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Comment by noisy_boy | Hacker News Reader

I have a genuine question. My long time peeve has been that I suck at Chess and every time I play against anyone/anything, I just lose. It demoralizes me and then after sometime I try again, only to have the experience repeat. I have had decent grades, I code for a living and have been told that the quality of my work isn't bad so I guess I'll risk coming across as arrogant when I think that I'm not absolutely dumb.

So the question is, is there anyone who has had the same experience? If so, what did you do to improve? Mind you, I'm not asking folks who put in moderate effort and got results. I'm talking to the ones that keep failing and failing spectacularly but eventually improved. Is it even possible to have anyone like that? If so, what did you do? Is it about just keeping at it?

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I've been playing a lot of chess over the past year or two. One thing that upped my game a lot was watching videos on Youtube about common openings and traps. If you regularly lose right away, you're probably falling for traps. Once you know about them they're easier to spot. You can also attempt to spring them on other people, which is fun (though unlikely to work against anyone serious about chess). Learn about the basic tactics like pins and forks and get better at spotting them.

My advice is to learn maybe 3-4 openings and just use those every time. It narrows the field of possibilities. You'll get acclimated to the different ways they tend to play out. Of course, people will use others that you're unfamiliar with and you'll probably lose.

Otherwise, just play a lot. I like bullet chess (1 minute games). The fast pace means lots of reps and you get good at assessing the board quickly.

I'll reply, but probably not how you want.

I've always been a smart guy at a lot of things, especially math, who never had to try that hard in school.

I went to exactly one chess club meeting in high school, as I knew how to play and wanted to learn more. I was defeated in a few moves by a kid who not only laughed at me, but told his friends about whatever rush I just fell for and they all had a good laugh.

As you may imagine, I never went to another meeting.

Years later I came across Yahoo Chess, and thought I'd give that a try. I was beat by someone from Syria who used his victory to explain to me why Americans are so stupid and cocky.

I learned two things about chess -

1) It's not about being gifted or smart, it takes a lot of work and practice.

2) The community can be toxic as hell, so have thick skin. Or don't, I don't even play anymore. Two games were enough to teach me I don't want anything to do with that club.

Regarding the toxic community, there is a reason chess.com hides chat unless you enable it.

This happened to me. Just get online, play games, and do puzzles and you will improve. One of the tough things is getting started. When you sign up on lichess.org, you start out with 1500 rating which is literally ~50th percentile [1]. You're probably not actually 50th percentile so you're going to loose literally all of your first 10-20 games until you stabilize at a lower rating (it was ~850 for me). It's a little rough, but you just need to get through it. Once your ranking stabilizes, you'll be matched against opponents who you have a chance to win against. From there you'll see improvement over time. Improvement is slow, though. 600 points in 6 months is notably _fast_. I've managed ~800 improvement 3 years.

[1] https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz

Losing is normal. Learning the moves is easy, learning to play not so much. Think of it as any non trivial card game.

Two pieces of advice: 1. Play longer times. This happened to me when I started with 5+3. Play 15+10. 2. STUDY YOUR LOSSES. sorry for yelling. Try to understand what did your opponent that you didn't see, try to understand if it was a tactic you missed or a strategy general loss. (in parallel with those) study endgame (mate with queen, K+R v. K, etc) and the tactics by name. X-ray, what's a fork, what's a skewer, etc. By name only, avoid puzzles. Think of them as the for and whiles of chess.

Similar experience here. Winning at online chess is punishment for me. They immediately start matching me against better opponents in order to make me lose again. I hate every game with these points systems.

I don't think I'm stupid but I do have attention deficit disorder. People told me to memorize chess openings and that was just so boring I couldn't pay attention. At this point, using a computer to break the game starts sounding a lot more interesting than playing the game itself. If it's just memorization, I'm not gonna waste any of my neurons on it.

Your comment resonated with me at least. I don't like playing chess for many reasons. I'm always second guessing myself, making stupid mistakes, and losing. I only tend to play vs the cpu on the easiest setting, and it still stomps me. I hate playing against real people, if for some reason I win I feel like a show off jerk who fluked it, and when I lose I feel like an idiot.

At the beginner chess level, you're likely to face opponents who know a few traps. When you lose to a trap, learn it, and then inflict them upon your opponent!

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