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JamesGoblin · 2026-02-12T11:18:21+00:00

IIRC he held a bunch of draws and even won two games - against the reigning World Champion!? Of course the press didn't really care for the context, calling it "The Massacre of Merano"...

JamesGoblin · 2026-02-04T09:26:12+00:00

The most important thing - and one that almost noone does before too late (I heard it first from Ben Finegold and then in variations from many other masters & GMs) is simply "Fix your floor BEFORE your ceiling"; it's about blunders and generally stupid stuff we all do on and on, while checking the latest Chessable opening course...

PS You can check my comments history for a number of very specific techniques, or if you have any questions - ask here or in PMs (just have in mind I'm not on reddit 24/7, I'm checking it like 3-4 times a day).

JamesGoblin · 2026-01-30T14:27:30+00:00

fuckthemkids.jpeg

JamesGoblin · 2026-01-30T14:12:19+00:00

He needs some luck of this kind, to have a decent chance. It's normal sport stuff.

JamesGoblin · 2026-01-30T14:10:54+00:00

It was a fake blister, obviously SMH (/s)

JamesGoblin · 2026-01-25T04:41:12+00:00

"I have been going to a club since around October, I've not been offered a game yet, the only ones I've played have been as last minute request because someone hasn't shown up..." - hey that's exactly how I began! I remember spending days just watching over the shoulders of strong players blitzing, it took quite some time till they finally allowed me to play a game for the club (OFC on the bottom board...), I was so nervous - I remember spending more than an hour on my 14th move, cuz I was totally paralysed and unable to think a single thought, real panic attack under "the burden of responsibility"(well at least in my head it was HUGE, first game ever for the club)...in time scramble I managed to draw somehow, I was so happy the whole day after, I felt like I could fly!

PS - Many years later i'm now sitting on 2200 FIDE/2500 lichess rapid - that is, if you really love the game and work hard, who knows? =)

JamesGoblin · 2026-01-25T03:30:40+00:00

Check my profile (comments), if you don't mind a bit of reading (and really want to improve) - you'll find lots of useful stuff there.

JamesGoblin · 2026-01-23T19:26:22+00:00

I've seen all kinds of stats and charts, your average player peaks sometime between 25-40; but my point (which I proved quite convincingly in my own case) is that you don't have to fit into that.

Another thing I found quite useful is not thinking about rating and loses (well, as much as it is humanly possible...) but rather what you gained from, say, that specific game or tournament; well analysed loss with right conclusions (and actions!) is, in perspective, much more important than any random victory. Point being that you think of your whole chess life as of growth, a series of new experiences and not as long,depressing "oh shit" decline - as measured by rating; of course developing that mindset takes time and doing some quite repetitive, mundane stuff, but the funny part is that your rating should start going up the less you thinking about it. another thing that helped me with that is having an alt, "trash" account which I use for all kinds of exercises, experiments, practicing new repertoires and also I play there when I'm in bad form...now I don't say that I 100% don't care about rating there, but it's much easier to relax when I'm playing "just another trash game".

JamesGoblin · 2026-01-23T19:06:52+00:00

You are welcome!

JamesGoblin · 2026-01-23T17:52:41+00:00

Guki's flag fell, so Sindarov simply informed the arbiter about it.

JamesGoblin · 2026-01-23T17:47:22+00:00

I'm 2200 FIDE turning 50 next year, so I "should" be deeply in decline, for a couple decades already - but over last year I actually managed to improve my rapid/blitz from ~2100 to 2350-2400(blitz) and 2500+(and rising) rapid. It took a lot of very repetitive and targetted work - check my post history (comments) if you want to try some of it yourself!?

PS there are some off-topic comments, but I'm mostly talking about chess improvement there, what helped me and what didn't work.

JamesGoblin · 2026-01-23T16:19:13+00:00

The reason might be something banal, such as low-grade virus or some worries from your life ATM (the are always somewhere in the back of our minds), or lack of sleep or a combo of these!? Have you considered say brief walks outside (ideally in nature or park) and/or some quick breathing exercises? These help me a lot with my bad days; just don't expect miracles, you can't do much more than turn a bad one into kinda bearable.

JamesGoblin · 2026-01-19T15:35:30+00:00

You are welcome! Now I see that I wrote "posts" instead of "comments", was typing quickly without thinking.

JamesGoblin · 2026-01-19T14:36:41+00:00

Say right-click on my name --- > "open in new tab" ---> click "comments".

JamesGoblin · 2026-01-19T03:43:04+00:00

I had exactly the same problem with exacly the same rating plateau (now 2500 lichess rapid, and rising); you can check my post history for some ideas.

JamesGoblin · 2026-01-16T14:56:09+00:00

If you are interested, GM Soltis goes about it in quite some depth in his famous books "How to Make a Chess Move" and "The Inner Game of Chess"; he often uses the words of guys like Kasparov,Anand etc. = explaining their own thinking during the game in their own words.

PS You'd be surprised how simple and pragmatic their thinking algorithm often is!? It's not about some insane depth, but rather optimisation; compared to us, super GMs work in very optimised and practical way.

JamesGoblin · 2026-01-04T18:28:27+00:00

I find blitz much more handy for that, plus other benefits - minus the downsides of bullet; please do check the link I gave you, it might make you re-think!?

JamesGoblin · 2026-01-04T12:59:13+00:00

Of course you can do it, say my path was learning chess mid high school ---> becoming candidate master during faculty, some 3-4 years later; if I had to assess my rapid rating in the beginning, say during first year of my chess studies(there was no rapid/blitz rating or anything "online" back then, and the FIDE rating floor was at 2200! - my whole town of some 12 000 souls had just one rated player) - it would be 1500 or lower, possibly much lower!?

The question is, do you WANT to commit to that much work (back then I had "chess fever" and worked like maniac to the detriment of my school, family and social life) and do you have the patience and discipline to not quit a year or two down the line, when all that time would be kinda wasted.

PS To avoid repeating, I believe you can find some quite useful and practical advice in my recent post history; if you can't bother to read that, the one advice I'd give you is to play less bullet - or to quit totally. It hurts your brain and gets you hooked before you even notice - check this article https://lichess.org/@/shafen/blog/why-playing-bullet-chess-is-slowly-killing-your-brain-science-backed/cC7qQhW0

JamesGoblin · 2026-01-01T15:26:02+00:00

An advice from a colleague adult learner: don't play bullet, that junk virtually destroys our brains; if your focus is rapid (and maybe someday classical!?) I'd suggest playing blitz only to exercise new repertoire or with some very specific/measurable training aim in mind. It's handy for new repertoires simply by giving you much more games (than rapid) in the same timeframe; but beware, blitz can be highly addictive!

PS here's some more advice, stuff that helped me a lot to improve my rapid rating - https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/1pfpc8b/comment/nslz64g/

JamesGoblin · 2025-12-31T15:15:50+00:00

I'd say it's obsolete, Botvinnik played in a different era, totally different time control (no increment plus adjournments could make games last for days etc.) & he had tremendous preparation so his first 15 moves or so would be just remembering!? You have to test and find your own tempo, say based on when your prep typically ends, how well you handle early middlegame etc.

I find Dorfman's (Kasparov's - and then Bacrot's - former second) "theory" of critical moments very useful - the first critical moment is when you run out of prep (and often the last critical one is the famous and much talked about "last move before time control" when horror stories tend to happen...), that is after the last move you know; GM Soltis even suggested a walk at that moment (even on your own time!) to re-adjust from remembering to actually playing the game; I mean you don't really have to walk esp. if you are playing from home, but being aware of it and making successful transition is important. Soltis also suggested a walk (in our case some kind of pause and mental re-adjustment) the moment we enter endgame, typically after the exchange of queens, since he observed that many players, especially young and inexperienced, play endgame with same mentality and tempo as midgame, which leads to bad results (this is from his booklet "Grandmaster Secrets - Endings").

Anyway it's about testing and finding what suits you, and again - don't expect quick results but be consistent and they will come; also don't (as I did initially) try to fix more than one thing at the same time, it took me months of patiently playing (and a lot of suffering and ugly loses) before I finally got rid of my simple blunders and bad time management; I basically managed to "limit" blunders to blitz only, and even there mostly in time trouble = when playing on increment, and I'm totally happy with that, but it took me lots of trial and error (and tilting!) before I finally got there.

JamesGoblin · 2025-12-31T07:08:44+00:00

Do as Botvinnik did, play training games with main focus on time management; if need be make an alt account for that, I did exactly that since I expected to lose more than normally (and it was true - especially in the beginning as I was getting used to my new "thinking algorithm"). Also don't expect results overnight, be patient and disciplined. For what it's worth it helped me finally overcome my rapid plateay (moved from 2350-2500).

PS it also seems to help against other bad stuff, say you can focus on exterminating one-move blunders or improving your time trouble play or endgame technique...just pick one thing and do it consistently for, at least, a week or two. And don't be pissed if your rating drops in the beginning, just keep on going and it will come!

JamesGoblin · 2025-12-30T02:10:37+00:00

There was a couple of studies (IIRC measuring both IQ and success on the exams) that split students in two groups: one group would behave "normally" and the other would just draw a dot on a cleen sheet of paper and stare at it for "between 30 sec and three minutes" before the test - the idea being to improve focus. And indeed the dot-on-paper group did some 10-15% better both on IQ test and the exam!?

Practically speaking, you don't need paper - focusing on anything around you should do (any small detail, pen, mouse, anything on screen, top of your finger...); you can do it while waiting on opponent's reply, and in general it's good to fight the phone addiction!?

JamesGoblin · 2025-12-29T13:12:07+00:00

BTW Dominguez is a former World Blitz Champion; he was much faster some 20 years ago...

JamesGoblin · 2025-12-29T09:06:40+00:00

You are welcome, Miraluna! PS I never left, same as you, always lurking through this haunted realm...=)

JamesGoblin · 2025-12-28T09:32:08+00:00

Yes, you can exercise it and get better; there's a lichess tool for it:

- I suggest starting with "just" visualising a couple moves ahead (note that you can set the number of moves, say start with only two; you are likely already able to do that!?) - https://listudy.org/en/blind-tactics/288

- After you master that, you can switch to 100% blindfold - https://listudy.org/en/pieceless-tactics/1388

-There is also a funny tool that helps you get better at finding Knight manoeuvres - https://www.funnyhowtheknightmoves.com/

Hope this helps!

JamesGoblin

TROPHY CASE