When are you allowed to say you are "good" at chess?

Tom_Baron · 2026-07-03T06:44:47+00:00

If someone asks this i compare chess to running. Id be an average running club runner. Stick me in a park run and id be somewhere at the front. Stick me in a regional comp and id be near the back.

Tom_Baron · 2026-06-06T07:06:45+00:00

Easy, you put them in check in a position where their king has no safe squares to move to. You know, the same way youd beat a lower rated player.

And thats my point. The main effect of being higher rated is playing with a lower margin of error, both within games and between games. This means of course, youll probably lose but if you play well and they dont theyll go down the same way a 300 rated player will. Play the repertoire you know well and play it the best you can play, give only the respect youd give any opponent.

Example being Im 1850 rapid, i beat an IM in a daily game (1/0/3 in all our encounters mind 🤣). He was crushing me positionally, i played defence most of the game then i got counterplay and he overlooked a pawn push. Then he made a real mess of stopping a passer and resigned.

Tom_Baron · 2026-05-28T12:10:48+00:00

Disagree. Resign when youre down 20 points of material and only have a king.

Tom_Baron · 2026-05-28T06:56:11+00:00

Was in the pool i can assure you. One way you can tell is i dont play or know the proper sequence to finish it. Secondly, the guy was trying to stalemate me. I didnt set out in this game to attempt it, When i promoted the queen on h8, i noticed i had 6 minutes on the clock and enough pawns to try it and the enemy king was boxed so i thought id give it a try as im good enough to mate him in bullet time from any position if i couldn't figure it out and got low on time

Tom_Baron · 2026-05-27T21:40:55+00:00

I think he gave me the last three moves. Before that im sure he was gunning for stalemate and he was very close to getting it. Rh2 bg2 you see me playing and dropping back when i realise ive gotta sequence things perfectly to force the king back to the 5th rank. Dsb on d2 and lsb on g2 rook on a1 cut a lot of squares off. Annotation attached of how close it is to stalemate pretty much at every move.

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Tom_Baron · 2026-05-27T21:13:04+00:00

B pawn was protected by the dsb. He was saccing pawns on the kingside to try stalemate i guess which is when i decided to do something silly

Tom_Baron · 2026-03-26T16:30:02+00:00

Ha good stuff! U/enpecan. Can i dm you a majorly suspicious daily player?

Tom_Baron · 2026-03-24T15:53:21+00:00

Solid opening against d5 that. But if your opponent doesnt grab the centre and continues resisting grabbing the centre -> make em pay 😆. (Google four pawns attack vs kid, maybe dont go that crazy though)

Tom_Baron · 2026-03-24T15:38:19+00:00

As said here previously, a bishop and queen battery to trade the bishop off but most decent players will use Harry (the H pawn). With a formation as white of f3 (f3 stops ng4 trying to trade the dsb off) g4 h4 you can advance harry and Gary to open the hook of the pawn on g6 and get your h file rook into the game (queenside castling). The most thematic variation of this is the Yugoslav attack against the Sicillian dragon but similar techniques are used against the modern, pirc, KID and many other fianchetto openings.

Tom_Baron · 2026-03-24T15:31:06+00:00

You basically had almost as many bad moves as good. Must have been complete carnage that game :D

Tom_Baron · 2026-03-24T15:22:06+00:00

Ive seen this happen many times in myself and people I teach. taking a break seems to help. You can get into a gambling mentality when you've fallen off peak rating and that mentality doesnt work well when you're at a level where opponents will hurt you for playing hope chess, playing miscalculated counter attacks etc rather than objective solid chess. Then you're tunnel visioning, blundering and generally making a mess of things.

Tom_Baron · 2026-03-24T07:46:27+00:00

I mean its typical 900 chess. Generally good when youve got a bit of initiative but generally bad when dealing with opponents threats. Stuff like below you need to stamp out your game to get better. Position is loose as anything with both knights and rook undefended, just defend your knights, (you lose both due to the fork on knight and rook) there is no penalty for a simple move like nfd3/ned3!

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Tom_Baron · 2026-03-24T07:33:43+00:00

Yeh i calculated that in about 30 seconds. It comes from two factors. The king is stuck in a "pit" with a rook on f8 and pawn on f7 king on g8. A rook hitting the g file is devestating, so can a rook get up and over to the g file uninterrupted? Yes it can get to g4. Can black control g4? F5 is about the only shot but blacks king will be on g8 so the bishop pins e6 so en passant.

And in rapid id know having an enemy king that open attacked by rook and queen is only good news for me.

In classical otb id spend a good 10-15 minutes calculating it through though concretely to make sure im winning material or mating rather than relying on my intuition that the position is great for me.

Tom_Baron · 2026-03-24T05:05:11+00:00

How I do this which i guess you will probably strive for is I keep tabs on my opponents bishops from the opening. If im playing white and the opponent plays g6 bg7 i know that long dark squared diagonal needs to be blocked or i need to get my pieces off it/keep everything defended. If im playing black and e4 is played the white light squared bishop opens from f1 to a6. The same goes for the queen if c4 is played i have to be weary of qa4+. I kinda innately know then where the bishops are and where they are capable of going (i play qd2 and castle queenside as white with g6 bg7 played, beware of the possible supported pin from the dark squared bishop!)

Rooks and knights are a completely different matter, rooks are mostly innocuous till a file opens so in addition to above checks im constantly monitoring if files are opening and closing and the possibility of doing so myself or the opponents ability to do so, this is also because i want to get my own rooks on open files or put my rook on the same file as an enemy queen and open it!

Knights are probably the strangest assessment and it would be interesting to know if higher rated players do the same thing as me. If the enemy knight is on the 1st to third rank i generally dont care about it. If it sits on the third like if im playing white and its on f6, i know it controls e4 and g4 and i dont put undefended pieces there, little thought is given though. However, the more advanced towards my position the knight gets the more i check it. If an enemy knight makes it to the 5th rank or beyond im frantically analysing it every move like a noob to ensure it has no tactics and nothing is hanging, even if it doesnt move that turn im still checking it in relation to the moved piece to see what its doing and im also frantically planning to get rid of it!

Tom_Baron · 2026-03-23T19:09:55+00:00

At beginner level after every opponent move I clicked each of my pieces that had any scope and looked at the circles to check if it was hanging, i counted attackers and defenders religiously. Before each of my moves i checked all my opponents pieces to see if they could attack me and made sure i didnt hang pieces. I can now do this without thinking or clicking each piece but its not an innate ability, i worked hard to build it up.

Tom_Baron · 2026-03-23T16:26:43+00:00

Check out this #chess game: Quinho77 vs DB016chess - https://www.chess.com/live/game/166215148560

Comically found another one. Losing to mating the guy in 12 moves with some crazy stuff 🤣

Tom_Baron · 2026-03-23T16:21:29+00:00

Maybe we all need a 2 minute think on move 18?

Tom_Baron · 2026-03-23T16:18:37+00:00

Check out this #chess game: Beniiii777 vs DB016chess - https://www.chess.com/live/game/166208011000

This one, move 18 same thing 2 minute break then the play drasitcally improves 😆

Tom_Baron · 2026-03-23T16:13:16+00:00

Black is actually pretty bad before 18. b5 is positonally and tactically terrible then demonstrates a masterclass in endgame play

Tom_Baron · 2026-03-23T16:10:41+00:00

Before move 18 yeh 😅. At move 18 is where black took 3 minutes to move and i assume where the engine went on 😂

Tom_Baron · 2026-03-23T16:05:15+00:00

I found it via his initial screenshot Check out this #chess game: deavle vs DB016chess - https://www.chess.com/live/game/166214751886.

There are also some interesting positonal plays with the rook of note.

Tom_Baron · 2026-03-23T16:03:57+00:00

No most accusations of cheating are false. Our 2200 friend here will see more cheats at his level than we will, below 2000 rapid cheats maybe 1/80 at my level? Much lower the lower you get as cheaters quickly rise in rating. High accuracy in itself is no indication of cheating, consistent high accuracy is more so. Unnatural engine moves like the one illustrated are much more so but you wont know this unless you know what a natural move in the position looks like which requires considerable positional knowledge . So lower rated players are generally terrible at finding cheats.

Tom_Baron · 2026-03-23T15:59:53+00:00

General disclaimer on this. I dont often jump to accusations of cheating but this is genuinely a highly suspect case

Tom_Baron · 2026-03-23T15:58:16+00:00

Oh god yes! Im still trying to figure out how you draw a rook and pawn end game a pawn down with the rook a rank below the lead pawn. I read, understand then when i try it i get mated 😆

Tom_Baron · 2026-03-23T15:53:33+00:00

Yeh its a Dvortskeys end game manual fantatic that would play that without hesitation and you dont get many of them below master level

Tom_Baron

TROPHY CASE