What got me playing over 1700 (lichess rating grin) were two things:
1) deepening my mental checklist: 1) am i being attacked, 2) are there unprotected pieces, 3) am I about to be forked/pinned, 4) can I fork/pin my opponent ... and increase how far down you can BFS this without getting a headache. And avoiding endgames because those are just logical grinds.
2) playing with an analysis engine like stockfish.
For me, memorizing defenses was not feasible because it is so broad, but I learned two openings (scotch and queens pawn) and at least know the defenses there because i know the openings. a little bit.
I'll keep at it, memorizing defenses, but I'm old and probably won't cram more into my brain.
EDIT: I used to go to a sunday-night chess meetup before COVID. 1700 on Lichess is nowhere near 1700 FIDE rating (of course, it was at a bar, so I'm usually a few pints in). I stopped going because I got tired of getting my ass kicked, there weren't enough mediocre players there.
The issue I've encountered with memorizing openings is that it assumes both sides are playing perfect openings that complement each other. In reality, in my "lower rated" games, my opponent is likely to make suboptimal moves against the opening I memorized. There are ways to punish their moves, but I would've needed to memorized that. So, I have to come up with changes to the memorized opening on the spot.
Going through the checklist allows me to play without memorizing movesets even though the moves I make are not the "best".
This is a good way to put it. I don't yet understand what makes an opening such a personality. Like, what the "attitude" of an opening is beyond "white tries to dominate the center with a fiancetto from the king-side and crush the opponents defenses through pressure on f7" (this is like how every Wikipedia entry on openings is written). Great, thanks! I think this is probably one of the things that separates enthusiasts from naturals, because while I get the basic point of the sentence, I don't see how that plays out for 10 moves. Or maybe I'm overthinking it. I keep waiting for it to "click" one day.
But yes, seeing someone deviate from a memorized opening doesn't help me win either!
The way you win in chess is to create an imbalance and then exploit your half of it. The imbalance may be on many facets, like different pieces or pawn structure or activity.
Some openings create few imbalances (e.g. Exchange Slav) and these are drawish.
This is a very helpful way for me to think about future moves, because I can add to my mental checklist: "scan for any possible imbalances."
You mentioned three facets: piece imbalance, pawn structures, and weaknesses near the king (or other pieces).
Are there more?
- Minor pieces (bishops vs knights)
- Pawn structure
- Space
- Material
- Files and squares
- Development
- Initiative
I would add how much time is left on the clock, though that is not a feature of the board.
An example: say you have a bishop and your opponent has a knight. This is an imbalance, and you want to exploit it by making your bishop better than their knight. Concretely that means trading pawns, to open up the game, so your bishop can bring its long-range strengths to bear.
I agree with the commenter who said that 1200-level players on chess.com do come with opening prep and will try to catch you out with their pet lines. Obviously it's too much to learn refutations for all the crazy gambits out there, but it's worth spending a bit of time understanding openings. The fine article we're commenting on does not go too far -- even for a beginner, it's worth knowing the difference between a Sicilian and a Caro-Kan. Even just learning the first four moves of the common openings is worthwhile, because it will save you time and energy that you need for the middlegame.
I agree that learning deep theoretical lines is a waste of time. Most likely you'll be out of book by move five in an amateur game. So learn a small number of moves (ideally, with a good reason why that move makes sense, even if it's just to develop a piece) and have some idea of the common plans that each side has in that opening.
On what time limit? I'm ~1700 on Rapid but ~1400 on Blitz. I find you need to play a lot of games to get good at quick time limits.
Quicker time controls are REALLY good at producing a lot of games for you to identify patterns of your own errors, though! Take a given game, slap on stockfish, then check what tactics you're missing and what positional decisions you made that significantly impacted the bar. On an individual level, not so important, but if you start noticing trends in your errors, you can mass-puzzle the areas you're weak at, etc.
That said, this analysis only works if you know your openings. Contrary to the OP, if your openings are mediocre you can't learn that much from your games. Understanding a system or two in depth will help you develop a 'feel' for what positions are dangerous, which positions are full of potential, etc. At a certain point that intuition will stop requiring 10-15 moves of theory to be sound, and you can start free-styling.
The reason for the advice to avoid end games is that the real end game contests happen with positions having a few more pawns or pieces. These positions can have a single not obvious winning move out of many alternatives. One false step can lead to a draw or loss instead of a win many moves later. Two almost identical positions can result in different outcomes even with perfect play.
If you take everyone whose FIDE rating is between 2400-2600, and you create a new pool of Elo ratings for them, their new Elo ratings will range from 1400-1600. If you take everyone whose FIDE rating is between 1400-1600, and you create a new pool of ratings for them, their new Elo ratings will range from 1400-1600. And so on.
https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz
https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/wiki/faq#wiki_my_chess.com_ra...
You can add 1,000,000 to the ratings of all players on lichess, and it wouldn't change a thing
so... cheating?
Playing as black for me is the real driving force for me to study openings because my black game suffers the most from actual Theory openings around 1200. It's not crucial to winning to study the openings because you can often get by with just basic positional play and simple deduction, but a cursory understanding of the most popular openings is a big bang-for-your-buck way to improve in the low 1k range, IMHO.
If you have a 1200 level tactics skill and 1500 level openings skill, you are going to be about a 1200 rated player. If you have a 1500 level skill in tactics, you are going to be about a 1500 rated player regardless of whether you've studied openings. Remember: Being able to calculate tactics better helps with openings! Just because your opponent has memorized something and you haven't doesn't mean you can't just calculate on the fly and avoid falling into obvious traps.
https://www.amazon.com/Woodpecker-Method-Axel-Smith-Tikkanen...
> The quick explanation of the Woodpecker Method is that you need to solve a large number of puzzles in a row; then solve the same puzzles again and again, only faster. It’s not a lazy shortcut to success – hard work is required. But the reward can be re-programming your unconscious mind. Benefits include sharper tactical vision, fewer blunders, better play when in time trouble and improved intuition.
This seems pretty similar to the Chess.com "puzzle rush" game, although I'll admit that I haven't actually tried that yet.
What do you do know, play specific openings or move by instinct until reaching the middlegame? Willing to bet it's the former.
- If the move I played is in line with theory, I don't bother trying to remember it because I can find it.
- If there are more than 1 plausible move in theory and my move is one of them, don't bother because I can find it.
- If theory happens to be something I can't find on my own, then I investigate the idea behind it and automagically I remember (at least for some time)Now at the 2500 level you get into sequences where you need to see a trap 15 non-forced moves in advance to not fall into it with seemingly natural moves. These can only be found in advance.
I don't need a 2500 rating to know something about how they play.
At the very least, all players need an understanding of opening fundamentals.
Why? I'm not at that level but I'm sure it can't hurt. I'm not talking about spending hours studying openings, but simply being able to name things is helpful. That way you can pick new ideas along the way, memorize past mistakes more easily, communicate with other players. And it doesn't take much time to know the first few moves of the most common openings.
How to close a game where you’re up a rook or a queen (without stalemating).
How to close a game where you’re up one pawn, if it’s not a forced stalemate.
Two bishops is maybe something you want to learn. Theoretically knight + bishop as well. I play a lot of bullet chess and pretty much never see these though.
The rest you can really only learn with practice and pattern recognition, like how to move your pawns and how to use a minor piece to secure a win. Well, you can try to learn it algorithmically but I wouldn’t recommend it. After learning those I would move onto tactics, because those are generally how you gain a material or positional advantage that doesn’t rely on a very trivial mistake like leaving a piece uncovered.
Also, if memory servers me I've seen two grandmaster games only during this week, where this endgame could happen, but the players didn't want their opponents to show the technique. One of these games was yesterday: https://www.chessbomb.com/arena/2020-russian-championship-su...
But indeed, rook endgames are way much more important from a practical point of view.
Study mating.
Chess is not about how you start but how you end.
Particularly if you are weak tactically, you're going to walk into opening traps / blunders if you aren't aware of them.
For blitz openings are essential and the difference between playing into a solid middlegame position in 10 seconds versus wasting one minute reaching an almost equal position.
One example: https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz
It is really obvious when you look at the stats for classical or rapid for example: https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/classical
Though I do well avoiding Sicilian by playing Alapin (e4 c5 c3).
On what rating system? USCF? Lichess? Chess.com?
I would imagine at some point the tactics are not the bottleneck and I should be working on something else instead (openings, endgames, or studying mid-game strategy?) but just wondering where that point is.
For a typical player, the chess.com puzzles rating is at least 500 points higher than the blitz rating on this site.
I think tactics shouldn't be on focus only for very strong players, such as FMs or IMs, but you definitely don't need to choose one instead of another. It's fine to learn some tactics, then some strategy, then some endgames, isn't it?
Among players who have played 100+ games/100+ puzzles, the difference is -205: puzzle rating substantially higher, standard deviation 320.
I'm not sure that it's ideal for ratings to be identical across the domains, but they should correlate to some degree.
For lichess at least, they don't. I'm a 2100 tactics and nowhere near that in actual rating (around 1500).
[1] https://listudy.org/en/blog/when-to-learn-chess-openings
Here is a counter argument - below 1700, someone who knows the strength of an opening would outperform those who do not.
That's exactly what I am saying. If one person knows the strength of an opening and the other person don't then the person who knows the opening has a clear advantage. I agree with @skulk's argument though - the time is better spent on learning tactics and analyzing games over learning many opening given the player is sticking to some particular openings.
not exactly if the person can't use the slight advantage for their benefit. They only have window of 2-3 moves at max to exploit less developed pieces else the advantage fades away(assuming non point positional advantage). It is hard for 1700s to exploit very minor advantage and most of the time the win is due to a blunder by opponent.
1700 rating is not very clearly defined since different Chess websites uses different ranking system and the rating can vary dramatically. For example, on average there are 400 points difference between chess.com and lichess.com ranking.
I think the most important opening prep for a novice is learning what lines to avoid at all costs. A lot of this, though, can be established with the basics: develop pieces, castle early, control center. Any time your opponent tempts you into violating any of these, think thrice.
That only works against a badly prepared player. Learning an opening isn't just about memorising moves, it is also about understanding why the moves -- both your own and your opponent's -- are good. If you have studied an opening well, you will understand why a stupid move is stupid and be able to punish it. Of course you may still end up messing things up and lose the game later on, but you should be able to emerge from the opening with an advantage.
Openings do not necessary break here. They are meant to take advantage of a situation by a series of branched off movement. If you are not making good enough guess about why a particular opening is played - making one move to pull somebody out of the book won't do much good.
After 1700 or so, specific openings can be studied. I suggest playing d4 instead of e4 as white (avoids dealing with the Sicilian) and as black the French defense (for e4) and the KID (for d4). This is mostly coming from the POV of getting good at the game with a minimum of theory preparation, whilst being able to deploy the same openings in blitz and bullet games if need be.
Another bonus of getting strong at tactics, is that you'll be able to see and appreciate ideas behind the openings and your game analysis will also improve. There are excellent GM analysis videos on Youtube that one can start extracting value from too.
[1] https://www.chesstactics.org
[2] https://chesstempo.com/