Comment by wjossey | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wjossey | Hacker News Reader

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Always excited when chess pops up on HN once a month or so. As someone who picked it up as a hobby in December, I can attest that lichess is a great app and site for folks looking to get back into the game or get started (I’m also a premium chess.com member as I use both products).

For those of you thinking about picking up chess, I’d highly recommend watching the Chess Brah “Building Habits” series on YouTube. Watch the first five or so videos, and just start practicing those habits in rapid games (recommend 15 minute with 10 second increment on lichess, which shows up as 15+10). Embrace the losses, and just keep working on not hanging your pieces for free.

If you’re intimidated by playing other humans, you can try the “Maia 1” bot on Lichess. It’ll likely beat you up for a while if you’re a beginner, but it’s a bot designed to play more like a human, and it’ll help you get the reps to feel more comfortable playing other humans.

From there, just enjoy yourself. Chess can be frustrating because by design you always lose about 50% or your takes, but once you learn to accept the losses, it can be a great mental exercise to keep your brain sharp.

I agree. I would also recommend Daniel Naroditsky's speed run video series. He starts with new account and explains his ideas and thoughts as he progress to higher and higher elo.

Naroditsky has the most accessible teaching videos on YouTube as far as I’m concerned. He’s also writing a regular chess column for NYT.

I really like Yasser Seirawan's lectures on youtube. Its amazing how he can talk about a chess game and make it appear exciting.

He is a fantastic coach and trainer, Bobby Fisher's second in his follow-up match with Spassky, and top ten in the world (1) mid-1990, and with another great coach and writer, Jeremy Silman, author of several great chess books. Three of all the time greats—Kasparov, Karpov, Ivanchuk—were in the top 4 when Seirawan cracked the top ten.

(1) olimpbase.org/Elo/Elo199007e.html

Any tips on handling losses? I’ve become a puzzle only player recently because I end up getting pissed off with myself after a loss

Think of the loss as a form of payment. What it buys you is experience. So whenever you lose, ask yourself what experience that just bought you? What improvement does it allow you to bring into your future games?

If your mindset is to become a better player, rather than winning, then a loss is still a way to gain something. And long term, you'll win more games if you think this way

People will tell you to not care about losing or your rating, but that didn't work for me.

What worked for me is "the rating I care about is my rating in three months from now, not today", which gives space for learning from losses etc.

Because of how ELO works, your win-loss ratio will pretty quickly normalize to 50-50, regardless of how good you are.

Over time your increased rating will reflect increased skill, but even if your skill was doubled tomorrow, you would still hit a 50-50 W/L because you would be playing people at the same skill level.

However…if you want to feel better, play for a couple weeks and then challenge an occasional player. Once you obliterate them, you’ll feel better about the losses it took to get there. :)

I had a very strong coach work with me on this exact problem. He required me to reframe my definition of what it means to win. Basically it came down the the quality of effort I put into the game. If I put everything I have into a game and lose, it now feels like a win, because I know it will make me stronger. Conversely, if I don't give a good effort, but happen to win the game, I count that as a loss. This only applies to longer time control games. I still play blitz now and then for light fun.

I think it's a great approach and I try something along those lines. However it requires some form of self-persuasion which is hard to get when you are just binge-playing quick games.

I feel doing what you advise + playing slower games (for me usually 10min + increment) + doing puzzles is a great combination. It forces me to calculate more variations than just the most likely candidate move, and to think about positions more. I still tilt in blitz a lot but I tilt much less when I follow my own advise.

For me the biggest blocker was over-focusing on the numbers going up and down. On lichess you can make all ratings invisible (bottom of the preferences page, "Show player ratings"). This means you can't see your own rating or your opponent's. Your opponent can obviously still see both if he or she doesn't have this option enabled.

Make a list of the reasons you get angry, and re-write and filter down to the top two. Write those somewhere and look at it regularly. You'd be amazed at how useful subconscious insights will filter up into consciousness this way.

A couple of points:

* Every time you win, someone else must loose. You should be happy to make the same sacrifice.

* If you loose half your games, you are playing at your appropriate skill level. If you play consistently you will inevitably reach that point.

I'm a Lichess puzzle player. I find it more entertaining than a full game, and can fit a puzzle or two anytime rather than a match (even a bullet game is too draining for a quick time-filler)

You don't learn anything with a win. You learn a lot with a loss.

I find a lot of beginners have this mentality and skip over analyzing games they win to their detriment.

In general, the way to get better at chess, or anything really, is all about intentionality.

I'd recommend reviewing every game, win or loss, and looking for things you missed, what your opponent missed, thinking about what your opponent was thinking, why did they play the moves they did, etc.

A world in which only you win chess games would be pretty boring. Just sort of work backwards from that perspective.

Curious, why do you subscribe to chess.com? What does it offer that lichess does not?

Both platforms are worth supporting. Com does a lot of great events and creates great content, and I like supporting it. I also prefer their UX.

Lichess has Maia bot, some good course material as well, and I like to use my lichess account sometimes as an “alt” where I can experiment with less stress about losing rating. Rating doesn’t matter, but it still makes me queasy if I tilt 100 points while trying out a new opening.

For me it’s just leagues better. The UI/UX is nicer, the lessons are nice videos with a roadmap to understanding chess, etc.

The only benefit I ever got from Lichess is that it’s open source which is nice.

The ux is indeed nice but I'm not paying to have stockfish nnue wasm running on my phone.

I personally wouldn't use much more than analysis and I can just get it for free exporting the game.

Puzzles feels like their better quality than lichess but I've heard discording opinions.

For puzzles, Chesstempo was the first site to generate them automatically from games, and it's still the best at them.

I disagree with almost everything you just said, as someone who has bounced back and forth for almost 4 years now.

The poster only mentioned two things. So you answer just makes me think you just don't admire commercial chess sites!

To take the video lessons, chess.com are clearly leagues ahead of lichess. They can pay the contributors to produce quality productions. You can't really open source the time of experts .

Isn't all open source built from the time of experts? (Not experts in chess, but in programming, design, etc) :)

I mean in theory, nothing prevent a professional chess player to make a nice video lesson and share it for free. And there is no reason to assume this video would not be as good as videos made for money (just like it's the case for software)

We’re talking about chess experts, not programmers

I agree with most everything you just said!

Thanks for proving my point those arguing in favor of lichess aren’t being honest

You're welcome? Are you always immediately hostile towards people who disagree with you on niche website preferences?

Frankly, who gives a shit about someone's opinion who can't even handle a comment like 'I disagree with you' without hurling personal insults.

Also learn the "London System", and try play correspondence style games.

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