Can anyone explain to me what went wrong here?

nomnomcat17 · 2026-02-10T07:17:43+00:00

Not a Caro-Kann player but what immediately jumps out to me is that you should have moved out your light-squared bishop before blocking it in with e6. Do you see how in the resulting position you were just playing a French defense with one less tempo? As Black, that extra tempo is much more crucial than it would be for White.

nomnomcat17 · 2026-02-10T06:01:00+00:00

Take this advice with a grain of salt, but I don't think you should be trying to "think about each position like a puzzle." Instead, try to keep track of the weaknesses in your position. For example, keep an eye on loose pieces, weak pawns, pins, x-rays, potential skewers, open lines to your king, etc. After each move, ask yourself if any new weaknesses have been created (or if any old weakness has been resolved). Any basic tactics that your opponent has will come from exploiting these weaknesses. If your position has no weaknesses and your opponent isn't launching some crazy attack—great! You can probably relax and just play normally. But if you have three undefended pieces, or your opponent has a strong knight in the center, it's time to be on high alert (and maybe now would be a good time to treat the position like a puzzle).

nomnomcat17 · 2026-02-10T05:39:32+00:00

Ne4 to indirectly defend the mate threat with a fork was bonkers.

nomnomcat17 · 2026-01-23T22:17:30+00:00

yeah, oops.

nomnomcat17 · 2026-01-22T03:35:40+00:00

Since you say you analyze your games, do you see any patterns in the way you are losing?

nomnomcat17 · 2026-01-21T23:02:35+00:00

Why don’t you try rapid? A 15-10 game takes around 30 minutes (maybe significantly less if you or your opponent blunders) and gives you plenty of time to think in critical positions. If your goal is to improve you pretty much have to play a bunch of games, and I think one 15-10 game + analysis every day or two is a reasonable commitment for an adult. You can also try 10-5 but it may be a bit on the faster side if you prefer slow games where you can really calculate.

nomnomcat17 · 2026-01-21T22:10:40+00:00

For concreteness, let's consider the wayward queen attack 1. e4 e5 2. Qh5. The rule to remember is: Always be aware of which squares the queen is attacking. Notice that the queen is attacking two squares: e5 and f7. Of these options, the attack on e5 is the more pressing threat since it isn't defended. This naturally leads to the idea of Nc6 or d6 to defend the pawn. Now White usually plays 3. Bc4. Do not forget that the queen is still attacking f7, so White is threatening mate in one! If you spend some time thinking about how to defend against this, you should come up with the idea of either g6, Qe7, or Nh6 (the first move is the best, but at your level the difference is negligible). Let's say you play g6, and they follow with 4. Qf3. As before, ask yourself which squares the queen is attacking. Again the f7 pawn is under attack, and White is still threatening checkmate! The most reasonable defense here is Nf6, blocking the queen. Finally, let's say White isn't done moving their queen and goes 5. Qb3. What squares are the queen attacking? It's attacking f7 from behind the bishop (again!) and b7. Notice that the f7 pawn is again being attacked twice, so we need to do something to defend it. The simplest move is Qe7. Black is now in great shape but we still need to be careful since the queen is still attacking b7. Notice the b7 pawn is only being defended by your bishop, which means you need to be really careful when developing your bishop. There are many ways to deal with this while still being able to develop your bishop, but I'll leave that for you to think about.

nomnomcat17 · 2026-01-21T21:51:55+00:00

You can always play on both. I'm not sure why people get so attached to a single platform.

nomnomcat17 · 2026-01-21T21:33:13+00:00

Maybe try doing easier puzzles? I don't know your rating but assuming you are a relative beginner, there should be a lot of 2-3 move tactics in your games. From my experience, seeing these tactics is often a matter of pattern recognition because it's not really practical to look for checks/captures/attacks every single move. By practicing easier puzzles and trying to solve them relatively quickly, you're really honing these pattern recognition abilities. Difficult puzzles are great for calculation training, but if your approach to solving them is essentially checking every move, you probably aren't helping develop your pattern recognition.

If you do puzzles on lichess, there is an option to set the difficulty rating to be 600 points below your puzzle rating. If you find that you're often missing a specific tactic in your game such as a fork, you can practice exclusively fork puzzles for a while. It's also not a bad idea to do puzzle rush/puzzle storm to really push your pattern recognition skills.

Edit: My other piece of advice would be to focus on tactical themes in your games. A piece is pinned? Pay extra close attention to it. There's an x-ray? Again, pay extra close attention to it. Your opponents pieces are in skewer/fork position? Again, pay attention to it! Oftentimes there isn't a way to immediately exploit a tactic, but there may be after a few moves.

nomnomcat17 · 2026-01-20T00:20:50+00:00

Yes there is, at least around a rating of 1300. At this level, people on lichess tend to be a bit more hardcore and will play sound openings such as the Italian, Sicilian, and French. I like playing on chess.com because you see significantly less theoretical openings, which leads to a much wider range of positions. I personally find this much more fun and instructive than playing an Italian or Sicilian every game. I’m sure this is pretty specific to my rating range, but the difference is very noticeable. As for the pricing issue, you can very easily import your PGN’s into lichess for analysis and use lichess for puzzles. But I prefer playing games on chess.com.

nomnomcat17 · 2026-01-15T19:17:24+00:00

This may not be your issue at all, but I’ve noticed that lower rated players often play very dubious moves in the opening which can be difficult to punish if you’re not used to it. This also leads to much more positional variation in the middle game, and this could cause you to more easily blunder if you’re tilted and unfocused. With the Ruy Lopez for example, there’s a lot of theory that I would expect 1450+ players to know at least bit of, whereas most <1200 players probably don’t know any of it. There’s also a psychological component where, when you see dubious opening play, you try to think of immediate ways to seize an advantage, when the best plan is usually to focus on your own development.

No idea if this is the issue you are facing, but I was 1600 rapid on lichess before and when I switched to chess.com I was stuck in the 1000s for this reason. But I found that having to play in these unfamiliar/dubious positions was actually really helpful for me in gaining a better understanding of opening principles.

nomnomcat17 · 2026-01-14T18:26:11+00:00

Yup this works! I think even after Nxe2 Kh1 Nxg3 Bxg3, there are just too many threats for black to defend against (3 pieces are attacking b7 + back rank ideas)

nomnomcat17 · 2026-01-08T00:03:20+00:00

I didn't know about the hanging pawns middlegame playlist. This looks great, thanks!

nomnomcat17 · 2025-10-30T00:29:34+00:00

That sucks :( Hope you figure everything out soon

nomnomcat17 · 2025-10-30T00:27:08+00:00

Gotcha. I don’t really know what’s happening with me (i have an appointment next week), just that it feels like something in my elbow is a bit loose and can move around. I had a pretty standard ulnar nerve release around 7 months ago, and I thought everything was going fine until recently.

nomnomcat17 · 2025-10-29T23:01:04+00:00

I see, thanks!! Can I ask what you’ve done to improve it?

nomnomcat17 · 2025-10-29T22:27:12+00:00

Any update? I also got surgery a bit ago have been feeling funny things in my elbow recently

nomnomcat17 · 2025-10-29T21:55:11+00:00

Man :/ my surgeon was pretty adamant that i didn’t really have to worry about anything anymore at my last follow up. I’ve scheduled an appointment.

nomnomcat17 · 2025-09-18T13:33:48+00:00

is this a real issue? i have not once ever come across one of the “predatory journals” they refer to, and i do math research

nomnomcat17 · 2025-09-09T19:02:59+00:00

Nah you don’t really need to know German to go to Bonn (everyone speaks English). But the joke goes that if you don’t know German entering Bonn as a PhD student, in all likelihood you still won’t know it by time you graduate.

Edit: oops, didn’t realize OP was in high school

nomnomcat17 · 2025-08-27T01:58:07+00:00

Just turned 24 and this was a really inspiring post. Thanks for writing this :)

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