 8, ranked by rating).
want to say thanks for all your amazing content and chessable courses. been going though old games of mine and looking at lines that involve taking the center and regret not playing them as the potential for amazing sacrificial chess was there but i lacked the understanding to go through with it. hope to apply these concepts to my future games and have some amazing morphy like chess(once i can calculate well enough to check before i sac)!
Coach, I just picked up your Chessable course Chess Principles Reloaded - Center w video (look at me go). I'm excited to really dig in. I saw that it was shortlisted as one of the best courses of 2020....and of all time(?) Thats incredible.
This video has described my journey for the past couple months. It's also my belief that slow chess is "real" chess. Slow chess is where it's at! You don't get a NM or FM title by getting good at blitz chess. Slow chess is the purest form of chess! I began my improvement journey at the beginning of October 2020. I'm a lifelong player, but in October I decided I really wanted to get really good at chess and dedicate a lot of time to it. I gave up bullet in early November because I felt like it was destroying any chance of improvement. (I relapsed for a couple weeks in December, but I'm back to bullet abstinence now). Nowadays I even rarely play blitz -- only if a friend wants to play chess with me and won't settle for a longer time control. I spend a lot of time studying and building/memorizing my opening repertoire and doing tactics, and when I play, I play slow chess. I wish more people played slow chess online. I have been playing 10+0 games but I'm thinking of switching to 15+10. The volume of players at my skill that play these long time controls online is just so low, though... (I am rated 2000 USCF). Just tonight I signed up for Lichess' 45+45 league. I really hope I get accepted because I have been itching for some classical time controls for so long ever since COVID lockdowns started and OTB went away. I'm still on the fence about a chess coach. I've never really had one before, and money is tight for me right now. Thanks for the vid IM Andras! You've confirmed to me that I'm doing the right things. I appreciate it a lot. I hope to be an IM like you one day
What are your thoughts on Daily/correspondence chess games? For me, of course it is much easier to play because you can look at opening databases without engine and because of the existence of analysis board within the game where you can move pieces freely before making the actual move (I am talking about chess.com option, but I presume other platforms are the same) which makes calculation easier. But it seems to me those games are actually a good way to learn openings because you are encouraged to look at databases, and apart from that, after the opening you still have to come up with good moves. I don't play them too often, but I do it from time to time.
I've never played an OTB game in my life, (I may start, but I don't live anywhere near a chess club and am not flush with cash) so my primary goal is to improve my online chess specifically rapid because it's what I enjoy most. The 60% learning is crazy to me, but I will try to incorporate it more than currently. Right now learning if you don't count youtube content is probably 5-10% of my time spent on chess and the rest in 15 + 10
Great vid, many thanks, very interesting, your comments on analysis of one's games, have you tried Decode chess? Just wondered what your thoughts are, if you have..
Hi, Andras! A 1800 FIDE player than comes from Perpetual Chess here! By the way, amazing interview there, learned a lot from your tips! I have a question for you: Have you uploaded a video on how to analyze either our own games or GM games, or do you know of any good source to learn how to do that? Thanks in advance!
I've been told that studying openings at lower ratings (I've heard it said even below 1600) is generally a waste of time and that I should just be doing lots of tactics instead. This didn't make a lot of sense to me, as in the words of the great Bobby Fischer himself, Tactics flow from a superior position. Can you perhaps shed some light on why people have this disdain for opening practice at low levels?
I really enjoyed this video, I've been playing the game for 6 months and I've gone from 1100 when I started to 1800 on lichess without actually studying but I think I've kind of plateaued. My pourpuse of 2021 is to get a fide rating by participating in at least two otb tournaments, get into a chess club and get to a solid 2000+ on lichess. This vid really helped thank you!
We pretty much have same rating progress dude. I started 1400 on lichess and now 1800 after 5 months and kinda plateued. Aiming to be 2000-2200 at least. Im thinking of purchasing chess.com premiun
I don't think rating goals are the best for chess improvement, focus on improving your own game and learning from your mistakes/fixing your weaknesses. Getting high lichess/chess.com rating is a lot of grinding mainly and is not neccessarily an accurate representation of your skill.
I hear you on playing longer time controls online, but i struggle to find any opponents once you move above 2300 rapid or classical on lichess. What would you do in this case?
Okay, here's my thing: I spent most of my time analyzing my games which took approximately a week per game for in depth analyses stage one was a preliminary analyses of the motivation behind each move for both white and black stage two was a post analyses whereby I looked in retrospect for the actual motivation for the moves based on the positions that were reached at later stages of the game, and lastly in the final stage I explored alternative lines that could have been played. My conclusion: The process aside from being time consuming is a little useless because every single game is completely different and the variations are completely different. So even if you learn a lot the opportunity to apply what you have learned quite simply doesn't occur or rarely occurs...
Which is when a coach comes handy because what you perceive as a single, stand alone mistake may actually be part of a very generic problem, that you fail to realise. A typical case for this for example is a passive mindset, which can manifest in many different types of moves but all part of the same core issue.
@@ChessCoachAndras True, is there a more efficient way to analyze games more comprehensively rather than the method I outlined above? I know that most GM's just do stage 3.
Thanks for an interesting video. Any thoughts on using an actual chessboard and pieces? Should you use them if you're playing a long time control game? (I iwonder if a lot of players who've only played online will find it awkward to transition to actual boards if they decide to play over the board chess.)
I am a big believer that chess by default is a 3D world, not 2d. In my 2nd book recommendation video I talk about the technicalities of how to read a book with a chessboard.
I used to hear that we can setup a board beside when we playing online chess, I've tried it but it is inconvenience indeed, I waste my concentration on making sure the board in my monitor is match with my physical board. Do you have any opinion on this?
Thanks to Andras I managed to get on lichess in Rapid games the rating 2370 Which is amazing for my otb rating 2000 with sth If interesting my nick is maxezer111 And in the last game i beat 2520 with Black And tis true that u better play with longer time control starting 10 minutes for game at least This time control will allow to play real chess!
Oh I have the drive. I have the thirst, the obsession, the itch to be the best I can be and improve and I am willing to do the things other people my level won’t want to do.
I don’t primarily look upon losing as a source of disappointment but more as a source of learning. Losing is an integral part of getting better, one must accept it.
Question: at 1900 should I still play ppl 200 points above me? (Hint: I only play classical, 90+30 or 120+30 for practice, that's the closest to Hungarian club level games). Special content, many thx!
Nothing that’s worth doing is easy, as my beloved tennis coach said not once... btw I did not say in the video to give up blitz, I said, keep it limited.
Hmm... How on earth will I find opponents higher rated than me online? Slow time control games. I am over 2000 om Lichess and there are seldom players over 2000 online. In fact I have never ever met someone there rated over 2100 in a slow time control game there.
Great advice. Although you mentioned using a chess coach every day for an hour. Considering most chess coaches charge between $70-$100 per hour, I don't think that's realistic for most people. I don't think people strictly need a coach, they are good for setting you on the right path, but there is so much material available, covering every aspect, you can get by without one.
Great video but I don't agree that you either are serious about chess, or you aren't. If you mean anyone who can't be a professional chess player and can't earn their living with prize money, is instantly not serious about chess. Then, sure. But there are varying levels of seriousness a person is able or is willing to take, given the confines of life.
Summary:
1. Get a coach if you can afford one.
2. 10% of playing time on blitz. Throw bullet out of the window!
3. Stop and reflect after each game; avoid rematches unless they are pre-arranged. Reflection should be based on master games, and self-analysis. Only use an engine if you get stuck.
4. Spend 30% of your time on longer games, 15+10 or longer. 40+40 or similar is great for practice e.g. Lichess league. Playing people around 100 to 200 points higher than you is ideal. Avoid players more than 50 points lower than you if you can.
5. Spend some 60% of your time practicing tactics, openings, endgames and analysing your own games deeply. It is easier to do this with a coach but books are the second best option.
Thanks!
Andras you are the only reason i keep chess in my liferino
Awesome video. One thing i would like to add, what you can really train in Blitz games: BLUNDER CHECKS!
I've started playing my Blitz games with one singular purpose, which is to reduce the amount of obvious blunders, keeping up my concentration, and checking for 1-2 move threats constantly.
I don't care if i loose on time, openings are whatever, but just focusing on not blundering pieces has made such a huge difference for me, i'm about 1700-1800 OTB.
It helps train the "mental endurance" that you need in an actual game, and just trains your brain to constantly watch out for basic stuff, which, at least for me, is how i loose most of my games even in longer time controls!
I get it, but why do you need blitz to do this? YOu can do it in proper time control too!?
1. recommendation to ditch bullet - i tell myself this all the time, yet late at night i find myself playing throwaway games because it is super addictive as you've pointed out
Thank you for making content! The internet coach we needed!
Thanks man, enjoy the channel!
Coach you got a new fan! Thanks for these tips!
@@ceejelly8783 welcome on board! Glad you like the content, there is a lot more like this on my channel !
Keep em coming cap'n. Class has started so I can't watch em all but I try.
Good video. I'm a new subscriber after hearing your interview today on The Perpetual Chess podcast. Looks like I've got more videos to watch now!!
Hi Bill, welcome to the channel, indeed, I hope you will find a lot of stuff here worthy of watching!
Same! 850 online player and have been playing with the goal of improvement for two weeks. Looking forward to the videos! Goal is 1500 online by year end. Thank you for these videos 👍🏼
Always on point. Great videos! Never stop!
Many thanks!
Great video! Couple questions about OTB chess: for me personally I live in Des Moines Iowa and there are no chess clubs around me to speak of at all. What are good online goals to really shoot for or should I be looking for opportunities in the future to travel instead to locations that have a chess club(ie. St. Louis)? Last question I had for you is where can you find these leagues and how can you join them? Do you need to be a certain rating level/pay-in structure etc. Thanks again for your time and for the awesome videos!
Online goals should (and and could only ) be rating related . It’s good to aim high but also within reason.
For lichess 40-40 just contact one of the lichess mods. I would have to research the rest.
Hi Andras, Josh, for the lichess 45-45 league, go to lichess4545.com and there will be instructions. You can either join as an individual or as a team (Board 1 to Board 8, ranked by rating).
Thank you both so much for your insight and help! Once I can get to an affordable position I'd definitely love to get a coach.
want to say thanks for all your amazing content and chessable courses. been going though old games of mine and looking at lines that involve taking the center and regret not playing them as the potential for amazing sacrificial chess was there but i lacked the understanding to go through with it. hope to apply these concepts to my future games and have some amazing morphy like chess(once i can calculate well enough to check before i sac)!
Thank you for the idea of playing up!
Great video. Another benefit of blitz is that it can "kind of" prepare a person for OTB time scrambles.
Seize the center on chessable is my life. 👌👌
Haha thanks mate!
Coach, I just picked up your Chessable course Chess Principles Reloaded - Center w video (look at me go). I'm excited to really dig in. I saw that it was shortlisted as one of the best courses of 2020....and of all time(?) Thats incredible.
Thanks Javier, hope you will enjoy the course!
@@ChessCoachAndras I was just wondering, between your center and development coarse, is there one that you would've recommended first?
@@javieracevedo6209 Yes, there is a reason why I made them in the order they are, and that's my recommended order (i.e. center first)
This video has described my journey for the past couple months. It's also my belief that slow chess is "real" chess. Slow chess is where it's at! You don't get a NM or FM title by getting good at blitz chess. Slow chess is the purest form of chess!
I began my improvement journey at the beginning of October 2020. I'm a lifelong player, but in October I decided I really wanted to get really good at chess and dedicate a lot of time to it. I gave up bullet in early November because I felt like it was destroying any chance of improvement. (I relapsed for a couple weeks in December, but I'm back to bullet abstinence now). Nowadays I even rarely play blitz -- only if a friend wants to play chess with me and won't settle for a longer time control. I spend a lot of time studying and building/memorizing my opening repertoire and doing tactics, and when I play, I play slow chess. I wish more people played slow chess online. I have been playing 10+0 games but I'm thinking of switching to 15+10. The volume of players at my skill that play these long time controls online is just so low, though... (I am rated 2000 USCF). Just tonight I signed up for Lichess' 45+45 league. I really hope I get accepted because I have been itching for some classical time controls for so long ever since COVID lockdowns started and OTB went away.
I'm still on the fence about a chess coach. I've never really had one before, and money is tight for me right now.
Thanks for the vid IM Andras! You've confirmed to me that I'm doing the right things. I appreciate it a lot. I hope to be an IM like you one day
That is gold Andras, thank you very much. Have you ever made a video on playing against engines? If not, what do you think about that?
What are your thoughts on Daily/correspondence chess games?
For me, of course it is much easier to play because you can look at opening databases without engine and because of the existence of analysis board within the game where you can move pieces freely before making the actual move (I am talking about chess.com option, but I presume other platforms are the same) which makes calculation easier. But it seems to me those games are actually a good way to learn openings because you are encouraged to look at databases, and apart from that, after the opening you still have to come up with good moves.
I don't play them too often, but I do it from time to time.
I've never played an OTB game in my life, (I may start, but I don't live anywhere near a chess club and am not flush with cash) so my primary goal is to improve my online chess specifically rapid because it's what I enjoy most. The 60% learning is crazy to me, but I will try to incorporate it more than currently. Right now learning if you don't count youtube content is probably 5-10% of my time spent on chess and the rest in 15 + 10
Very helpful, thank you!
coming from perpetual chess, looking forward for future videos!
Welcome on board, Denis, be sure to check out the videos from the past too, lots of content there...
Great video. Thank you.
Thanks a bunch!
Great vid, many thanks, very interesting, your comments on analysis of one's games, have you tried Decode chess? Just wondered what your thoughts are, if you have..
Hi, Andras! A 1800 FIDE player than comes from Perpetual Chess here! By the way, amazing interview there, learned a lot from your tips!
I have a question for you: Have you uploaded a video on how to analyze either our own games or GM games, or do you know of any good source to learn how to do that? Thanks in advance!
Tough one to do by yourself, especially as a lower rated player. Engine might come handy.
Amazing video. Thank you so much
Wondering if sometimes playing down might be useful in figuring out how to punish aponent's weak moves?
Certainly, I do say in the video to play up often, not all the time.
I've been told that studying openings at lower ratings (I've heard it said even below 1600) is generally a waste of time and that I should just be doing lots of tactics instead. This didn't make a lot of sense to me, as in the words of the great Bobby Fischer himself, Tactics flow from a superior position. Can you perhaps shed some light on why people have this disdain for opening practice at low levels?
I really enjoyed this video, I've been playing the game for 6 months and I've gone from 1100 when I started to 1800 on lichess without actually studying but I think I've kind of plateaued. My pourpuse of 2021 is to get a fide rating by participating in at least two otb tournaments, get into a chess club and get to a solid 2000+ on lichess. This vid really helped thank you!
We pretty much have same rating progress dude. I started 1400 on lichess and now 1800 after 5 months and kinda plateued. Aiming to be 2000-2200 at least. Im thinking of purchasing chess.com premiun
@@wingsgamingfans5850 that's awesome, do you mind if I add you on lichess to practice sometime?
I don't think rating goals are the best for chess improvement, focus on improving your own game and learning from your mistakes/fixing your weaknesses. Getting high lichess/chess.com rating is a lot of grinding mainly and is not neccessarily an accurate representation of your skill.
@@owencrawford5984 i agree there are some random rating fluctuations involved but it's the only measure we have
I hear you on playing longer time controls online, but i struggle to find any opponents once you move above 2300 rapid or classical on lichess. What would you do in this case?
I hate to say this as a lichess fan, but go to chess.com.
What if the higher rated opponents you'd like to play have seen this video and are avoiding lower rated opponents??
Great advice! Thank you a lot!
My pleasure, more to come !
Okay, here's my thing: I spent most of my time analyzing my games which took approximately a week per game for in depth analyses stage one was a preliminary analyses of the motivation behind each move for both white and black stage two was a post analyses whereby I looked in retrospect for the actual motivation for the moves based on the positions that were reached at later stages of the game, and lastly in the final stage I explored alternative lines that could have been played.
My conclusion: The process aside from being time consuming is a little useless because every single game is completely different and the variations are completely different. So even if you learn a lot the opportunity to apply what you have learned quite simply doesn't occur or rarely occurs...
Which is when a coach comes handy because what you perceive as a single, stand alone mistake may actually be part of a very generic problem, that you fail to realise. A typical case for this for example is a passive mindset, which can manifest in many different types of moves but all part of the same core issue.
@@ChessCoachAndras True, is there a more efficient way to analyze games more comprehensively rather than the method I outlined above? I know that most GM's just do stage 3.
Thanks for an interesting video. Any thoughts on using an actual chessboard and pieces? Should you use them if you're playing a long time control game?
(I iwonder if a lot of players who've only played online will find it awkward to transition to actual boards if they decide to play over the board chess.)
I am a big believer that chess by default is a 3D world, not 2d. In my 2nd book recommendation video I talk about the technicalities of how to read a book with a chessboard.
I used to hear that we can setup a board beside when we playing online chess, I've tried it but it is inconvenience indeed, I waste my concentration on making sure the board in my monitor is match with my physical board. Do you have any opinion on this?
I don't play any blitz. Just 15+10 and longer. Can't I also use those games for the opening practice?
Of course you can!
Feel like I get great coaching from you, but I have engaged a regular coach.
you get to have the cake and eat it too !:) Win-win!
Thanks to Andras I managed to get on lichess in Rapid games the rating 2370
Which is amazing for my otb rating 2000 with sth
If interesting my nick is maxezer111
And in the last game i beat 2520 with Black
And tis true that u better play with longer time control starting 10 minutes for game at least
This time control will allow to play real chess!
Oh I have the drive. I have the thirst, the obsession, the itch to be the best I can be and improve and I am willing to do the things other people my level won’t want to do.
Would you say that the new lichess puzzles are better than chesstempo ones?
I think they are just about the same now
haven't watched the video yet but after having a tough loss to you on one of your streams I've definitely got to pay attention :)
How do you handle the disappointment when loosing?
I don’t primarily look upon losing as a source of disappointment but more as a source of learning. Losing is an integral part of getting better, one must accept it.
Amazing advice, how have I not been this yet??
Question: at 1900 should I still play ppl 200 points above me? (Hint: I only play classical, 90+30 or 120+30 for practice, that's the closest to Hungarian club level games). Special content, many thx!
Any thoughts on correspondence chess (e.g. 1-3 day/move on sites like chess.com) and how that could fit in?
I Believe that correspondence gives you unrealistic amount of time , but it may have the benefit to teach you how to analyse . Give it a go
OK I will try to stop playing 5 min blitz.
But it is not going to be easy.
Nothing that’s worth doing is easy, as my beloved tennis coach said not once... btw I did not say in the video to give up blitz, I said, keep it limited.
I would just like to check do you have a Patreon?
Thanks, not sure how to find a good coach
Great case against all play and no study.
Hmm... How on earth will I find opponents higher rated than me online? Slow time control games. I am over 2000 om Lichess and there are seldom players over 2000 online. In fact I have never ever met someone there rated over 2100 in a slow time control game there.
Great advice. Although you mentioned using a chess coach every day for an hour. Considering most chess coaches charge between $70-$100 per hour, I don't think that's realistic for most people. I don't think people strictly need a coach, they are good for setting you on the right path, but there is so much material available, covering every aspect, you can get by without one.
Apologies, I meant once a week.
Hello to chikAs and chikOs
Is there is a difference?
Sounds the same
girls and boys!
Great video but I don't agree that you either are serious about chess, or you aren't. If you mean anyone who can't be a professional chess player and can't earn their living with prize money, is instantly not serious about chess. Then, sure. But there are varying levels of seriousness a person is able or is willing to take, given the confines of life.