I Reached 1300 Rating on Lichess

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A few days ago I hit a new milestone on Lichess: 1300 rating. In the grand scheme of things, 1300 is still pretty low, but it’s definitely worth taking a moment to reflect on my coming back to chess, and what’s helped me get on an upward trajectory.

Beginnings

My dad taught me how to play chess at a fairly early age. I got somewhat serious about it in primary / middle school — enough to get a private chess coach for a time. I played on my school’s A team, and was number 2.

After high school I just… stopped. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy it anymore, it’s just that music pretty much had a monopoloy on my time and headspace.

Returning

Fast forward twenty years to last year, and my then ten-year-old son discovered chess and kinda just taught himself how to play. He has now become — like I was — somewhat serious about it. We attend a chess club together, and he is entering tournaments almost monthly; sometimes we play together in the same tournament (different age categories). It’s really neat having something new to bond over, and we play pretty regularly together.

A side effect of this is that I have now in turn come back to chess, and am starting to get serious about improving again. I never really forgot how to play of course, but — after a two decades absense — I was pretty much starting at zero in terms of tactical thinking, opening knowledge, and so on. I’ve been playing almost every day now for the past four months or so. It’s been great, and I’ve definitely got some of those muscles chess back.

Making progress

Making progress in chess is not easy. The rules are fairly simple, but the game is complex. Improving can be slow going and challenging. But over the past little while, I’ve definitely been winning more than I’ve been losing, and I’ve been creeping upward in rating.

What has definiely not helped:

• trying new openings every few games / focusing on openings
• playing games one after the other without a break
• playing too fast a time control
• passive learning (YouTube)

What definitely has helped:

• playing longer / slower games (15+10spm minimum)
• picking a few openings and sticking with them for a while
• doing lots of puzzles
• post-game analysis after every game

YouTube spiral

I have definitely got a lot of value (and entertainment) from YouTube videos, and it’s a great way to (1) get a feel for a new opening and (2) to see how good players think through decisions and reason about positions. My favorite creators right now on YouTube are Akeem, Tushar Anand and Anna Cramling. (Gotham Chess is also great.) But too much of this is obviously not helpful, as it’s passive learning.

Openings schmopenings

Focusing on openings is similarly not very helpful for beginners / early intermediates. The key is to find a good, solid opening for white that suits your play style, and a good opening for black against 1.e4 and 1.d4. But beyond that, it’s counterproductive to become fixated on openings. I played around with different openings, and it was fun. But it’s really easy to fall into the openings rabbit hole trap. Ultimately an opening should get you in a good position for the middlegame… and that’s it. Right now I’ve settled on the Italian Game for white, and the Scandinavian Defense against 1.e4, and a setup opening from Tushar Anand that works against 1.d4 or anything else that isn’t 1.e4. I was playing Caro-Kann for a while, but I’m finding that the position is often a bit closed for my liking. Scandinavian is more open, and can be aggressive or solid, depending on how your opponent plays.

Take your time

Playing too fast a time control is probably the worst thing you can do; getting better at chess is about getting better at thinking. And that takes time. You need time to thinking through every move; the speed comes later as you get better at recognizing patterns. I think it’s best to avoid blitz or bullet until you have a really solid foundation, are regularly spotting tactics in rapid games, and are consistently winning up to 1800 or so.

Post-mortem

Post-game analysis is one of the most important things you can do. It is far better to play one game and analyze it in depth than to play ten games and not analyze at all. Learning from your (and your opponent’s!) mistakes is crucial.

There are essentially two platforms to play chess online: Lichess and Chess.com. I prefer Lichess for a number of reasons. High on that list is the fact that it’s free and open source. The open source part is important to me. But the free part is also crucial here. Chess.com has great game analysis tools, but the free tier is extremely limiting. One great thing about Lichess is that everything is free, with no restrictions. There are some UI niceties that you miss, but there is no limit to the analysis board. You don’t get quite as nice a “review” as you do with Chess.com, but the Stockfish analysis is there, and there is a “learn from your mistakes” feature that is pretty good.

Tactics are everything

It’s been said my many that you can go far in chess with just tactics. I definitely agree — you can probably make it to 1700 or beyond just on tactical mastery (and not blundering) alone. The way to get better at tactics is through puzzles. Lichess, again, has endless puzzles, and there is no limit to how many you can do (unlike Chess.com). I’ve almost been spending more time doing puzzles than playing games, and that is definitely helping a lot. Being able to recognize tactics (whether it’s a fork you can take advantage of, or a pin you need to avoid) is critical.

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My goal is to reach 1500 or 1600 by the end of the year. I think that would be a great achievement. 1500, especially, is definitely doable.