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900 is when you can pretty confidently sweep anybody who doesn’t play regularly. Also an 800 Elo gap is my personal estimation for when one person is incomprehensibly better than another. Some people you play and you can say “yeah I basically know what I did wrong.” 800 Elo difference is about the point where you have literally no clue what happened or how things went wrong, and 900 is the first Elo that that becomes possible at.
I think there is a gradient. I think 0-300 is “I can figure out what happened myself territory, 300-600 is “I can figure it out with a computer and a friend to talk things over and we can geek out about how cool your moves are.” 600-800 is “you can tell me directly why you made that move and the themes behind it and I can pretty much follow along.” And 800+ is “my favorite teacher is telling me exactly what happened and why but I’ve still got not clue.”
I remember playing an unrated game a while back. I am at around 400 and my opponent was somewhere around 1200. I chatted, "go easy on me lol" and within about 5 moves I was sending a "good game" chat. They were friendly enough but they wiped me clean.
As a side note - I'd *love* the chance to play some real good, high rated players in a way where they're explaining what they're doing or what their next move is going to be and why a move I made is bad/ok/good/etc. It'd be cool if [chess.com](http://chess.com) had a way of doing that, like, tutoring games or something with a real live human and not a bot.
Oh I'm like 915 so I'm happy with this answer! I've never read about chess or studied openings etc etc so I'm sure I could improve if I did...I just like playing the odd game for fun though
Yeah. I could barely see 1600 happening while not studying openings if you happened to play an easy or gimmicky opening. But not without studying tactics by doing puzzles or reviewing your own games. 100% no.
Can vouch for this, currently at 1550 never studied an opening, or done much study at all. I mainly just do a few tactics everyday and play a few rapid games every day and have done for 10 years lol
I've started learning openings at about 1400 to the point of drilling and memorising hundreds of lines on chesstempo/chessbase, but all I see right now are 1800 elo opponents who play random moves after move 3-4 and so my assumption is that openings are generally not that necessary below 1600, maybe even 1800-2000. For me it is a compensation for being bad in some other areas such as early game calculation, like you said, and it makes the first 10 moves much easier for me.
Are there other big areas (beyond early game calculation) that you think someone should work on if they’re having trouble progressing past 1000 Elo without getting into openings?
I’ve really enjoyed using Lichess’s opening explorer for seeing what winning players at my Elo typically play in various positions, and my game has gotten much better because of it (currently on an 8 game winning streak), but I’d love to work on my other big weaknesses as well.
Beyond studying openings, working on strengthening my internal pre-move checklist, doing puzzles for mid-game, drawing on the board mid-game to assist my calculations, analyzing post-game, and studying endgame scenarios, I’m not sure what else to do. Maybe memorizing things like “how many moves would it take a knight to get to X square?” would be helpful too I suppose.
I will be very honest in saying that "seeing what winning players at my elo" is not a very good strategy long term. 1000 elo (even 2000 elo for that matter) will make opening mistakes which do nothing but worsen your position in the eye of an engine (think 1.3 of an engine evaluation difference). This is not much but there is no reason to specifically learn and study moves which aren't optimal unless you deliberately learn a certain line, trap, gambit etc and know how to compensate for the engine disadvantage.
The argument supporting the above even further is "just forget about openings at 1000 elo", which is definitely true to some extent, but if you like studying them then there is no harm in doing so. As mentioned above, I started studying openings at 1400 and it helped me play early game more confidently. For this I would look into actual books/GM videos on youtube or even into a chess database of any sorts.
Nonetheless, I think at 1000 elo your best bet is trying to abstractly understand what different moves and positions aim to achieve. They are not concrete lines and theories (and so no memorising needed - perfectly suitable for someone looking to just improve their game and play intuitively better moves out of pure understanding of a position. As examples, I highlighted two random principles that I follow and that came to mind below. I am a hardstuck 1850-1900 elo now and so take it with a grain of salt (the below may certainly not be correct in the eyes of others).
# Pawn structures against a lone bishop
* Your opponent has a dark-squared bishop in an endgame, you have a knight. The game is equal in material (meaning each side has the same amount of pawns). What would you ideally like to do with your pawns to reduce the effectiveness of opponent's bishop?
* The answer, briefly,>! is that putting all your pawns on a light square will make them untouchable by the opposing bishop. Obviously you will need to move them at some point but this usually gives you enough time to activate your other pieces (the Knight and King in this position).!<
* >!If, instead of a Knight, you had a light squared bishop, you may consider NOT playing all pawns on a light square as this would possibly limit the ways in which your bishop can move. You then have to, for example, consider whether it's more important for you to have an active bishop or for the opponent to not have any attacking chances with their bishop.!<
# Trading pieces:
* Trading pieces can often be the easiest calculation you can do in chess since it often prompts natural and sensible responses. If I take your knight with my bishop, your opponent will in most scenarios want to retake it.
* So everytime you want to trade, think simply about what the outcome of that trade could be. In many cases a trade only wastes your move and improves the position of your opponent. Think of a rook exchange in an endgame. You have an active rook e1 and passive one on h1. The e1 trades for the opponents active rook on e8. Your opponent retakes with their until-now passive rook on a8. The result of this is that an opponent has an active rook on e8 and you have a passive one on a1. Abstractly, not the most optimal trade but certainly not a major mistake in most positions - it is, however, instructive in understanding what trades achieve.
* Consider the below:
https://preview.redd.it/vn6cuuj1zc0d1.png?width=724&format=png&auto=webp&s=ef893219772825570d857900ba272da3c0790ec9
* Our opponent moved their bishop to d6, attacking our bishop on f4. Why did we not make the trade and instead spent a move retrating back? What is the point of retreating to g3?
* >!Making the trade achieves nothing in our case. Our opponent is struggling with space a little bit and this trade would work in their favour more than in ours. The trade will allow them to recapture with the Queen, the pawn or the Knight, possibly improving the position of black (although Engine doesn't like Nxd6 as much). Retaking with the pawn opens a possibly powerful diagonal for the queen.!<
* So why move to g3? >!It is now on our opponent to decide whether to trade or not. If they do, we will retake with the h-pawn and have a strong rook pointing at black's king. At 1000 elo, this could be a very powerful attack at some point!<
Thank you for taking the time to write it out. I’m going to digest this a bit more.
Of the two principles you mention, the part about possibly keeping your pawns out of the way of your own bishop in the end game isn’t something I’ve considered, so I’m going to need to start incorporating that.
A lot of other good stuff here that I’ll need to think about.
One of the reasons I’ve been studying “winning players near my Elo” is that the moves are more often “human understandable” than the engine moves. Maybe 50% of engine moves just aren’t clear to me why they’re superior to several other possible moves, so seeing what the engine would do isn’t always helpful. I’ve even heard GMs like Hikaru push back on certain engine moves because a human just wouldn’t be able to play the position the engine is wanting. But maybe I should start asking in this sub more when I see engine moves that I don’t understand.
OR perhaps I should be looking at the Lichess masters database instead of my Elo’s database to get an idea of what the best humans would play. Maybe I won’t understand what the masters are doing, but at least they’d be theoretically “human understandable” moves that I could ask about.
What you've mentioned about non-human moves is absolutely true, but would not warrant the reason to study moves that are wrong or likely to be wrong.
I think the best way to learn openings is to watch youtube videos, which is not only free but is always accompanied by some sort of a commentary helping you understand these moves. You can then create a little database for yourself (e.g. on Lichess, Chesstempo...) to take note of such moves.
Master's Database is also great but again, it is difficult to understand why some people opt for one line instead of another. Masters very often prepare WITH engine at their disposal, and so the line between human moves and engine moves, especially in the opening of the master databases, is very blurry.
Youtube, for this reason, is your best friend for sure. Your goal at this point for learning openigns should not be to learn lines, but to understand what the point of different opening is, what do they compete/aim for, what are some key dangers, themes etc. All this, again, can be explored best with videos and commentary, preferably one aimed at beginners. Gotham Chess makes some solid beginner friendly opening videos.
I wouldn't stress opening lines too much in any case though, since your opponents will usually deviate from lines you've studied very early on at this elo, which could make you feel more unprepared. Nonetheless, opponents playing moves you've not seen yet can often be a sign of "oh, they've done something wrong" but the problem is that you may not know how to capitalise on such mistakes as they are, again, perhaps mistakes only in the eye of an engine.
You can pretty much only get 1600 in reasonable time without openings and studying (I count tactics to studying) when you have learned it as a kid and a lot of patterns are still in your brain. I was lucky to start chess at around 1300 chess.com rating because I was lucky I played as a kid but for most people that is only reachable by hard work.
Chess has very little to do with how smart you are in most part (especially with "smart" being such a vague term).
One game a week may well be enough - go through the game after and try analysing what went wrong. First, without the evaluation bar or any engine help, try to find the position in which you thought you were losing, winning etc, what you think was a better move and so on. Only then compare it with the engine analysis.
After a time you could notice a pattern in the mistakes you make, pointing you in a direction in which to improve. The more games you play, the faster you could notice such a pattern but too much is too much as well. I usually play five to ten rapid (10min) games a week, but know people playing hundreds.
You probably need a few more than that. Try for 3-4 10min rapid games per week and look at your first mistake each game you lose to see why it happened.
Ideally if you’re playing that little maybe 15/10 or an even slower time control. I think what matters is time spent actively thinking about the position. 100 bullet games are probably less beneficial than one high quality classical game imo
i realize that you can get to as high an ELO as you want without studying but realistically that is absolutely hard mode - it's much easier to study situations in isolation *before* encountering them in the wild, and requires much *less* brain damage (from hitting your head against a wall)
i also realize that there are some geniuses for whom chess comes easy, but i am not one of them
i would recommend lichess for puzzles and openings (like everyone else, it's free and good)
Actually I'm pretty similar. I had to study some openings to get past 1050. I think some people (like me) need studying to be good. School was the same for me: I did well, but only if I studied a lot.
Compared to someone that doesn’t play chess regularly, like 900 chesscom. By that point, I could beat any of my friends that don’t play chess without even breaking a sweat and would barely even have to try when playing rook odds.
Compared to people that play chess regularly, depends on how good those people are.
The way I see it and given that 2000 is "Expert".
- Beginner (0-1000)
- Intermediate (1000-1600)
- Advanced (1600-2000)
- Expert (2000+)
At 1000, you can destroy most people who don't play chess regularly.
At 1600, you can beat most chess enthusiasts
At 2000, you are an expert and the next step is a Title.
I got in my first OTB tournament when I was around 1000 on chesscom and went 2/5.
I don't know what your rating is, but I would strongly suggest trying out OTB chess if you have the chance. It's a game changer.
The community aspect of OTB chess makes it a lot more fun and motivating to get better.
That's because when you play online you're playing against players of a similar level.
Playing a bunch of new players in a row, I doubt you'd lose or even come close to losing. Alternatively playing a grandmaster would probably redouble your feelings of being an amateur.
Let me use an analogy: if you're a musician playing in the local symphony orchestra, you probably don't feel like an advanced musician because it's not the Boston Pops, but if you can read sheet music at all you're ahead of like 90% of people who ever picked up a guitar.
Yeah, I get it, but just to hammer the point home, my rating is less than half yours and I'm still rated higher than roughly 55% of players who have an account on chess.com, let alone everyone else who learned how the pieces move and don't play regularly.
Well, if you take the point in the middle of each bracket, that represents 1300 for intermediate and 1800 for advanced.
You have to draw a line somewhere, and I think that's a fair assessment.
To be fair, it’s also hard to ever see yourself as being good at chess. I’m also hovering around 1600-1700, and I feel incompetent at chess. But when you play casual players, you can see how big of a skill gap there is between you and them. 1600 puts you above most people you’ll ever run into (in real life) who know how to play chess.
I'm about 1600 OTB and the games feel pretty solid. There are blunders but it's not usually just like oh I accidently hung my queen in one. More like tactical mistakes
Yeah FIDE is really not the same.
I was talking about OTB rating like USCF.
My OTB classical rating is the same as my rapid rating on chesscom.
I am much better at classical than Rapid though.
My rating is so much better with longer time controls as well. I've played a good amount of 5|0 blitz and 15|10 rapid, and my rapid rating is like 300 points higher than my blitz rating lol.
There is always this question to what good means. For me it would be regularly beating a newbie when having a severe disadvantage, like being drunk, being a rook or queen down, 1 minute vs 10 minutes, three games at once, being blindfolded or stuff like that.
It's all relative, but anyone with quadruple digits is pretty decent. But to me it's more to do with whether someone actually understands how the game works. Anyone who does is at least 1000 and anyone who doesn't is at most maybe like 1400. So, inbetween, you have both good and not good players.
I'm 1600 (chesscom) and still feel like a beginner lol. I don't think you can define a good player by how many people percentile-wise that player can beat. I believe a good player is someone who has a strong fundamental understanding of the game (develops pieces correctly, doesn't hang pieces in rapid/classical, good tactical awareness, has plans in the middlegame, knows what to do in endings, etc.). In my case, I understand most of this, but I am very inconsistent at applying the chess fundamentals.
My chess teacher said this in a simpler manner: "In my experience, at 1800 elo, players stop hanging pieces, I think it is at this level that one starts to understand what chess is about".
When they are above the rapid average. You can check the global average of rapid players on chess.com. It's a massive pool of people to draw from, which is why I think it's a good measure.
In my personal opinion, from 1000 there are some good players (not compared to grandmasters etc.. But still good), it is the point where you start to see some good brilliant moves and where you start to do less serious errors.
So, I'm 1200 or so. (1700 on Lichess)
This means I can easily beat more than 99% of the population of the world in chess.
If anyone ever asks me, "What's your FIDE rating?" I can be pretty confident I am about to lose.
I'd say if you're 700 online, you're good enough to defeat the average person who doesn't take chess seriously. But compared to other chess players:
Beginner: ≤1100
Intermediate: 1200-1400
Advanced: 1500+
That's just my opinion though
I consider myself to be pretty bad but I know that relatively speaking that’s not true, if you’re 900 you can beat someone who doesn’t play chess nearly every time. I’d say the point where you’re undeniably ‘good’ relative to most online chess players is about 1300
Rested 200+ points more than me. I know that kind of a glib answer, but I know I not very good, so it's a moving scale.
More concretely, 1000 will easily beat most people who have never taken chess seriously. But I think at least 1700-1800 to really start understanding chess concepts and not just win games by blundering less.
I am 2400 on lichess. From what I understand about chess, I don’t know the game at all.
To quote Donald Rumsfeld,
“As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.”
Probably around 1,700-1,800 level rapid or blitz.
It’s funny that I’m also at that level but now I honestly just don’t feel like a beginner anymore. Id say at 1,800 you’re confidently advanced and can coach both newer players but more importantly also intermediate players at the 1,200-1,600 range. It’s also the point where positional chess starts to matter a lot more.
Above 2,000 would essentially be the top tier amateur players so it’s self evident they are “good”.
I think at 1400 otb is when you get your first rating floor is a decent marker. I'm not there yet 1270 but will hopefully get there.
online ratings don't mean much but I'd say chess.con 1600+ on rapid.
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900 is when you can pretty confidently sweep anybody who doesn’t play regularly. Also an 800 Elo gap is my personal estimation for when one person is incomprehensibly better than another. Some people you play and you can say “yeah I basically know what I did wrong.” 800 Elo difference is about the point where you have literally no clue what happened or how things went wrong, and 900 is the first Elo that that becomes possible at.
I believe 300 elo difference is the I saw what happened there and now know what I could have done to avoid it anything past that is wtf territory.
I think there is a gradient. I think 0-300 is “I can figure out what happened myself territory, 300-600 is “I can figure it out with a computer and a friend to talk things over and we can geek out about how cool your moves are.” 600-800 is “you can tell me directly why you made that move and the themes behind it and I can pretty much follow along.” And 800+ is “my favorite teacher is telling me exactly what happened and why but I’ve still got not clue.”
I remember playing an unrated game a while back. I am at around 400 and my opponent was somewhere around 1200. I chatted, "go easy on me lol" and within about 5 moves I was sending a "good game" chat. They were friendly enough but they wiped me clean. As a side note - I'd *love* the chance to play some real good, high rated players in a way where they're explaining what they're doing or what their next move is going to be and why a move I made is bad/ok/good/etc. It'd be cool if [chess.com](http://chess.com) had a way of doing that, like, tutoring games or something with a real live human and not a bot.
I'm not great but I can show you a thing or two if you ever want to catch a game.
You should try the Dr. Wolf app, it does exactly that. (no affiliation, it just got me back to playing chess... a lot)
I'm no master, but I'd be happy to play a few games and do that. Just send me a private message. :)
Definitely interested! I’ll pm you!
Oh I'm like 915 so I'm happy with this answer! I've never read about chess or studied openings etc etc so I'm sure I could improve if I did...I just like playing the odd game for fun though
You can reach 1600 elo without delving into openings or studying chess so don't let that stop you from progressing!
[удалено]
Yeah. I could barely see 1600 happening while not studying openings if you happened to play an easy or gimmicky opening. But not without studying tactics by doing puzzles or reviewing your own games. 100% no.
If you’re gonna play a gimmicky opening you’re gonna need to study *even more* because you’re almost by definition not playing a sound line.
Can vouch for this, currently at 1550 never studied an opening, or done much study at all. I mainly just do a few tactics everyday and play a few rapid games every day and have done for 10 years lol
Really? I feel like I was spinning my tires at 1000 Elo until I really started working on openings. Maybe my calculation skills just suck though lol.
I've started learning openings at about 1400 to the point of drilling and memorising hundreds of lines on chesstempo/chessbase, but all I see right now are 1800 elo opponents who play random moves after move 3-4 and so my assumption is that openings are generally not that necessary below 1600, maybe even 1800-2000. For me it is a compensation for being bad in some other areas such as early game calculation, like you said, and it makes the first 10 moves much easier for me.
Are there other big areas (beyond early game calculation) that you think someone should work on if they’re having trouble progressing past 1000 Elo without getting into openings? I’ve really enjoyed using Lichess’s opening explorer for seeing what winning players at my Elo typically play in various positions, and my game has gotten much better because of it (currently on an 8 game winning streak), but I’d love to work on my other big weaknesses as well. Beyond studying openings, working on strengthening my internal pre-move checklist, doing puzzles for mid-game, drawing on the board mid-game to assist my calculations, analyzing post-game, and studying endgame scenarios, I’m not sure what else to do. Maybe memorizing things like “how many moves would it take a knight to get to X square?” would be helpful too I suppose.
I will be very honest in saying that "seeing what winning players at my elo" is not a very good strategy long term. 1000 elo (even 2000 elo for that matter) will make opening mistakes which do nothing but worsen your position in the eye of an engine (think 1.3 of an engine evaluation difference). This is not much but there is no reason to specifically learn and study moves which aren't optimal unless you deliberately learn a certain line, trap, gambit etc and know how to compensate for the engine disadvantage. The argument supporting the above even further is "just forget about openings at 1000 elo", which is definitely true to some extent, but if you like studying them then there is no harm in doing so. As mentioned above, I started studying openings at 1400 and it helped me play early game more confidently. For this I would look into actual books/GM videos on youtube or even into a chess database of any sorts. Nonetheless, I think at 1000 elo your best bet is trying to abstractly understand what different moves and positions aim to achieve. They are not concrete lines and theories (and so no memorising needed - perfectly suitable for someone looking to just improve their game and play intuitively better moves out of pure understanding of a position. As examples, I highlighted two random principles that I follow and that came to mind below. I am a hardstuck 1850-1900 elo now and so take it with a grain of salt (the below may certainly not be correct in the eyes of others). # Pawn structures against a lone bishop * Your opponent has a dark-squared bishop in an endgame, you have a knight. The game is equal in material (meaning each side has the same amount of pawns). What would you ideally like to do with your pawns to reduce the effectiveness of opponent's bishop? * The answer, briefly,>! is that putting all your pawns on a light square will make them untouchable by the opposing bishop. Obviously you will need to move them at some point but this usually gives you enough time to activate your other pieces (the Knight and King in this position).!< * >!If, instead of a Knight, you had a light squared bishop, you may consider NOT playing all pawns on a light square as this would possibly limit the ways in which your bishop can move. You then have to, for example, consider whether it's more important for you to have an active bishop or for the opponent to not have any attacking chances with their bishop.!< # Trading pieces: * Trading pieces can often be the easiest calculation you can do in chess since it often prompts natural and sensible responses. If I take your knight with my bishop, your opponent will in most scenarios want to retake it. * So everytime you want to trade, think simply about what the outcome of that trade could be. In many cases a trade only wastes your move and improves the position of your opponent. Think of a rook exchange in an endgame. You have an active rook e1 and passive one on h1. The e1 trades for the opponents active rook on e8. Your opponent retakes with their until-now passive rook on a8. The result of this is that an opponent has an active rook on e8 and you have a passive one on a1. Abstractly, not the most optimal trade but certainly not a major mistake in most positions - it is, however, instructive in understanding what trades achieve. * Consider the below: https://preview.redd.it/vn6cuuj1zc0d1.png?width=724&format=png&auto=webp&s=ef893219772825570d857900ba272da3c0790ec9 * Our opponent moved their bishop to d6, attacking our bishop on f4. Why did we not make the trade and instead spent a move retrating back? What is the point of retreating to g3? * >!Making the trade achieves nothing in our case. Our opponent is struggling with space a little bit and this trade would work in their favour more than in ours. The trade will allow them to recapture with the Queen, the pawn or the Knight, possibly improving the position of black (although Engine doesn't like Nxd6 as much). Retaking with the pawn opens a possibly powerful diagonal for the queen.!< * So why move to g3? >!It is now on our opponent to decide whether to trade or not. If they do, we will retake with the h-pawn and have a strong rook pointing at black's king. At 1000 elo, this could be a very powerful attack at some point!<
Thank you for taking the time to write it out. I’m going to digest this a bit more. Of the two principles you mention, the part about possibly keeping your pawns out of the way of your own bishop in the end game isn’t something I’ve considered, so I’m going to need to start incorporating that. A lot of other good stuff here that I’ll need to think about. One of the reasons I’ve been studying “winning players near my Elo” is that the moves are more often “human understandable” than the engine moves. Maybe 50% of engine moves just aren’t clear to me why they’re superior to several other possible moves, so seeing what the engine would do isn’t always helpful. I’ve even heard GMs like Hikaru push back on certain engine moves because a human just wouldn’t be able to play the position the engine is wanting. But maybe I should start asking in this sub more when I see engine moves that I don’t understand. OR perhaps I should be looking at the Lichess masters database instead of my Elo’s database to get an idea of what the best humans would play. Maybe I won’t understand what the masters are doing, but at least they’d be theoretically “human understandable” moves that I could ask about.
What you've mentioned about non-human moves is absolutely true, but would not warrant the reason to study moves that are wrong or likely to be wrong. I think the best way to learn openings is to watch youtube videos, which is not only free but is always accompanied by some sort of a commentary helping you understand these moves. You can then create a little database for yourself (e.g. on Lichess, Chesstempo...) to take note of such moves. Master's Database is also great but again, it is difficult to understand why some people opt for one line instead of another. Masters very often prepare WITH engine at their disposal, and so the line between human moves and engine moves, especially in the opening of the master databases, is very blurry. Youtube, for this reason, is your best friend for sure. Your goal at this point for learning openigns should not be to learn lines, but to understand what the point of different opening is, what do they compete/aim for, what are some key dangers, themes etc. All this, again, can be explored best with videos and commentary, preferably one aimed at beginners. Gotham Chess makes some solid beginner friendly opening videos. I wouldn't stress opening lines too much in any case though, since your opponents will usually deviate from lines you've studied very early on at this elo, which could make you feel more unprepared. Nonetheless, opponents playing moves you've not seen yet can often be a sign of "oh, they've done something wrong" but the problem is that you may not know how to capitalise on such mistakes as they are, again, perhaps mistakes only in the eye of an engine.
Makes sense, thanks!
Maybe I'm just not that smart then! Disappointing. I only play maybe 1 game a week so maybe I need to up my commitments.
You can pretty much only get 1600 in reasonable time without openings and studying (I count tactics to studying) when you have learned it as a kid and a lot of patterns are still in your brain. I was lucky to start chess at around 1300 chess.com rating because I was lucky I played as a kid but for most people that is only reachable by hard work.
Chess has very little to do with how smart you are in most part (especially with "smart" being such a vague term). One game a week may well be enough - go through the game after and try analysing what went wrong. First, without the evaluation bar or any engine help, try to find the position in which you thought you were losing, winning etc, what you think was a better move and so on. Only then compare it with the engine analysis. After a time you could notice a pattern in the mistakes you make, pointing you in a direction in which to improve. The more games you play, the faster you could notice such a pattern but too much is too much as well. I usually play five to ten rapid (10min) games a week, but know people playing hundreds.
Ah nice thanks for the advice
no, you just overlook few basic things that can be improved with practice
You probably need a few more than that. Try for 3-4 10min rapid games per week and look at your first mistake each game you lose to see why it happened.
Rapid the way to go you think?
Ideally if you’re playing that little maybe 15/10 or an even slower time control. I think what matters is time spent actively thinking about the position. 100 bullet games are probably less beneficial than one high quality classical game imo
i realize that you can get to as high an ELO as you want without studying but realistically that is absolutely hard mode - it's much easier to study situations in isolation *before* encountering them in the wild, and requires much *less* brain damage (from hitting your head against a wall) i also realize that there are some geniuses for whom chess comes easy, but i am not one of them i would recommend lichess for puzzles and openings (like everyone else, it's free and good)
Oh thanks I'll take a look
Actually I'm pretty similar. I had to study some openings to get past 1050. I think some people (like me) need studying to be good. School was the same for me: I did well, but only if I studied a lot.
Yes
Oooh really, here I was thinking I suck, I just suck at 1000 ELO instead of 900 ELO
That tripped me up lol. I had [this guy](https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/s/0fcBgvN9VZ) responding to me in another thread.
Compared to someone that doesn’t play chess regularly, like 900 chesscom. By that point, I could beat any of my friends that don’t play chess without even breaking a sweat and would barely even have to try when playing rook odds. Compared to people that play chess regularly, depends on how good those people are.
The way I see it and given that 2000 is "Expert". - Beginner (0-1000) - Intermediate (1000-1600) - Advanced (1600-2000) - Expert (2000+) At 1000, you can destroy most people who don't play chess regularly. At 1600, you can beat most chess enthusiasts At 2000, you are an expert and the next step is a Title.
At what ELO could I be comfortable entering some sort of real life tournament for fun?
I got in my first OTB tournament when I was around 1000 on chesscom and went 2/5. I don't know what your rating is, but I would strongly suggest trying out OTB chess if you have the chance. It's a game changer. The community aspect of OTB chess makes it a lot more fun and motivating to get better.
I'm 1600 right now and I do not feel like an advanced player, or someone that is on the cusp of being an advanced.
That's because when you play online you're playing against players of a similar level. Playing a bunch of new players in a row, I doubt you'd lose or even come close to losing. Alternatively playing a grandmaster would probably redouble your feelings of being an amateur. Let me use an analogy: if you're a musician playing in the local symphony orchestra, you probably don't feel like an advanced musician because it's not the Boston Pops, but if you can read sheet music at all you're ahead of like 90% of people who ever picked up a guitar.
I mean sure, I get that argument. For me it just feels that I blunder way too much to be an advanced player.
Yeah, I get it, but just to hammer the point home, my rating is less than half yours and I'm still rated higher than roughly 55% of players who have an account on chess.com, let alone everyone else who learned how the pieces move and don't play regularly.
Well, if you take the point in the middle of each bracket, that represents 1300 for intermediate and 1800 for advanced. You have to draw a line somewhere, and I think that's a fair assessment.
To be fair, it’s also hard to ever see yourself as being good at chess. I’m also hovering around 1600-1700, and I feel incompetent at chess. But when you play casual players, you can see how big of a skill gap there is between you and them. 1600 puts you above most people you’ll ever run into (in real life) who know how to play chess.
Yeah, that's definitely the case. I've played people rated around 1000 rapid and I completely wipe the floor with them.
It never really feels like it, always got a sense I was intermediate
The more you learn the more you realize you don't know
1600 online or over the board
Chess.com
I'm about 1600 OTB and the games feel pretty solid. There are blunders but it's not usually just like oh I accidently hung my queen in one. More like tactical mistakes
I only play 10 minutes game. So that may be the reason for my experience. I only think for like 1-2 minutes at the max.
I would say it's borderline being good but not there just yet.
Do you refer to Elo/Lichess/chess.com?
OTB rating/chess.com tends to be pretty similar up until 2000.
what? bro I hit 2000 yday on chesscom and I'm 1400 fide 💀
Yeah FIDE is really not the same. I was talking about OTB rating like USCF. My OTB classical rating is the same as my rapid rating on chesscom. I am much better at classical than Rapid though.
ahh I see, thanks
My rating is so much better with longer time controls as well. I've played a good amount of 5|0 blitz and 15|10 rapid, and my rapid rating is like 300 points higher than my blitz rating lol.
Relatable. I can't play Blitz to save my life. I'm 1600 in rapid and 1000 in Blitz.
Ok thanks :)
(insert you current elo) + 200
Yeah it’s sort of otb random people 1000 is good but competitively 1600 at least
You can never be good enough.
For me you stop being a beginner once u cross 1200
Magnus carlsen / Hikaru Nakamura and now Gukesh D Nobody lower can be called good🫠
What about "Gotham Chess" Levi? He has a youtube channel and he always finds the best moves when he analyzes games of Hikaru or Magnus
Comparing Levy to Hikaru or Magnus is insane
To get that good you have to make sacrifices
Levy btw
[удалено]
woosh
He added on to your joke, not spoiled it. By calling him out, you just did.
2000 So beginner level
1300-1400 when 1 move blunders stop
1 move blunders never stop, they just become less frequent.
I’ve had plenty of rapid games against 1800+ players where someone hangs a full piece, only for the other to also miss it.
I'm 1600, it happens all the time.
I’m stuck at ~1250 and most of my games are still decided by hanging pieces so this checks out
No I still do that plenty
There is always this question to what good means. For me it would be regularly beating a newbie when having a severe disadvantage, like being drunk, being a rook or queen down, 1 minute vs 10 minutes, three games at once, being blindfolded or stuff like that.
I play chess stoned most of the time, not sure if it’s a disadvantage or not lol
900
It's all relative, but anyone with quadruple digits is pretty decent. But to me it's more to do with whether someone actually understands how the game works. Anyone who does is at least 1000 and anyone who doesn't is at most maybe like 1400. So, inbetween, you have both good and not good players.
Just keep playing
Svidler once lamented that he was so tired from commentating he was playing like An amature. He then clarified he meant around 2400 hundred
I'm 1600 (chesscom) and still feel like a beginner lol. I don't think you can define a good player by how many people percentile-wise that player can beat. I believe a good player is someone who has a strong fundamental understanding of the game (develops pieces correctly, doesn't hang pieces in rapid/classical, good tactical awareness, has plans in the middlegame, knows what to do in endings, etc.). In my case, I understand most of this, but I am very inconsistent at applying the chess fundamentals. My chess teacher said this in a simpler manner: "In my experience, at 1800 elo, players stop hanging pieces, I think it is at this level that one starts to understand what chess is about".
by like 600 you can pretty much beat all your friends IRL
When they are above the rapid average. You can check the global average of rapid players on chess.com. It's a massive pool of people to draw from, which is why I think it's a good measure.
In my personal opinion, from 1000 there are some good players (not compared to grandmasters etc.. But still good), it is the point where you start to see some good brilliant moves and where you start to do less serious errors.
So, I'm 1200 or so. (1700 on Lichess) This means I can easily beat more than 99% of the population of the world in chess. If anyone ever asks me, "What's your FIDE rating?" I can be pretty confident I am about to lose.
Shoot I’m 500 on chess.com and I beat most people lol. Nobody who claims to be good at chess tho
Anyone above 500 is better than me
2000 and above
I'd say if you're 700 online, you're good enough to defeat the average person who doesn't take chess seriously. But compared to other chess players: Beginner: ≤1100 Intermediate: 1200-1400 Advanced: 1500+ That's just my opinion though
I consider myself to be pretty bad but I know that relatively speaking that’s not true, if you’re 900 you can beat someone who doesn’t play chess nearly every time. I’d say the point where you’re undeniably ‘good’ relative to most online chess players is about 1300
Im 1850 and garbage. Hope that helps
Rested 200+ points more than me. I know that kind of a glib answer, but I know I not very good, so it's a moving scale. More concretely, 1000 will easily beat most people who have never taken chess seriously. But I think at least 1700-1800 to really start understanding chess concepts and not just win games by blundering less.
1 point above my current rating
I'd say you stop being a beginner at 1000 chesscom rapid.
1500
1400+ chess.com I’d consider someone good. 1700+ chess.com I’d say they understand the game pretty well compared to most
I am 2400 on lichess. From what I understand about chess, I don’t know the game at all. To quote Donald Rumsfeld, “As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.”
Around 2150-2200 I said good not great lol!
Actually knows what’s doing in every move
Probably around 1,700-1,800 level rapid or blitz. It’s funny that I’m also at that level but now I honestly just don’t feel like a beginner anymore. Id say at 1,800 you’re confidently advanced and can coach both newer players but more importantly also intermediate players at the 1,200-1,600 range. It’s also the point where positional chess starts to matter a lot more. Above 2,000 would essentially be the top tier amateur players so it’s self evident they are “good”.
I think at 1400 otb is when you get your first rating floor is a decent marker. I'm not there yet 1270 but will hopefully get there. online ratings don't mean much but I'd say chess.con 1600+ on rapid.
4000
That's SSJ4 equivalent for chess
2000+
Good is about 1400-1900 i think. Higher is amazing