Idk how that even worked... i passed up on a free knight for some dopamine sigh.

Hi, just wanted to say I hit 2000 tonight. I don't have many friends that are into chess so I thought I'd share my achievement with you.

I've been playing online since 2020 and I played a little as a child and in highschool. When I started again as an adult it got me hooked! It's such a nice game and I wish I had more friends to play with.

I've been doing some puzzles and watched some tutorials for openings, but mostly I've been just playing more or less actively. At one point I watched lots of YouTube content such as chesswithpatrick, apexxchess, Gotham and chessbrah.

I play Vienna and Caro-Kahn which I know quite well. Later I learned Grand Prix variation against sicilian since many people played it against me. But outside of those I don't have much opening theory. I tend to play the simplest lines so I don't blunder in the very first moves.

Funny thing about my chess journey is that since my first kid was born, I started to play much better and my ratings skyrocketed. I thought I couldn't play any longer, cause I've been getting little sleep for a long time now. But I think less time to play ment more playing with focus and intention. We all hate to go to bed after losing, so I thought that, if I have time for a game in the evening, better not lose.

If you read this far, thank you for your time! Keep the grind up and you will see improvement! If any of you have any questions, I try to answer them :)

Please explain this to me, unfortunately Duolingo doesn't have a detailed analysis feature yet

They sent this message 20 moves earlier when I was down a minor piece and in a worse position. Knew I was going to lose but couldn’t give them the satisfaction of resigning

Never resign

I didnt

I've been playing chess for 3 months now. You won't happy how happy I am. Also the game I played felt really nice as well and I felt like I performed really good

I still remember how much I was stuck at 400 and kept going back to 350 and coming back to 400 and repeat. Or when I hit 700 then spent a whole month trying to reach it againg from 500 cu that felt like hell

Anyways tho, long story short I'm really happy and I wanted to share it with someone. In case anyone is wondering, Im watching levy's slowrun and mostly followed gm aman (chessbrah's) building habits v2. Building habits helped A LOT since I was London and maneuvering a closed position was so hard for me

It only took around 1000 games

2nd photo is when i realize i have it

I live nearby this Cheba Hut and have been looking for some more chess players to hang out with and learn from. The event is every 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month from 6-9pm. Tonight 10/14/26 is the second meetup so far!

The event is open to all skill levels and they have a chess coach hosting if you want to improve your game and get some tips. The food is always a major plus as well. Come on by!

I have no idea what white was thinking here.

Please use spoilers for any line you see.

Mate in 2

Hi everyone,

I’ve been working on improving my chess lately. I’m around 1000 Elo right now, and my goal is to reach 1600-1800.

The problem is that just playing more games doesn’t seem to be helping anymore. I feel like I’ve hit a plateau. So I want to try a different approach: actually learning chess properly and understanding the purpose behind every move, the plans, and the bigger picture of the game.

I’ve been looking at Chessly, the course platform by Levy (GothamChess). If you’ve taken any of his courses, I’d really like to hear your honest thoughts.

A few things I’m curious about:

• Which courses did you take, and did they actually help you improve?
• Do they explain the ideas behind moves, or is it mostly memorizing lines?
• Was it worth the money compared to free resources?

Any other advice for getting from 1000 to 1600+ is welcome too.

Thanks in advance!

I've had like 4 brilliant moves before this, but they were all againdt bots with evaluation bar + engine feedback (And undo)

Now i got one in an online game im so happy

The engine says the line after exf5 is

…Qxf5; d4, exd4

How is opening up my center and maybe trading a knight for a bishop better than a guaranteed rook for a bishop?

I tend to lose motivation when my opponent wins a pawn or piece without compensation. Sometimes, I feel like my position is losing, but when I analyze it with an engine, it turns out to be equal.

Even when there are still drawing chances, I sometimes prefer to resign rather than prolong the agony of defending a worse position.

How can I improve my fighting spirit and mental resilience in chess? Any advice or tips would be appreciated!

Started playing beginning of summer, been playing mostly AI and friends up to now, that I started playing online.

I was recently looking at games from back when I was much lower rated and of course, they were basically all won and lost based on one-move blunders. I think it's safe to say that the main differentiating factor between me now and me when I was, say, 800 is that I simply blunder less.

But I wonder, the three rating ranger I listed above each have a 1:10 expected winrate against each other. What would you say are the main differentiating factors between them?

So I have a twofold question.

First how does one keep track of exchanges in such situations. Especially as this situation seems so fluid. What attacks/defends what can change depending of what the opponent takes back with (this is a game against a computer btw) and what value piece gets taken mid chain and this gets complicated by the fact that often you would take back in a different place on the board and with a completely different piece.

Is there like a thinking technique one can use to make this make more sense and be easier to track? I would normally think that I get this piece for this piece (knight for a bishop etc.) but I just lose track in longer chains.

Second part of the question is. Should I have allowed myself to get into such a tangle in the first place? Is this something I should expect of myself to be able to do (eventually) or is this something that most people would just stray away and try to keep the position simpler. I think I just might be not exchanging often enough and that is why I end up in these situations.

After ...Nd7 I was trying to find a move better than forking the queen and king. Yk maybe there's a solid mate or something. Didn't see anything and was like "Ah I don't see anything. I don't wanna waste time let's just play it safe and win the queen for a knight."

I played it and it was checkmate in one lmao. BEST FEELING EVER. A bit embarrassed that I didn't see the mate in one but ehh I guess it comes with time. I think I played pretty well positioning the queen on b3, taking with the bishop on e5 instead of the knight as the knight can jump to the weak, juicy light squares around the king. Very satisfying game!

Though moving the queen to d5 wasn't really accurate unfortunately. I didn't wanna be too passive with Qd1, or block my dark bishop via Qc3. c4 walks into Na5, but it was the best engine move 'cause that knight move wastes a tempo and is bad; I shouldn't have been scared of it. Of course, I didn't the very obvious Nf6 attacking the queen. Eh. I'll play more and get better!

Tbh I don’t really know what clicked over these past few weeks, but I think the most of my improvement has come to hanging free stuff less and spotting when my opponents give me free stuff.

I also don’t know any openings or gambits either and haven’t really had many played against me, but I’m sure I’ll encounter more on my way towards 1000.

This is the first game I've ever posted. I've been playing for about a year now.

Been playing bullet and blitz lately, but decided to play a 10 minute rapid. After about move 5 I could tell my opponent was not very good, and I knew I could play defense better than their absurd offense.

On move 12 I started making my way to what I thought was just a free pawn. On move 13, I continued to the free pawn. Move 14, I thought I was getting my free pawn, but it was actually mate.

Full Game