The 1600 blues

Originally posted by wormwood
well, anyway, I also suspect your problem is likely the lack of experience in your openings. you have your tactical hammer ready, which is all good & well, but now you'll have to learn when, where and why to hit with it. which is where knowing your openings and the resulting positions intimately comes in. CC is excellent training for that, but llection book or dvd. the most important thing is to have a steady diet of those positions.

thanks wormwood, but I don't think I have any kind of hammer ready yet. I lose material to tricks that would take me 3 seconds max. to find on CTS. most of them are in the transition from middlegame to endgame, especially when time trouble gets into the scene. probably early middlegame positions and openings are more relevant in higher level of play.

However, I take the advice seriously and will study on my openings more, and definately will play more often.

thanks everyone for their helpful posts, I decided to stop whining at this point.🙂 the more I do, the more I get angry with myself and frustrated. probably this is all how it's supposed to be, chess is definately very hard, and I could be a slow chess learner too.

well, anyway this should be it🙂

Originally posted by diskamyl
thanks wormwood, but I don't think I have any kind of hammer ready yet. I lose material to tricks that would take me 3 seconds max. to find on CTS. most of them are in the transition from middlegame to endgame, especially when time trouble gets into the scene. probably early middlegame positions and openings are more relevant in higher level of play.

Ho ately very hard, and I could be a slow chess learner too.

well, anyway this should be it🙂

Do not worry, chess improvement can occur in staircase jumps, when you are least expecting it. Chess is second name for slow learning so do not worry, we share your frustration. Just keep the good (and hard) work and you will see results, sooner or a bit latter.

Originally posted by diskamyl
thanks wormwood, but I don't think I have any kind of hammer ready yet. I lose material to tricks that would take me 3 seconds max. to find on CTS. most of them are in the transition from middlegame to endgame, especially when time trouble gets into the scene. probably early middlegame positions and openings are more relevant in higher level of play.

what I was trying to say was that by knowing the positions, you'll also know where the dangers lurk, as well as the possibilities, all before even looking for them. like a blind man in his own house, he's not gonna bump into things because he already knows where each and every wall and piece of furniture is.

what a lame analogy (I just watched a kungfu movie 😛), but I hope you get what I mean.

Originally posted by wormwood
what I was trying to say was that by knowing the positions, you'll also know where the dangers lurk, as well as the possibilities, all before even looking for them. like a blind man in his own house, he's not gonna bump into things because he already knows where each and every wall and piece of furniture is.

what a lame analogy (I just watched a kungfu movie 😛), but I hope you get what I mean.

yes, I do, thanks.

Originally posted by diskamyl
I lose material to tricks that would take me 3 seconds max. to find on CTS. most of them are in the transition from middlegame to endgame, especially when time trouble gets into the scene. probably early middlegame positions and openings are more relevant in higher level of play.

Sorry maybe my previous intervention was weird , actually i hadn't read the post to the end and i thought you were an OTB competition player, but kotov's advice is harder to apply on the internet (no writing down...) but you got my point.
i have 2 remarks, as a player that like you blunder a lot, especially in time trouble (and having reached a good level : about 2100 fide)

- Try longer games. i mean real long games, like we play in competition, and use that marvellous system to avoid time pressure : time increment. for instance i like to play 1 hour+ 30sec per move.

If i had never played any long games, i would certainly have given up chess by now, since i have made little progress in fast games since i started playing 20 years ago. In fact i have noted my level is a dreadful 300 points below my "normal", that is long games, rating, when i play blitz! Even in 1 hour games i don't feel comfortable without the increment! (time pressure at the end then blunder...old story!

- You always progress by steps. So don't worry if you're stuck for a while at a certain level, it's normal! Some rare and very gifted players progress smoothly way beyond others, but they always get stuck at some point. For most people i think the first barrier is 1600- 1700.
In my case : i got to 1650 in my first year of competition play (had been playing 2 years before), then i couldn't get past 1750 for 6 years! then i climbed quickly to 2000 (at the time i managed to solve most of my blunder and time trouble problems!), to get stuck again since ten years ! (2050 - 2150)

If you need advice on what good book to buy, too, you can ask me, i worked in a chess store for 3 years.

Originally posted by ivan2908
Simple and extremly effective. Did you find a way to FORCE yourself to do it before every move ?

Lol not really! but at least i know it's the right thing to do 🙂

Anyway i make a lot less blunders now, except in rapid play (hopeless i'm afraid...)

Originally posted by shorbock
Lol not really! but at least i know it's the right thing to do 🙂

Anyway i make a lot less blunders now, except in rapid play (hopeless i'm afraid...)

I never make a blunder in the opening, simply because of careful use of databases & openings books.
This is worth at least 100-200 points to a 1400 & gets you to a perfectly playable middlegame virtually every time.
However, I too have the 1600 blues.
The air gets a lot thinner when you get much above 1600.
It feels like the only way I could reach 1900 is by beating 1300's a gazillion times!

I think I'm going to shelve Silman's book for a while. I going to focus exclusively on tactics for a few months, and see if I can get out of the 1600 blues so I can start complaining on being stuck in the 1800's

I bought this chess computer. It has 73 levels of play, and its highest level is rated 1750 ELO. What I am doing, is, I'm playing each level until I beat it 3 times in a row. This way, I get consistent, while slowly improving. The one problem with it is it plays the same opening line against my chosen schemes. For example, everytime I play the Vienna Game, it plays almost the exact same line - but an easy fix: There's a 'multimove option' where I can move for the computer and sometimes I will just make him a move so that it causes a different variation. I'm on level 8/73 and lost to level 6 lol but since then I've won all.

Originally posted by chesskid001
After racing up to 1600 USCF pretty quickly (from 1150 to 1600 in about a year) I've been stuck for 6 months. In fact, I've noticed this pattern with [b] a lot of other players. For those of you who got stuck at the 1600's for a while and managed to get out of it, what advice can you give us poor souls in the "1600 doldrums"?[/b]

There is something strange with 1600 indeed. Cheapos and flip coin moves do not work anymore so you have to play clean games where you won't be able to exploit blunder but more subtle tactical overlooks of your opponent and where your bad Bishop finally does the difference.

But I am looking forward day when I will look at my 1600 games and think "oh, what a primmitive way of playing". 😛 I hope that day will come soon enough.


EDIT : I already see they are primmitive 😵

Originally posted by ivan2908
There is something strange with 1600 indeed. Cheapos and flip coin moves do not work anymore so you have to play clean games where you won't be able to exploit blunder but more subtle tactical overlooks of your opponent and where your bad Bishop finally does the difference.

But I am looking forward day when I will look at my 1600 games and think "oh, wha ...[text shortened]... ". 😛 I hope that day will come soon enough.


EDIT : I already see they are primmitive 😵

especially that game you lost against me where I played horribly...you just played even worse I guess. 😛

Originally posted by tomtom232
especially that game you lost against me where I played horribly...you just played even worse I guess. 😛

when do i get to join the ivan and tomtom game circle? i can't wait 🙂
and exigentsky to. The tiresome threesome! lol...

nah..but seriously...ivan and tom you guys up to start running games? rated/unrated is no issue to me 🙂

Well I seem to have the strangest rating pattern out of all of you guys, I hit 1600 after a lot of time and effort...and skipped right through to 1725, then I crashed back down to 1600 and lost a lot of games to timeouts after that. I'm finally getting close to that 1600 mark again (I think I'm around 1530 now) and I'm hoping that I can get 1700 pretty quickly.

Originally posted by cmsMaster
Well I seem to have the strangest rating pattern out of all of you guys, I hit 1600 after a lot of time and effort...and skipped right through to 1725, then I crashed back down to 1600 and lost a lot of games to timeouts after that. I'm finally getting close to that 1600 mark again (I think I'm around 1530 now) and I'm hoping that I can get 1700 pretty quickly.

yea...i wanna play a few games with you to. Maybe you can hack a few points off me 🙂

Originally posted by Adorea
yea...i wanna play a few games with you to. Maybe you can hack a few points off me 🙂

For whatever reason, everybody wants games with me. Unfortunately it's a very exclusive list of players who get games with me. 😛 Unless you're lucky and match up in a tourney or clan challenge.