How to determine what areas need study beyond blunders?

I would appreciate any advice that anyone can offer on determining what to study once you only blunder never or rarely (in rapid games)?  I feel I am really struggling to make any progress at all because now that my rating is above 1000, both I and the players I match up with are (per the post-game review engine) really not making blunders anymore, or if so then they are true brain fog oversights and not for lack of tactical knowledge.

To give an example, as I have been studying in past months, I would take steps like identifying that I often blunder into knight forks, and so I practiced against that and then after I cleaned that part of my game up, I'd move on to something else.  But now that the blunders are gone, and the engine regularly rates my games 1200-1300 in strength, but I really don't beat anyone at all unless they are rated below 1020.  My gains have completely plateaued since I can't beat anyone at or above my level and I just feel I can't identify any weaknesses which to me is  red flag that I'm really missing something important.

I am currently practicing endgame maneuvering because that is one area of play where I have definitely lost some games I could have won, but beyond that, I really need any help I can get.  Are there complex additional tactics I should look up lessons on, or else is there a method to learn how to look ahead by more moves?  I have plateaued on being able to pass puzzles as well, I simply can't figure out anything rated above 2100 or so, I used to learn a lot from puzzles but now I can't understand what makes those solutions work either.

Improving Your Chess - Resources for Beginners and Beyond.....

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/improving-your-chess-resources-for-beginners-and-beyond

I will try to offer my advise on what you can do to improve your rating:

The first thing is tactics as it is with everyone (although don't only focus on tactics). The best way to improve tactics is probably with a tactics book, but when it comes to doing puzzles focus on finding the right solution, and not how fast you do it in. This will help improve your calculation ability, and improve seeing tactical patterns in games. It will take time to improve your puzzle rating, but focusing on the right solution (even if it takes 10 minutes to find) will stretch you and will lead to improving your puzzle rating and calculation ability (both in speed and accuracy). The other thing is that blunders above 1000 are not as likely to be just dropping pieces (that still happens though), and have a more increasing likelihood of being 1 to 3 move tactics. So something that is not as in your face. Also often tactics grow on strategy and getting better positions for you in addition to causing your opponent to have to figure out problems in their position often lead to tactical blunders. This is something I noticed you did not do in your games. Also you use tactics to accomplish goals in your games that do not result in just material advantages. They can help increase strategic goals, or plans for you also. So tactics are not just about gaining a material advantage.

Tactics definitions

Chess Vibes Strategy and Tactics Playlist (also goes in the strategy section)

The second is something you already mentioned which is endgames. You need to know overkill mates (I am assuming you already know those based on rating), knowing and applying the principles of the endgame (you need work on this, but I can tell you are learning these), at least the basics of king and pawn endgames and maybe a little beyond that. This is what you need to focus on learning for the endgame.

Chess Vibes Endgame Playlist (I would watch all the videos in this list, but focus mainly on the king and pawns ones)

Principles of the endgame

Strategy and learning how to come up with a plan is next. I analyzed your last couple of games, and this something that I repeatedly talked about in that. You have to do a few things to do it well. First you have to know how to evaluate the board threw out the game. I don't think you do that, or at least not very well. This will help guide you in exploiting your opponents weaknesses, advance your strengths in a particular game, or mute your opponents strengths or your weaknesses in a game. The second part is to learn how to use your pieces well in coordination with each other. This will rely on your knowledge in strategy (something to start learning about, and will be on going in your learning process).

Good and Bad pieces article

Basics of pawn structure Article

Planning article

Evaluating a position

Working on your openings: This is more about you not applying the principles to your opening and not looking at what your opponent is doing in the opening. It seemed like in the first game I analyzed you just played your moves because that is what you are suppose to play, instead of seeing what they are doing, and adjusting. This rely's heavily on a more robust understanding of what you want to accomplish in the opening (think opening principles), tactical knowledge because they can come up at any time, a good ability to calculate well and accurately, and a decent understanding of the ideas in your particular opening that you play. I am not advising you to learn a bunch of opening theory though. You can learn some if you want. You are at a rating where there is some benefit from it, but don't go crazy on it. You need to focus more on making sure you are apply the opening principles when you are playing the opening. You do know them. I can tell that, but you get distracted by what your opponent is threating (often threats that can be either met with following the principles, or don't have to be met right away).

Chess Vibes How to Learn an Opening

Chess Vibes how to win pieces in the opening

Opening Principles (more for reference I know you have read it before, and try to accomplish them)

Here is my analysis of your last two games:

One last note is that I repeatedly saw you not coordinating all your pieces towards a common goal. This will help you greatly if you can learn to do that well.

Hope this helps

@1

"true brain fog oversights"
++ Check your intended move is no true brain for oversight before you play it.

++I really don't beat anyone" ++ Analyse your lost games.

"I can't identify any weaknesses" ++ Analyse your lost games.

"practicing endgame maneuvering" ++ Great.

"Are there complex additional tactics" ++ Analyse your lost games.

"can't figure out anything rated above 2100" ++ Look more deeply.

"can't understand what makes those solutions work" ++ Look more deeply.

@AlphaTeam Thank you so much, this is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping to get. The problem was that I do not know the chess studies terminology to put my needs into words, so it was very difficult for me to search for lessons on my own since I didn't know what terms to search for or how to visualize my weak areas. Your suggestions help a lot. The game analyses are an added bonus and I really appreciate you taking the time out to go so far for some random person .

@RussBell and @tygxc Really unhelpful guys, I'm sorry, I appreciate you replying, but I literally said I needed more specific help and you either replied by dumping a chess blog on me (again, I didn't know what to search for, so it feels like you are just telling me to read the whole thing and to hope I'll become smarter), or else telling me to analyze but without any advice or even example of what that looks like. Can you please be more selective in your replies to people?

AlphaTeam already wrote a perfect advice here... but to add a few more thoughts :
I will say that tactics is the most important thing to learn for 1000+ rated players. Of course tactics is the first priority to everyone, but it is more important to especially 1000+ rated players.
The ultimate goal of tactics is to earn a material. Fork, skewer, discovered attack, .... they are all end up earning materials. So if you can make this 'tactics situation' at the end, you will win the game.
The hard thing in above 1000 is at this level players don't just throw their pieces, as already mentioned above. It means the level of game is changed, and blunders become more complex. So you have to train yourself in order to improve your sight to see those chances.
This is why learning tactics is the first thing to do. You can improve your sight by learning tactics. It does not only improve your chance to attack, it also help you notice and prevent your opponent's tactics.
Also, it would be helpful if you focus on the role of your pieces. In my case for example, when I move my knight I usually don't intend to attack a piece(if there is no clear chance to earn material). What I see is the squares that my knight controls after the move. I only see if those squares are important. So do not focus on what you are doing with your piece, and focus on how the position changes. If the changed position is good for you, then you can go for it.
Opening principles are important too. They are not always right, but they show a good way to proceed opening. Opening is important because the formation and characteristic of game is determined there. If you can play openings well, you can enter a middlegame with clear advantage.
There are some additional things in chess skills like strategy and positional chess. To put it simply, strategy is about plan and positional chess is about making your pieces stronger. These are also important, but it will be more effecient if you study them after you get a higher rating. (It doesn't matter if you want to learn them now. Those will also be helpful)
+) Chessvibes is a good channel. I recommend that channel too. (I learned a concept of positional chess from there.)
Hope this helps!

Hey there! It sounds like you've made great strides in eliminating blunders from your game, which is a big achievement! Now that you're focusing on endgame maneuvers, have you checked out ChessMood? They've got some awesome resources and lessons that could really help you refine your endgame skills further. They cover everything from basic principles to advanced strategies, so it might be just what you need to break through your current plateau. Keep up the good work and keep pushing those boundaries!

Link to ChessMood: https://chessmood.com/?r=NationalChessBlasters

Good Luck,

Trokly34

I also agree. ChessMood has helped me a lot.

Something that really helped me was the book "Simple Chess", by Michael Stean. This is an excellent book on basic stress strategy suitable for beginner-intermediate level players. If you're the type of person that enjoys learning from books, then I definitely recommend this one.

Hi ,yes you do need to coordinate your pieces onto a specific goal try learning how to improve a position for a attack or a counter attack if your opponent gets aggressive ,yes your opponents make one move blunders all the time around 1000 elo though it is kinda hard for them to hang pieces randomly you need to apply pressure and scare them

Try to think two moves ahead calculating even two move tactics will help tbh my advice won't be super specific though since everyone "study's" at your level you might want to rethink doing something different to get ahead even tho that can help analyzing both yot wins and losses are important not just looking at stockfish game review for me analyzing takes maybe 30 sec -2 min max (for blitz games )

Just try to go back and look at what you did wrong try to find a real for it

Are you hanging one move tactics,not seeing deep enough and your opponent calculated one move ahead,did you get scared because of too much pressure , did you not ask what your opponent is.going to do,did you not ask yourself what you should do (lmao lost a game onc because i focused too much on my opponent and paniced)

There's a lot more to than that but try to find a way to lesson the effects of the problems your dealing with and try to either get good at that or get really really good at what your already good at

Basically when you analyze 1.yes you can use stockfish by not recommended

1.browse through the game and find the mistake that lost you the game (not just any mistake )

2.figure out the cause of that

3.think of a plan you could have done better instead of playing the move and figure out what you should have done instead

4.look at what you did wrong (maybe lesser mistakes like converting a win poorly ) and try to figure out plans that are better than the previous one

5.of course look at wins lol you might learn more from lost games but how you win is still important

6.analyzing should take between 30 sec to maybe ten minutes max though tbh alt of people can get away with 30 ish seconds (if you need more time take the time everyone's different )

7.rinse and repeat as many times as necessary you don't have to analyze every game but at least do a good chunk of course if your struggling try to problem solve you have to work smart+hard usually unless your extremely gifted (even then a lot still do both )

puzzles can be helpful getting thinking on the right track I actually don't do puzzles that frequently I only started doing them recently (very helpful for random checkmate patterns but it doesn't teach you positional play at all )

8.read chess books if you need it you don't need it to get better at all but it helps a good chunk f people (personally I have never even opened a chess book)

But they can help you learn how to analyze (not always tho cause some advise is bad or just doesn't suit you ) it kinda is difficult to explain in a forum post id probably have to talk for that but I don't typically coach (btw if any coaches want to fix some of this that would be helpful preferably stronger players )

Honestly you seem pretty decent at analyzing your games you can tell at least what's making you lose

pattern recognition will help a lot in endgames and applying pressure does to the harder part is trying to figure out how you do well at try changing up your style a bit usually if your stuck either your learning a bunch of new stuff (sometimes learning and trying out new things makes you lose games ) or your just being repetitive and reinforcing some time of bad habit that's keeping you from improving though I don't think the second part is the case

Everyone plateaus btw I was stuck at 2000 ish for like a year I broke it by just grinding consistently and changing up my style to be suited for beating 2200+ ex of style change :being more patient in the position

@BigChessplayer665 Thank you for the insight, I appreciate hearing your approach. Do you have any advice on seeing the board/doing the analysis in that time frame that you recommend? For me personally, there is no way I can do an analysis in 30 sec. or even in a few minutes. A few minutes is how long each and every puzzle takes me (I only get +5 to my puzzle rating each one I solve due to this ). So I can't imagine doing an entire game review in a few minutes, my analysis usually takes 10-15 min. I guess the problem I'm having, if you look at a few of my games, is that I am losing even 30 and 60 min games on time, so with the speed my brain is currently working at, there's just no way in-game that I can do the level of calculation necessary to avoid the mistakes I find during analysis.

Sort of related, I would also appreciate any input on how you make plans. It's like you said, usually I may start with some sort of plan but my opponent sets up a checkmate threat usually within the first 15 moves, so then the rest of the game I just find myself trying to survive that. Generally if I win, which is getting quite rare these days, it's because I find a good counterattack against an overly aggressive player. I can't remember the last time I won due to an actual plan of my own working, I always get countered doing that.

If your losing longer games on time it might be counter intuitive and give a few bad habits but playing a few blitz games may help with speed if your losing 30 mins on time that's a problem you should NEVER lose a online 30 min game on time

It's the thing that "a bad plan is better than no plan " unless it's chess lol though that's sometimes true

Sometimes you want to wait and let your opponent create a bad plan sometimes the position so dead and you need to create it yourself

But honestly most of 2000 rapid people (10|0 ) hange pieces by move like 24 max unless they are really lucky im guessing (im not a coach or very good at chess but) that is is most likely some huge positional oversight like simple plans that could be thought of in about 4sec-a few min you might be too passive and might need to attack more but attack cautously as you end to make sure it doesn't kill the position but I dunno lol I haven't looked at your games yet

So what you're saying makes sense, but I'm not sure on the approach. I mean, obviously I lose the majority of blitz games on time as well. I've tried to speed up by "going with my gut" and playing the first move that seems right, but that approach has a 100% failure rate for me, I usually get checkmated within the next 5-8 moves when I am in that mindset. With 30 min games it's very similar, if I set myself a strict time limit and focus on not losing by time, the result is always that I lose by checkmate instead, in less moves, because of the lowered quality of my play. Unfortunately I have simply found myself unable to memorize positions, so perhaps that is my personal limit of how far I can advance in that case.

You don't have to memorize everything it is easier to memorize your own games than random puzzles even if random puzzles helps

With time management the tricky part is knowing when to play fast base off intuition and when to play slowly you can't play every move based off instinct but you can't think for too long either I would try to think in more critical positions and when faced with positions you know realitivaly well then play faster

This is kind of aside from what others are suggesting, but I glanced at your recent Daily games and noticed that you move quite quickly (for Daily) - often less than an hour. I would suggest using Daily as an opportunity to study positions mid-game, taking a lot more time with the analysis board to play around with what happens if you make this move or that. Choose games that are multiple-day with players who are closer to your rating or higher so you can really learn from the games. Don't be afraid to use all of your time for each move - I like to come up with a plan, sit on it for awhile, come back to it later and see if I can find something better. Personally, the abstraction of seeing several moves ahead is one of my biggest challenges and doing this has really helped improve my board vision and positional play. I know it doesn't appeal to or work for everyone, but that's my two cents.

(To be clear, I'm not suggesting you stop playing shorter time controls, just add this practice to what you're already doing!)

Daily rating is all over here place alot of 2000+ is 1400 in daily while some 1100s are 2000+ in daily so I would recommend trying to play against stronger players for that or at least equal so try to challenge maybe friends to it and analyze with them

Thank you for this perspective, I always wondered about that to be honest, I wasn't sure how long most people spend thinking about the daily games moves. I think I just have perhaps a higher than average difficulty in putting myself in different perspectives, for example once I've taken an hour and seen all the plans that make sense to me, I have found that when I come back a day later, I really never see anything new, I just keep rehashing the same old things and my brain kind of gets stuck in a loop, if that makes sense. It seems very fantastically talented to me when I read people doing game reviews and making comments about how someone's move shows their intentions, because I never see that in games, I can only see what I would do, and so if someone makes a move that I wouldn't have made, I just find it impossible (for now at least) to perceive what their intentions are. A lot of my wins come when the opponent happens to be someone who thinks "like me" and plays the same lines I would have, because I pick up on that and so I can see how it would help immensely to be able to do that against a broader range of opponent styles.

Try not to just come up with your own plans try to see the intentions in others plans when I focus too much on one or the other I lose games tho

Like if I focus on too much of what my opponent will do I get scared by their moves if I focus too much on mine get greedy with useless threats and I'm not making good ones

You need to be aware of both what you will do and what your opponent will do (and their intentions )