These are my rules in my grand theory of the road to improvement:
1) recognise you can actually 'beat' yourself and assist your opponent in winning, through making bad moves, poor choices at the board etc.
2) take all the games you have lost in the last 50. Work through them one by one, be ultra critical of your play listing short notes about the mistakes you have made. For example, I lost 19 games in 1 season....very rarely was I totally out-played. I could normally trace my loss back to poor decisions and play on my part. eg. In 6 games I left my king in the centre and ultimately got caught out, so by not castling I was actually contributing to my own loss.
It is amazing how often you make the same mistakes, but dont realise how often you make them until you see them occurring time after time. These mistakes could be poor opening play, poor development, making weakening & bad pawn moves in front of your castled king etc etc.
3) If your finding that your getting into trouble early in the game then adopt some rock solid opening systems that emphasise solidity ie. the semi slav against d4. You need a firm base to build on, and to get into a middlegame with equality
4) Study tactics.....time well spent and very entertaining too.
5) Aim for solid consistency over recklessness. Brilliancies are great to show your chess mates but its the consistency in your game that will produce longer term results.
6) aim to turn more of those losses into at least draws. Sometimes you can play well and still be struggling, if possible try and get a draw out of the game...reduces the negative effect on your rating.
7) Use your time wisely. In particularly tricky situations consider all your possibilities
8) Be wary of trying to force an opening to fall into a system you have worked on. You need to be ready to change your opening plans in reacting to your opponents play and be 'on the button' from move 1. If your opponent plays a particularly weak move dont be afraid to try and capitalise on it even if it means taking the game into unfamilliar territory
Originally posted by molatovkidThis is all very well if you know what is good play and what is bad play. I'm an averagish player 1200 to 1300. Half the time I make an obvious mistake but half the time I genuininely play what I thought was the best move at that juncture in the game for the whole game.
These are my rules in my grand theory of the road to improvement:
1) recognise you can actually 'beat' yourself and assist your opponent in winning, through making bad moves, poor choices at the board etc.
2) take all the games you have lost in the last 50. Work through them one by one, be ultra critical of your play listing short notes about the ...[text shortened]... e afraid to try and capitalise on it even if it means taking the game into unfamilliar territory
Unless you can recognise strong patterns and possible outcomes you are stuffed.
This is where playing through your games with a strong computer program like Fritz, Shredder or Junior can make a massive difference.
if u have one of these programs then analyse your games move by move on 'infinite analysis' and/or work with a stronger player to improve your play