Adam-Herwis

Bio update: Nov 3 2020

I am really satisfied with chess.com. I literally boosted from a 700 rating to a 1700+ max ratings in ALL of my live ratings in just 4 years. Thanks Chess.com and Premium Membership is definitely worth it. Tactics Trainer helped me a lot.

I chose chess as my main hobby because:

• High skill ceiling (arguably one of the highest compared to other games)
• Cheap hobby (unlike paintball, or bowling for example)
• Safe hobby (unlike soccer, basketball)
• I prefer mental skill than spamming buttons, or micromanagement labor oriented games

I used to be a tactical geek. I used to spend hours solving chess puzzles per day and was short on positional and opening understanding. In 2017, I was able to get around 2000 in bullet, around 1800 blitz, and 1700 rapid. The increased rating for faster time controls seems to be explained by my tactical obsession. At this point I haven’t settled on a specific opening.

I used to think that I would be able to get NM through pure tactics, but I eventually realized I was wrong.

I got a bit busy from 2017 to 2019 and lost some interest in chess during that duration. Around 2020, I got back into the game and considered the possibility of making a living out of chess by becoming NM in around 2025 if possible. In the summer, I did some hardcore mate puzzle studying by using chesstempo premium, and consistently solved mate in 1 puzzles on that site for around 60 days. That did help me in bullet, but not much in blitz and rapid.

I eventually decided to get more serious about openings, and decided to study the openings that are simpler, that don’t have as much branching variations, or crazy gambits etc. so I went ahead and studied the French defense that I play as black, and Queen gambit for white.

I heavily relied and still do, on engines to analyze my games, and study opening lines. I was obsessed in the past with engines even back in 2014, letting 3000 rated engines play lower rated chess computers and studying how the engine capitalizes.

If it weren't for chess computers or chess engines and their analysis features, I probably would quit chess. I would find it hard to follow the top "human" players who could miss mate in 3's and analyze a board and not even know what your mistake was during analysis. That would also cost much more money.

Nowadays, I play a lot of odd games vs stockfish 12 dev versions. I sometimes play blitz and rapid and analyze those games. I prefer chess.com’s analysis tool over lichess analysis because of the coloring on the blunder moves for example, which is why premium membership is still helpful to me. Analyzing your games is very important for improvement. I tell that to every student I tutor. I do also play correspondence from time to time.

Main chess sites I play on:

• chess.com
• lichess.org

Some chess.com advantages over lichess:

• I prefer it’s analysis tool
• Livechess premoves are red and clearer, and you can make multiple premoves before your opponent moves unlike lichess where you can only do 1 premove per turn
• It's correspondence system is better, since it separates conditional moves, from the analysis board, and on iPhone, the correspondence moves you make are immediately updated unlike lichess where I’d need to wait like 10 seconds or switch games for the game that I already moved in to not show up in my pending games. Also, you notice on chess.com that when you use the analysis board in correspondence, the board gets slightly lighter, which is also a bit helpful in allowing you to differentiate between making a real move, or making moves in analysis.
• Puzzle rush is useful (not found on lichess), and the puzzles tend to be a bit higher in quality
• Chess.com is better than lichess in searching game archives (more stable too) by opponent, color, etc.
• I like the chess club system on chess.com
• I get slightly annoyed that whenever I comment in a forum, I need to make a move sequence to prove I’m not a bot on lichess

Some lichess advantages over chess.com:

• Everything on it is free
• I find it a bit less laggy in livegames compared to chess.com mainly during bullet
• Although chess.com’s correspondence system is better in general, you can make conditional moves that branch out for example halfway during many of your conditional moves, without playing the whole move sequence again. For example:

1. e4 e5 Nf3 Nc6 Bb5
2. e4 e5 Nf3 Nf6 Nxe5

On lichess, you can click on the conditional Nf3 move, then play for black (your opponent’s move, in conditional move analysis) Nf6 then Nxe5, without inserting the move sequence: e4 e5 Nf3 again. On chess.com, your second conditional move sequence would have to start again from where you opponent didn’t move, even if you wanted to make a move that branches halfway through your already made conditional moves in your first correspondence move sequence (I might make a video on this in the future this is complicated).

• Takeback system in live games is good, needed on chess.com. Maybe putting a setting so that your opponent cannot propose takebacks would be good.

Chesstempo puzzle advantages over chess.com:

• Chesstempo mate puzzles aren’t determined by a voting system, which is why whenever you choose any mate puzzle (from M1 to M7) they are always mate puzzles. Chess.com needs to remove the vote system especially for mate puzzles that can be detected easily by the chess computer (should be automated)
• Chesstempo allows you to choose “unsolved” puzzles such as “unsolved mate in 2”. If chess.com can make a choice to solve unsolved puzzles in puzzle rush, and rated puzzle solving, it would be a good addition

My Youtube Channels (2nd Channel doesn't have chess content)

https://www.youtube.com/c/AdamHerwis1

https://www.youtube.com/c/AdamHerwis2