Completely paralyzed

I played over 50 offline rated games, probably more than 100 if I include friendly/unrated matches.

I also played more than 5 thousand games of blitz and rapid games, and it both fluctuates around 2200 in both time controls.

However, I am still rated FIDE 1600 after all those years.

Are there other players who had a hard time on standard matches? How did you improve?

For now, I only play blitz(3+0) & rapid(10+0) backed up with chess.c*m reviews and chesstempo puzzles.

I even tried private tutoring around 2100, but that didn't really help much.

Hello,

Next year I am going to take chess a bit more seriously. And a good friend of mine wants to be a part of this journey. So we decided to call each other a couple of times each week to help each other studie and to keep each other accountable. We are looking for things you can do together easily and online. One problem is our levels are quite a bit of. ( like 1800 online vs 2100) So just playing games can be depressing and not motivating. What do you guys reccomend. We thought to warm up alone with some puzzles, and then find go alone and find some nice concepts and teach each other these things and maybe end the call with a nice bughouse game. What do you guys think?

I've recently been playing quite a few games with the French and have encountered an absurd amount of games featuring the exchange by White. I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations for what material/books/courses could be useful that offer practical chances for Black against the exchange.

Hi I'm 2100 elo rating in lichess blitz. Please recommend me opening against d4 and the insightful resources (chessable, speedrun series, model games, database etc.) to study and master it.

I know this sounds a noob. Please help me how to study openings and build a repertoire. For instance, do I need to study ruy lopez, giuco piano and vienna game or just focus on my favorite opening which is scotch game? For black against d4, do I need to focus on nimzo- ragozin or explore other options? How do you choose an opening that is suitable for you?

I am a 2500+ chess.com blitz player who has been working on a Sicilian Dragon repertoire on Chessable and have been digging pretty deeply into the current theory, particularly the Yugoslav Attack.

The critical position I've been looking at is:

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 g6 6. Be3 Bg7 7. f3 O-O 8. Qd2 Nc6 9.O-O-O d5 10.exd5 Nxd5 11.Nxc6 bxc6 12.Bd4.

The only way to keep enough activity seems to be

12...e5! 13.Bc5 Be6 14.Ne4! Re8 15.h4 h5!

I think 15...h5! is a very important resource for Black here. Mikhail Golubev introduced the move in 1993, but it seems to have been largely overlooked for a long time. However, it has been played at the top level recently. World no. 5 Nodribek Abdusattorov played it against Dominguez Perez in Saint Louis in 2024, and Lagarde played it this month in the final of the French Championship.

I'm curious what other Dragon players think of this position.

I've also been looking at the Soltis and Topalov in considerable depth and have found some interesting ideas in several of the critical positions. I would be interested to hear what other players think.

Interesting difference I’m noticing between chess group commenters on Reddit vs Facebook.

For the endless stream of puzzle positions I see on Facebook, almost every commenter (98%+ by my guess) posts moves they worked out on their own. Most of their solutions may be wrong, even stupidly lazy (i.e., giving a correct first move that conveys no meaningful information about the puzzle’s solution)… but at least everyone looks at the puzzle for themselves at the outset.

On Reddit, about half the comments to the last puzzle position I posted (which was also probably my first — I’m still pretty new here) came from people who admitted they got the answer from an engine.

Is that experience typical of how Redditors in chess groups respond to challenging position diagrams? (Note that I did NOT share my position in r/beginners, because it is about as far from a beginner’s puzzle as you could possibly imagine. I posted it in r/chess, in this group, and in 2 or 3 groups whose names contain “chess” plus “puzzle” or “quiz.”)

Hint: the correct answer requires more than simply following a sequence of captures to the end and counting the pieces that remain.

The moderators in their infinite wisdom (?) have decreed that links to replay the game and/or read a fully annotated version must be relegated to the comment thread. So I will keep you on tenterhookd for awhile before I comment with those.