Hello everyone, I need some advice and have a couple of questions for more experienced players. Thanks for your input in advance


1) Moving from online to OTB problems

I started playing on chess.com about 6 months ago, mostly just playing slow daily games, tactics trainer and puzzle rush. I am 2000 in tactics and 1600 in daily. Never really played much OTB before.

2 weeks ago I started playing for my local club and have incredible difficulties adjusting to it. So far I played 4 club games and feel like I have absolutely no tactical vision as opposed to online - can not calculate accurately and very far, miss very simple tactics constantly and make way more mistakes then on a small 2D board online. Hell the first time I played I confused a King with a Queen on move 5 (they were still in their starting positions). It feels like I have not learned anything playing online that is applicable to live games and just started playing now even though i am playing the same game, just in a different format. If I had to guess, my OTB rating would probably be about 500+ points lower then online.

Is this just inexperience with the new and different environment/board and these problems will get fixed over time? Any of you had these problems as well? How did you work on this? Just play more frequently live and the vision will come in time?


2) Difficulties in faster time controls

Even though I am fairly satisfied with my progress in slow games and tactics training, I thought my ratings in blitz would also mirror this.

Apparently that is not true as I can not seem to break above 1200 (granted, I only played about 100 blitz games in total so far). I thought training tactics/puzzles is the most important thing for blitz progress but even though my tactics vision is ok-ish in puzzle rush/tactics trainer, I do not seem to be able to apply that in real games.

Any tips how to get better in blitz? Just play more and more and more?

Thank you

1) Play more with a board. To expedite this you could play out online games on a board next to your computer (unless the time control is too fast) and look at the board and not the screen. Or you can do tactics puzzles on a board (get some book, probably any book will do). Basically, just find things to do with an actual board and spend time with it.

2) Probably just play more blitz. I think on chess.com blitz ratings are lower than longer time controls in general? Not completely sure on that. Maybe by 100-200 points. Not 400+, though. You definitely haven't played enough blitz to get used to that time control.

This seems like a really good idea, will give it a shot. Thanks!

+1 for playing with a physical board during your longer time control games online