What Opportunity Tactics Did I Miss? Use tactics.bitcrafter to find them

 I found this nice tool at tactics.bitcrafter that examines your games on lichess and finds the tactics you missed from the last 25 games you played there: these are situations where your opponent left the door open for a big hit from you and you didn't take the easy money.

Here's an easy example of one I missed - a simple king-queen fork, with the pieces out in the open! I took five seconds to overlook this golden opportunity but instead I retreated my rook; I faintly remember not noticing that my bishop was covering that square. I went on to, undeservedly, win the game on time.

This one is more subtle - I had a 7 point swing in my favor waiting if I spotted this Nb4. It would allow me to get that knight to c2 and fork the king/rook and white would have a hard time stopping it cleanly.

The site does NOT include errors that you made on your move - it's just positions where you had an opportunity due to your opponents blunder and didn't see it. I think this is a very valuable tool because you can identify gaps in your perception of your opponents moves.

One thing to remember - it only finds tactics in game where you used the "Request A Computer Analysis" button on the analysis board.

Missed Opportunities in the Opening

Free Stuff in the Opening 

Oh boy, this game is kind of embarassing.    I'm play a Scotch opening and my opponent goes astray quite early, serving me up several opportunities to take pieces/pawns. But I didn't take them, fearing some kind of trap or gambit that just wasn't there. But the calculation was much more straightforward!

Two attackers - one defender.

Same again - two on one.

I should have taken the e5 pawn and the knight in the second image.  Lucky for me my opponent opened the door to me attacking his rooks and he rage quit on move 13. I'm almost 1500 rapid on lichess now.

Study-wise I'm leaning hard into the "On The Attack" series. It will take months to get through the whole lot but I'm determined to find out if it improves my play by recognizing over 1000 puzzle positions. So far....no. But I'm definitely improving at recognizing the puzzles themselves; on about the fourth repetition I'm starting to recall the moves by sight instead of calculating them (if I even can calculate them!).

I'm still completing my last two games in a chess.com tournament. I'm pretty sure I'll come second in my group with 7.5 out of 10, which is pretty good (EDIT: I won my last game, and the tiebreak! I don't know on what basis, but I will be in round 2!) . And I'm playing a lot of slow correspondence games against friends from the chess club. They are very solid players and I may need to start studying something new to learn what I'm lacking in those games. The occasional blunder that throws the game doesn't help either!

Visualisation as the Master Skill of Chess?

One intriguing training site I came across is Dont Move Till You See It. He suggests that if you train your visualization skills just 10 minutes a day you "unlock" the chess knowledge you have learned through studying because you're making your brain work harder during the exercises, compared to when you sit at a board to play. Your "chess mind" will be more forthcoming with the information after you've made it work hard at visualizing with your eyes closed.

His course is free to start; you get enough to work with and you can pay for premium content if you wish.

You can hear the creator talk about his system - and he gives away all the techniques for free - on Chess Journeys ep 82. I've got the five free emails describing the exercises but haven't done them yet.

As Fabiano Caruana says - "Visualization is probably the most important thing in Chess.

Mistakes and blunders, if we strip them down to the bare essence, are problems with visualization."

Nice explanation of an instructive chess game

 I've never heard the stages of a chess game explained so clearly - this a really helpful video.

Seeing it explained with a physical board is a nice surprise too - I think it makes it easier to understand.

Playing openings without memorizing

 Several of my chess buddies have expressed surprise that I'm not working on memorizing openings. It feels like an important part of chess, learning the exact "right" moves to play at the start of the game, but I've found several videos where smart people say otherwise. For a start, your opponents are unlikely to reply with the "right" responses to your theoretically perfect moves, not past one or two moves anyway.

I thought I'd put the videos in one place for easy reference:

Here's what they all agree on: play using the basic chess principles (control the center, develop pieces, king safety. Play slow games, not fast. Analyse your games after you play them.

Chess Dojo on learning openings from 0-1200: I just found these guys last night. I love that they have a structured training course, telling you what skills/books you should be using at different levels of chess ability. They emphasize NO opening theory till about 1200 ELO. They have some videos (I haven't watched yet) about opening principles.

Adult Chess Improver: Complete repertoire for black and for white, and here's a 6 part playlist containing those two wherein he talks about it a bit more. Again it's "use opening principles but don't focus your limited study time on openings, because that's not where you, a lower-rated player, are losing games."

Andras Toth: How to Get Better at Chess 0 to 1700: part one and part two. "90 games out of 100, games are not won, they are lost". A point I've made in earlier posts; games at this level are mostly decided by who blunders most/first/last (take your pick!).   Focus on tactics and calculation, and the basic principles: development, central control and king safety.

Spend 60% of your chess time studying, 40% playing. No bullet, 10-20% on blitz and just for checking your openings, because these short games don't give you time to think.

In my tournament games against higher level players they simply don't make those kind of errors! I wait for my chances to take something off them, but it never comes! I'm at the point where I need to learn the next set of skills; Chess Dojo suggests it's understanding tempo.

More About Chess Dojo

Look at their "Chess Dojo Training Program" playlist to see what you ought to know at different levels. It's free to know the requirements; you'll see them in the video. For me at about the 1000 level here's what they'd like me to do.

Polgar 5334 problems book: all mate in 1s, up to #700 of mate in 2

Learn Chess The Right Way book 3 (defense), Susan Polgar 

Chess.com Puzzle Rush 5 min: 14 (I have 27)

Chess.com PR Survival: 16 (I have 30+ I think)

Endgames position #1: be able to win with queen or rook

They have other requirements: memorize a particular game, review/annotate games etc.

Play 25 classical games (thats like 45 min + 30 sec?) and do 10 post mortems with a stronger player

At this level you should be good at playing in a miserly fashion; not giving up material  (i.e not hanging pieces, staying defended). They talk about chess having three “dimensions”:  material, tempi and quality of position. Beginners need to focus only on material, but at this level start to think about tempi. 

They expect you to try and win games by sheer force of material; taking more of it from your opponent than they take from you, then finish the game with a king+queen or king+rook combo.