35
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 31 May 2026
35 points (100.0% liked)
No Stupid Questions
48321 readers
452 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
600-700 is around when the basic beginner traps stop working. Fried liver attack, etc, and not moving on past those traps is why so many get stuck there for too long.
Reading theory is helpful, but I'd say that's more important at 1000+ ELO. For now, I'd say learning the basics of evaluating any position (king safety, long diagonals, weak squares, etc). Also, knowing many openers is good and all, but I suggest picking one and get really good at that. "I fear not the man who has practiced a million openers once" -Bruce Dickinson, or something.
My personal choice for openers are Kings Indian attack (as white) or Pirc Defense (as black). These are very similar, so if you know those two well, it doesn't really matter what color you start as - they tend to end up with similar mid-games.
Also, around 700 it becomes important to spot which tactics are available to you in various positions. The puzzles at chess.com are really helpful for learning this.
As for the lichess argument, yes, it's good. But I find that the analysis engine on chess.com is slightly better. And on that note, if you have a subscription, analyze your games afterwards, as it helps you understand what went wrong or right (yes, don't just analyze your victories). Also, keep in mind that chess.com and lichess have different ways of calculating ELOs.
Also, use the time you have. If you're playing 10min games, make sure to use your time accordingly. Don't rush into a blunder because you didn't see the revealed check or the fork. Personally I mostly play 10min games, as that gives me plenty of time to evaluate the board. Sometimes I do 3min when I'm less patient.
Source: 1757 day streak on chess.com, 1261 ELO while I'm writing this (Although, knowing myself, I'll trip back to 1100ish soon)
The chess com engine analysis sucks. It's too focused on glazing you and not enough on being honest. It certainly feels better than the lichess engine, but it doesn't actually share more information.
For example, it used to be that a "brilliant move" was any move that you spotted but that the engine didn't. But now, it's been changed so that any sacrifice is a "brilliant move".
Further, the LLM based analysis is also pretty bad. It only seems to explain moves, but like most LLM's, it actually hallucinates and recommends nonsensical stuff, or incorrectly makes other claims about the position. If you search on r/chess you can find plenty of examples of this:
etc etc.
As an alternative, if you really want that type of UI, you can also use Lichess' server based engine analysis (you get 40 free per day unlike chess com's paid stuff):
But it doesn't tell you why a move is bad. If you really want to learn why a move is bad, the local analysis lets you play your moves against stockfish and experiment and see why they are lacking.
Just learn to use the Lichess local analysis. It's designed to actually facilitate improvement instead of glazing users and getting them to keep paying.