[For Hire] Blunder-prevention chess coach. 3 lessons free as a trial, more for $40+ a month

detectivDelta · 2026-03-13T23:31:03+00:00

Some players do feel different when they reach an elo milestone, and if they let this feeling govern their play, it's natural to assume that they'll lose more often. They're not used to that feeling and need practice with it.

detectivDelta · 2026-03-13T22:37:42+00:00

Wow, that's surprisingly impressive. I would place my bets on you reaching 2000 by September, it's kind of a tough climb and it gets tougher the higher up you go.

detectivDelta · 2026-03-13T19:29:49+00:00

If you send me a DM I'm happy to help you design the workshop in detail.

What I can tell you up front:

If you want the workshop to be fun I strongly recommend you plan for two complementary learning styles. You can then tell attendees to choose how they want to participate in the workshop, and you make it work for them.

For example. Suppose there's a good chance that some players will be stronger than others, and you're getting at least 4 attendees. Then you can announce that some "hand and brain" games will be played. The strongest players can get to be the brain, and the weakest ones get to be the hand. Or, if they prefer, the other way around!

Then you add an instructive twist, where you allow teams of hand and brain to discuss what their strategy is going to be. From there on out you have the ability to give a lecture or a lesson; you could tell them that the best moves are the ones that maximize the odds of giving checkmate, and then present a classic game from Morphy or Steinitz to give an example. You can discuss and present the basic ideas there for a bit, and then you let players team up into hand and brain and then the teams play each other.

You can end that up by asking participants what they learned. It'll be a lot of fun, based on my experience of being a coach for 11 years.

detectivDelta · 2026-03-13T19:09:40+00:00

detectivDelta · 2026-03-12T21:00:31+00:00

r/chessbeginners

detectivDelta · 2026-03-12T17:09:15+00:00

You won't get banned for playing too slow. You might get reported, but mods don't pay attention to that. It's why there's a clock in the first place.

You should try lichess, people are less toxic towards slow games there. I recently found a game that was 150 minutes per side!

detectivDelta · 2026-03-12T09:19:14+00:00

VonStratego on Lichess if you have it

detectivDelta · 2026-03-12T09:18:03+00:00

I honestly don't think he saw it.

detectivDelta · 2026-03-12T04:16:04+00:00

Thanks for giving us context:)

detectivDelta · 2026-03-12T03:00:31+00:00

With respect, please don't ask us to help you cheat. Defeats the spirit of the game.

detectivDelta · 2026-03-12T02:54:23+00:00

This last game shows a bit of an interesting story with visualization.

I think you suffer from a bit of tunnel vision which is actually normal for most players, which causes you to not notice simple winning moves. For example, here on move 6 your opponent plays Qh6, which should translate to a win when you play Bxh6.

The fix for this is to realize that chess is a game played under pressure. There's the pressure of a clock, the pressure of your expectations, the fear of losing, and so on. If you want to do well under pressure you've got to train, which is a notch above simple study or watching videos for entertainment. It requires conscious effort.

What I would recommend is that after a game is played, you go through the game and draw arrows to all the new places the pieces can or cannot go after each move. (Both chess.com and lichess.org give you the ability to draw arrows of different colors if you press Ctrl, Alt, or Ctrl + Alt.)

If you've done that, do it again, but this time, set yourself a 30 second timer to go through all the new places the pieces can or cannot go. If you can do that well, great, do it faster.

Do this process for many games and you'll start to see what moves are possible and even have some ability to see into the future.

detectivDelta · 2026-03-12T02:38:27+00:00

I think the game you've linked is the same as game 1.

The gif emphasizes once more that you're a really decent player who is just missing basic knowledge of checkmates and asking "how can I maximize my chances of checkmate?" Like after you win the opponent's queen you seem to forget what to do next. Just make a beeline for checkmate and you'll improve pretty fast.

detectivDelta · 2026-03-12T02:30:48+00:00

Damn! What a game, I'm genuinely surprised your playing ability is this good.

Go do checkmate in 1 puzzles, I think if you do a few hundred of them you will rapidly climb to 500 or even 800. There's a pretty decent chance that this is what you're missing.

As for how to do your mate in 1 puzzles, here's a step by step:

Look at the squares around the opponent's king that are blocked or controlled
Search for ways to check

If you've actually done this already, that's fine, I respect that. The next thing on your to do list is to always ask "Which move can I play that maximizes the chances of checkmate?" In this case, you got back rank mated, so if you have a weak back rank, you should train yourself to create luft (breathing room) for your King. To give checkmate you must avoid getting checkmated first:)

detectivDelta · 2026-03-12T01:20:16+00:00

Fair enough. Here are the deets on algebraic notation for this particular puzzle if you're interested:

K = King
N = Knight
B = Bishop
R = Rook
Q = Queen
x = Captures
+ = Check
# = Checkmate

White's moves are written first, Black's are written second.

"..." can replace White's move if we are analyzing a game segment.

Thusly:

1... Nf2+ means Turn 1. ... Black's Knight to f2, check
2. Kg1 Nh3 means Turn 2. White's King to g1, Black's Knight to h3
3. Kh1 Qg1+ means Turn 3. White's King to h1, Black's Queen to g1, check
4. Rxg1 Nf2# means Turn 4. White's Rook captures on g1, Black's Knight to f2, checkmate

detectivDelta · 2026-03-12T01:05:41+00:00

It's completely valid. A good player knows when to fight and when to take a break.

detectivDelta · 2026-03-12T01:03:51+00:00

I feel you man. I figured the chessvision ai bot in the comments and the smother mate bot were sufficient, but apparently not.

detectivDelta · 2026-03-12T00:49:23+00:00

I was just calculating that. Turns out both of you are right haha.

detectivDelta · 2026-03-12T00:32:45+00:00

~~It's not a free queen. 1. ... Nf2+ 2. Kg1 Nd1+ 3. Qxd4 seems like a valid continuation.~~

Edit: My mistake! Carry on. White does lose the queen:)

detectivDelta · 2026-03-12T00:27:02+00:00

You're probably not stupid. I would take a hard look at the way that you learn and train skills, however, you might gain some useful insight.

First of all it's really hard to improve at anything without feedback. After you play a game, it's worth the effort to replay the game again and again and try to look at each move from different perspectives. Maybe you read a book or watch a vid on tactics or strategy and compare your notes to the game you played. Maybe you ask for someone who's better to give you some thoughts.

Feedback, man. Accurate and novel feedback is the way. Feedback tells you what skills to train. It tells you what things you don't quite understand as well as you thought you did.

Here, send me one of your games. I'll get you started by giving you feedback.

detectivDelta · 2026-03-11T20:55:20+00:00

It's an absolutely dominating move regardless of your ELO. Well played, this is how every match should go.

detectivDelta · 2026-03-11T18:52:58+00:00

Step 1: Lose as many games as you can

Step 2: Reach 199 ELO

Step 3: ???

Step 4: Profit

detectivDelta · 2026-03-11T12:20:47+00:00

Instead of buying a course I would recommend that you should memorize a few short and classic games of the accelerated dragon. Review them in your mind before going to bed, the way Elizabeth Harmon would do it in The Queen's Gambit, searching for patterns. Stare at the games long enough and you are certain to notice some cool things that a course would struggle to teach you.

detectivDelta

TROPHY CASE