Comment by Moodles | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Moodles | Hacker News Reader

I think by far the biggest improvement newbies can make is just not hanging pieces and blundering, honestly. Literally the majority of games at <1600 lichess level will be decided by mistakes. But apart from that, it's openings and tactics. I largely agree with the blog post.

I used to be quite good as a kid, winning championships and whatnot, and I'm actually glad my grandfather didn't teach me opening theory so much, so I could be trained to think more than memorize. Sadly at the highest level, you do just have to memorize the best opening lines which makes it a lot less fun so I'm not too bothered about not being the best I could be. I think games like Fischer random go some way to addressing this and it's a shame they're not more popular.

Some really entertaining Chess youtube channels I like are:

GothamChess: https://www.youtube.com/c/gothamchess/about I think the number 1 on YouTube these days. He explains games in a high level, really entertaining way. He also has other playlists like guess the elo, etc. He's a really entertaining guy.

https://www.youtube.com/c/agadmator I think he number 2 and used to be number 1 most subscribed until very recently. He explains lines in more detail than Gotham, and has quite a few funny meme-able phrases like "captures, captures, captures", "hello everyone!", "bishop pair fully operational", etc. I enjoy his playlists about e.g. the Morphy Saga, AlphaZero, very much.

ChessBrah: Kind of broey funny with house music, challenges and whatnot, and actually very high quality chess from GMs too https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXxdkt1d8Uu08NAQP2IUTw

There's some others I don't watch so much but which are also liked by many too, like the Botez sisters, GM Hikaru, Eric Rosen, etc. It's quite a nice community (barring the usual drama all such communities have).

Have to include ChessNetwork https://www.youtube.com/ChessNetworkTV/videos

If people like Gotham/Nakamura/ChessBrahs aren't your style, ChessNetwork is calm and straight forward without all of the youtube/twitch "entertainer" personality I find grating.

To extend your list, I like grandmasters GingerGM https://www.youtube.com/c/GingerGM and Daniel Naroditsky https://www.youtube.com/c/DanielNaroditskyGM

I'm a huge fan of Eric Rosen, who plays lots of gambits and aggressive games with highly instructive commentary.I'd highly recommend his content whenever you feel yourself starting to get tired of traditionally high-energy YouTubers -- Eric is lively and funny but also stays incredibly chill and calm 100% of the time. I've watched hundreds of hours of his videos and have never seen him lose his cool ever, it's impressive.

+1 for Eric Rosen, his calm attitude and lack of memes make it enjoyable to watch. GothamChess and Chessbrah are obnoxious to my ears and eyes.

On the same note I really appreciate Dan Naroditsky and Ben Finegold.

I'd rank them best first: Gotham, John Bartholomew, Rosen, Hikaru, Agadmator, Hanging pawns, others.

The st louis chess club lectures are also very good.

How is hikaru before agadmator - it’s pure entertainment. Watching a super gm intentionally blunder on first two moves for 3 hours probably hurts your chess more than improves it

yeah I felt they ranked about equal but I think the memes and the small talk about other stuff are more interesting in Hikarus streams. I'm also not a big fan of strong non-anglo accents.

So I don’t mean this is to be snarky , but aren’t all chess games decided by mistakes?

It is thought that if chess was played perfectly then it is probably a draw, but nobody knows. So if by "mistake" you mean "not exactly the best move to force a draw from move 1 to the final move", then yes. But in chess "mistake" usually means "large inaccuracy" rather than "not the best move". I just mean games at a higher elo are usually decided by pressing a smaller advantage, rather than someone hanging a queen by mistake, so basically just avoiding massive blunders gets the most elo benefit, rather than worrying too much about tactics or opening theory.

Perhaps it's fair to say that a "mistake" in chess is a move that you realise is bad as soon as your opponent makes their replying move (or, in some cases, as soon as you take your hand off the piece you just moved).

So if you just realize that move was bad after 3 turns it was not a mistake by your standards.

Sure, but in chess blundering is more specific in that it means a mistake that is obviously awful. It's the difference between making a poor tactical decision that you might not realize was the reason for your defeat without analysis, and making a move that is so terrible that if you had noticed the issue with it in advance even a low ELO player never would have made it. A hanging piece being given up for no positional advantage is the classical low ELO blunder.

Inaccuracy, mistake, and blunder are in a sense technical terms related to the gravity of the screw up.

failure to see disaster 3 moves ahead is a mistake, failure to see it 10 or more moves ahead is just the limits of human reasoning. In between is squishy

I've managed to progress (over the course of several months) from making dumb blunders like hanging a queen or a rook to blunders 3 moves ahead that are instantly losing according to the engine but completely innocuous to my eye, even when reviewing the game. "Just don't make blunders" is the standard advice but it is not very actionable. Do you have any advice on how to go about this?

For one move blunders, it is things like:

- Look for checks.

- Look for hanging pieces.

- Be extra careful with knight forks.

- Be careful with pawn forks.

- Look for zwischenzug when doing exchanges.

- Look for what a piece is currently doing before you move it (is it defending something?).

- Apply above reasoning to what your opponent might do in the next move after yours.

2-3 moves ahead is mostly the same, just in a bit more depth where some common tactics come in, e.g. the bishop sacrifice on A2 if the white king is castled and stuff like that.

By the time the bishop comes in to A2 it is usually too late XD. Zwischenzugs in exchanges still get me sometimes, otherwise I've mostly fixed these. Thanks for the time spent answering though, I think the main thing is to remember to take the time to think things through. So obvious and yet so difficult :)

The reason everyone says drill tactics is because the tactical motifs become a building block of several moves that you can see as one object; so if you can see that motif arise two moves away and the motif is three-move combination its the same as seeing five moves ahead but you didn't have to brute-force calculate every line five moves deep to find it, you recognized the pattern at a depth of two.

Depending on your definition of a mistake.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_ches...

> I think by far the biggest improvement newbies can make is just not hanging pieces and blundering, honestly. Literally the majority of games at <1600 lichess level will be decided by mistakes.

This, in fact, exactly what GM Ben Finegold points out. At anything short of Master-level play, blunders define the winner. "Never resign" is something that he drums into his students.

My biggest issue with chess is that playing chess isn't "fun"--it's hard work. There are a lot of games that I would rather play when I'm against a human socially.

Yeah, I know what you mean. Chess is strange in that it is kind of fun to spot a tactic and crush, but also kind of mentally exhausting when a position in complex and it's so easy for either side to blunder. Sometimes I play then after awhile, I have to check myself and ask: am I actually enjoying this? Is this a good use of my time?

I find Gothamchess very annoying. I like Ben Finegold a lot. Go Ben!

> you do just have to memorize the best opening lines

At that level, might as well just use a computer to play the game for you.

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