Hey all,

I am starting this thread to share my chess journey with 2p2 chess players, motivate me, and journal my progress. I am an absolute beginner as I know no opening detail but have played about 1000 games. I play on chess.com

About 3 months ago I lost my job and sought a distraction which I found in chess. My memory isn't great at recall so I can't remember the name of the GM but I have watched a number of his videos and I love his teaching and also his general character that comes out in his lectures. I will report his name in my next update.

My usual defence to white kings pawn opening is the Sicilian but I just play about three book moves then play as I go. One thing I want to get better at as I post and learn is knowing more standard lines, and playing them.

Each time I update I will write what I have learnt. Also how many games I have played on chess.com and what my chess.com rating is.

I play live blitz mostly

My current chess.com rating is: 592
I have played: 1779 games.

When you read feel free to share your comments, advice and feedback

Off to play a couple of games now.

First thing I'd say is don't worry at ALL about opening theory (in the sense of specific memorized lines) right now. Learn a few opening PRINCIPLES (like control the center and develop your pieces) and then just focus entirely on tactics until your chess.com blitz rating is at least 1000.

Second thing I'll say is welcome!

As said above, learning opening principles is probably more important at this point than specific lines, because opening principles help you all the time, even when your opponent goes off a standard line (which will happen all the time at your level).

And I also agree that focusing on tactics is the best way . There's a tactics trainer on Chess.com which works great. If you have a free account there's a limit to how many you can do per day, but if so you can use another site instead (like ChessTempo).

If you do want to play actual games as well during this, I would go for longer time controls. Either keep a handfull of correspondence games going or play something like 15+10. It's hard to improve if you just play blitz games all the time.

I'm also a beginner and one of my goals is to be able to play bullet tournaments and actually do reasonably well in them. But I'm staying completely away from them at this point, because my skills are at a place where I can really only win on time in a 1-minute game, and then it's just pointless. I think focusing on playing solid in slower time controls will be much more beneficial for my bullet/blitz experience in the long run.

Thanks for the advice both. I did read it at the time. I forgot about learning opening theory and concentrated on sound opening theory. Like this...

1) Develop my pieces before attacking.
2) Get the knights out generally before the bishops.
3) Get the rooks in the centre of the board.
4) Get the queen on the same line as the opposite king.

My results have fluctuated. I was up as high as +200 points since my first post here. Down as low as -100 points since my first post.

Since I post I've played 685 games and improved my rating by +28

Here are my stats:

Highest: 1200 (Aug 19, 2014)
Best Win: 1066 (danilo1988)
Avg. Opp.: 671
Total Games: 2,466 (1,196 W/ 1,235 L / 35 D)

----------------------------------------------------------

I've heard there is similarity between chess and poker but I am really seeing that for myself lately. For instance, I like playing really quick in my games (moving within a second or so) but of course this doesn't allow for full thinking. Why do I like doing that? It just feels good and is like an ego battle with the opponent who usually trys to move just as quick and then you pick off a blunder.

Like poker - what feels good (perhaps playing LAG, and or getting emotionally involved) is not the correct winning strategy (for most people).

Over the next while I'm going to slow my games down and really work hard on increasing my rating. I'll next post in here when I hit a rating of 900.

Hopefully this will not be my last post in this thread then!

Those don't really have the right focus imo. I would opt for the following goals in the opening:

1) Control the center
2) Activate your pieces
3) Get your king to safety

Then we get to the means:

1) Generally, this is achieved by getting at least one pawn in one of the squares d4 d5 e4 and e5, and keeping it there. Getting a knight to f3 or c3 (as white) also helps, as it aims two of those squares.
2) Getting your knights out before your bishops is a very general guideline. There are numerous openings in which there are other move orders. Mixing this up won't hurt you badly. A more useful guideline is to never move the same piece twice without a very good reason in the opening. Following this will usually get all your pieces developed as fast as possible. Getting the rooks in the center is not necessarily best, you want to position them on a file which is either open, or likely to be opened. More important is connecting the rooks, after which they can more easily be used to challenge files, or to double on files.
3) Don't get mated: hide your king. Usually this entails castling in either direction. Plenty beginner games are decided because one side goes on an adventure while leaving his king in the center, after which it never finds shelter. Moreover, an exposed king can often be used as a tactical resource (e.g. to pin or double attack pieces).

After you took care of all of these, the middle game starts and you can have some fun in trying to get some tactics or an attack going. If you have achieved your opening aims you will be more likely to succeed in those endeavors.

Good luck!

If you want constructive advice, I think posting a link to a game and your thoughts on where you went wrong is always the best way to go.

Yeah post your screen name or links to games so we can see what you're doing. If you have played 2,500 blitz games and your rating is 620 then you aren't learning anything at all and are basically playing for fun.

Not sure what you mean by get queen on same line as king, and you are likely overemphasizing getting rooks to center of board.

Taking 1 second to make a move is completely meaningless. It won't rattle your opponent at all, and likely just means you made a worse move. If you rating is this low then there is almost never a move you will spot so easily as to play it in 1 second. This isn't poker so just forget about that. There's not really "bluffing" or gamesmanship or angle shooting that you can get away with in poker. All the pieces are out there for both of you to see so it boils down to playing fundamental openings/defenses and then being better at tactics than your opponent, or mopping up in an endgame better than them.

I also suggest moving to 15/10 games so you can spend more time thinking of the lines deeper. Also play correspondence chess. It will give you a chance to learn a ton by analyzing many lines very deeply by using their "Analyze" link.

I only started about 1.5 years ago and kinda suck so I'm not being hard on you. I'm being truthful - you aren't learning anything by playing 10 minute games, especially if your rating only goes up 28 points in 800 games or whatever.

You should probably learn a couple basic openings and defenses and then play them pretty much solely. Learn the Ruy Lopez. Learn the Queen's pawn opening. Learn a couple defenses against 1.d4 and 1.e4 like the Scandi or a couple others.

Do a crapton of tactics problems. Don't hang pieces. Look for hanging pieces. If opponent has a piece of square that is un or under defended then see if you can attack it more times than they can defend it. Learn about discovered attacks, pins, forks, skewers, etc.

Control the center with pawns, develop knights and bishops, castle, and for Pete's sake keep your queen and rooks tucked away until it is reasonable to move them. Play fewer games but think about them harder. Good luck!