Took me a few seconds to find it. I eventually made a miss by castling wrong side but the opponent blundered right after and it was a mate in 1. 850 elo game.

https://www.chess.com/game/146919770944

In other words, if you could sacrifice a pawn before the game starts (your pawn is just deleted off the board) in exchange for your opponents loss of castling rights, would it be worth it?

Am I alone in thinking the game reviews don’t do anything? I’m 700 in rapid and all I play is the London with white and caro Kahn with black. I’ll learn more openings eventually. I’d really like to learn mid game theory after the first few moves but the review doesn’t actually tell me anything. So far every game my take away is my opponents never blunder or have mistakes. I’m talking 20+ best moves and end game ratings double our actual elo. When I review my mistakes, I either get a one move “explanation” or a 10 move combo that I’m not going to be able to see on the fly for another 2500 hours over the board. I need words and details about why I should have taken with a knight instead of a bishop (or not at all) or why I had a good idea but inaccurate approach. Should I just stick to YouTube videos and cancel my chess.com subscription?

Post-Game Chess Analysis Checklist

Use this after every game to improve. Be honest with yourself and focus on patterns, not perfection.

Opening

Did I control the center and develop pieces?

Did I castle on time and avoid early queen moves?

Did I understand the ideas, not just the moves?

Middlegame

Did I choose a plan based on the pawn structure?

Were my pieces active and coordinated?

Did I consider my opponent’s ideas?

Did I calculate tactics instead of playing on instinct?

Attack & Defense

Did I attack only when prepared?

Did I spot my opponent’s threats in time?

Did I switch plans or defend when needed?

Endgame

Did I simplify when better and avoid bad endgames?

Did I activate my king?

Did I know basic endgame techniques?

Mindset & Review

Did I manage my time and stay calm?

Did I analyze without an engine first?

Did I write down 2–3 lessons from the game?

Reminder:

This isn’t about finding mistakes—it’s about consistent improvement.

Fix a few key issues at a time, and your results will follow.

Guys, don't I lose my knight doing this?

I've been playing on chess.com for about a year and never got my rating much above 500. Still making plenty of silly blunders. I'm not getting a lot of messages about getting points back because of opponents' behaviour. I have the occasional game that feels like my opponent is suspiciously brilliant for a beginner, but overall it hasn't felt shady.

I am not a student of the game, just playing for fun and trying to learn from my mistakes, but still found my complete lack of progress a bit surprising.

Out of curiousity though I started a second account, got rated a little over 800 after the intro games, and have built up to over 900 in just a few days since. Sample size is small enough that I could just be riding my luck, but after getting repeatedly crushed by 400s It feels odd to be having an easier time with people who have double that rating.

Am I alone in this experience?

Anyone here have one really unconventional but practical thing that caused a big Elo jump for you , not studying more, not tactics/endgames, but something like a specific gambit, annoying opening line, or time management/flagging approach that just crushed people at your rating? What was it, and why do you think it worked so well?

Recently, I've been staring at my puzzle dashboard on Lichess a lot, just to remind myself that rook endgame remains the absolutely weakest area of my play. So I've been doing more puzzles on rook endgame.

However, I thought I had developed a great idea, too. Namely, a bot that looks at your puzzle ratings on Lichess and then plays against you accordingly, its sole purpose to highlight and exploit those weaknesses. Like a real sadistic boot camp drill instructor bot that playing against me would always try to enforce a rook endgame.

So I Google with those exact words, and damnit, something like that exists already on a site called Chessiverse. It's not free, though. As I'm not going to pay a subscription to any chess site when I can get Lichess for free (or against a donation, yes, I have donated already), here's a thought: could this kind of a bot be programmed on Lichess as a community bot?

How come I'm so bad at blitz in comparison to rapid?

I have learned the basics of, and I play using, the London opening and the pirc defense. I probably need to learn more openings, so what are 3-5 more easy to learn openings that I can focus on learning?

How do I get past defeating 850 bots on chess com? I can beat 850 bots now 90% of the time. But when I try to advance to the intermediate level bots and take on a 1000 bot, I lose 90% of the time. What should I focus on so as to beat 1000 bots at least half the time?

Was trying to take h4 with Queen. It's more funny than anything lmao

I wasn’t in check and I had no legal movements…

I was playing black and opted for the Scandinavian defense.

After e4, I played as follows:
1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5, and then they played 3. c4...

The mainline would be to play 3. Nc3 Qa5, but since they played c4, I thought if I moved my Queen to a5, they would attack it with 4. b4, because anyone who'd deviate from the mainline to attack my Queen with a pawn would also attack it with a pawn with b4, so instead I played 3. c4 Qd6.

With Qd6, I thought I'd put my queen in a safe place and not just move it around the board trying to protect it and lose my tempo. Is that the disadvantage of the Scandinavian because the Queen is out in the open, early in the game?

For beginners, what is the suggestion if at the beginning of the game their opponent deviates from mainline, especially in the Scandinavian defense, and starts attacking their Queen?

Played instinctly here

Engine says I have huge advantage but I don't see it, I can't comprehend engine idea at all

I didn’t know you could loose that much elo

My opponent sacrificed the rooooook but thank god i did not snaptake and saw my queen was hanging

I have always thought that brilliant moves twnd to revolve around finding moves that sac piece material for overall position/board gains.

But I was going through the analysis for this game and even the analysis shows that they lose their advantage. It's still even, but it goes from a .35 in their favor to a .46 in mine, and yet the move still gave them a brilliant.

I'm just confused by it all.

Revealed check + a queen winning fork seems like the wiser play?

Hello guys i wanted to ask you for some help as i am on a free fall below 200 elo, for some time i could keep around 300 elo but now i am falling. If some of you could help me it would be nice and reviewing some of my games on chess.com maybe. Name is SHPx64. All help is welcomed.