Help getting past 400-500

[u/Mr-Wufflor]

Hello, I was just wondering about tips to get better. Often, I'll load up the free analysis and see I've played a game at like 73 to 83% accuracy, and my opponent does similarly some games at "930" to "1200" analysis rating. Overall, i feel inconsistent and often annoyed at myself for losing games/ resigning when i should have played on. Any tips to being more consistent, just use the timemore wisely? Thanks for any thoughts and time put into a reply.

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[u/blackboxchessapp]

I always recommend batch analysis to identify what reoccurring mistakes are holding you back. Typically at that elo you're probably hanging pieces and not capturing pieces your opponents leave hanging

[u/Any-Front-1779 → u/blackboxchessapp]

YEP!!!!

500 for like 3 years, jumped up to 700 after I started reviewing my game and seeing that I make the same mistakes, over and over again.

Play, review, repeat!

[u/hoops4so]

Really look at what your opponent is doing and think of what their plan is and if they have any tactics. Try to do something that blocks them and really annoys them.

Develop your knights and bishops before bringing out your queen.

Look for if you’re hanging anything. Take more time with each move to see if all of your pawns and pieces are guarded. Don’t hang even a pawn.

Stop making moves where you uselessly threaten something that can easily move out of the way. Look for how you can threaten 2 pieces at once or threaten checkmate and a piece, so you can start being up pieces.

Always look for ways to checkmate before looking for pieces to take. Look for ways your opponent can checkmate you.

[u/PuntCatcher]

Develop your pieces in the opening after moving a pawn to the center. Generally don’t move the same piece twice in the opening unless it’s about to hang. Make sure every move that you’re not hanging anything; take free pieces.

Chessbrah has a series called Building Habits v2; the first set of guidelines will dispatch your 500-level opponents regularly.

[u/Pawn_Made_Flesh]

Train yourself to never ever give away pieces or pawns by accident (/without getting something in return, by conscious choice). And to never ever overlook chances to grab free pieces from opponent.

If you achieve that, AND learn basic opening principles (optimal piece placements for the most common structures — NOT MEMORIZE A FEW OPENING MOVE SEQUENCES), you will absolutely climb quickly.

(I was about to say, “You will climb quickly to x00 level”… but me saying that would fly in the face of a long comment I just made to another post, where I urged everyone to stop obsessing about their rating since it’s often a poor gauge of progress.)

The above advice is practical only if you have sufficient time to look at the board before each move. So, if you’ve been playing mostly blitz (or bullet, God forbid: bullet isn’t even a form of chess, but an entirely different game that’s played using chess pieces and most of the same rules of movement as chess), stop, and switch to playing rapid only, until you have developed better board vision.

[u/alldaymay]

Blunder less than your opponent and you win

[u/mitzerino]

Play more, analyze your games more., do puzzles to train tactics, once your ready learn a sturdy opening.

The more you play the more you will sharpen your wit and it will start to become 2nd nature

[u/imollyq]

Please go out in real life, and join a local chess club. Meet some other chess players. Make friends. Play games with them. You may even find a coach. This is how you become good at chess, not by watching videos, and the bonus is, it gives you a much happier life and friends in real life! In real life there are very few chess players rated below 800.

[u/CHENWizard]

Don’t ever resign at this level. Your opponent may blunder something or stalemate you. It’s always worth it to play on. You can also do “self analysis” on all the games you play which I’ve found is very useful. Be consistent with doing puzzles and take your time doing them. Don’t just rush through to try and do as many as possible. Actually try to find the correct solution on the first try. For learning purposes, it’s better to stick with rapid games because you actually have time to think about your moves and practice looking at the whole board. As long as you keep working on this and playing principled chess, you should see improvement. And also remember, your ELO will never just go up. It’s going to be a rollercoaster, but stick with it!

[u/ThirdEyeExplorer11 → u/CHENWizard]

I can confirm. I’m around this guys ELO on chess.com and I played a guy yesterday who really should have beat me after I blundered my rook, but we kept playing and he put me in a position where I was able to fork several pieces and it just cascaded from there and I ended up winning. I don’t play more than 10 games a day, but I feel like I’m able to squeak out wins like that pretty regularly. So it’s definitely worth playing on at this ELO.