Read more about the article How to Kill Your Time Trouble
Analysis

How to Kill Your Time Trouble

We have thousands of students at ChessGoals. One of the most common questions we get is how to avoid time trouble. Let's start by working backwards. What causes us to get low on the clock? No clear plan for time usage Overthinking "easy" positions Panic and rushing in critical moments Underestimating our opponent's time usage. With just a few adjustments, we can turn the clock into an asset instead of a liability. Get the cheat sheet Tip #1: Time Budget Think of your time as a budget. Don't spend it…

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November 12, 2025
Read more about the article Can Blitz Chess Make You a Better Chess Player?
Analysis / General

Can Blitz Chess Make You a Better Chess Player?

This question has been around for at least as long as chess clocks have been standard. How can it be beneficial to instantly blitz out moves in a game, chess, that requires spending so much time thinking through all of the possibilities? I learned to play chess in the early 1990s, and this topic was as popular then as it is now. The movie Searching For Bobby Fischer highlights two distinct camps on this topic. Theatrical release poster In the movie, young Josh Waitzkin has a famous chess coach named…

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January 25, 2021
Read more about the article Takeaways, The Best Method For Game Analysis
Analysis / General

Takeaways, The Best Method For Game Analysis

Last week we looked at part 1, highlighting the study plan of Nicolas Celedon Hernandez, aka coriollis. In this post, Nicolas explains his five-step method for creating takeaways. The inspiration for his method came from our game analysis post and Natalia Pogonina's game analysis post. His method uses Chess.com premium features. The rest of the post is from Nicolas. Please let him know on chess.com or in the comments below if you like his method (Nicolas' Beginner Study Plan). How I Analyze my Games I will use my most recent game…

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January 10, 2021
Read more about the article Game Analysis #1 – An Interesting Nh3 In The Dutch Defense
Analysis / General

Game Analysis #1 – An Interesting Nh3 In The Dutch Defense

I recently wrote a post titled How To Improve - The Art Of Game Analysis that received some positive reviews and players seemed very interested in the topic. This inspired me to start a series of game analysis posts breaking down how I like to review my own games. In that previous post, we identified four levels of game analysis. Opening ReviewKey MomentsFull Human AnalysisExtra Credit For this first game in the series, I'll be conducting a full human analysis. Background This is a 30+30 league game played a few…

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November 21, 2020
Read more about the article How To Improve – The Art Of Game Analysis
Analysis / General

How To Improve – The Art Of Game Analysis

Note: This post contains chess.com and Amazon affiliate links. ChessGoals may receive a commision if you click on these links. Game analysis is a core component of chess improvement. Playing games is important, analyzing games is helpful, and the combination of playing and analyzing your own games will boost your success! In this post, we will focus on analyzing one's own games. For information on analyzing games of others, see How To Analyze Master Games. Why Game Analysis? Based on our survey data we analyzed on over 400 players, game…

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November 12, 2020
Read more about the article Chess.com and Lichess.org Rating Comparisons
Analysis / General

Chess.com and Lichess.org Rating Comparisons

It's updated and more accurate than ever! We have pulled down a list of players with both chess.com and lichess.org ratings, subset them to only ratings with RD values < 150, and created formulas to convert the ratings. An RD value < 150 means the player is fairly active in that rating category. Each column compares between 55 and 130 players! Thanks Jesse for writing the code to pull down the ratings. CHESS.COMBLITZLICHESSBLITZ(+/- 135)LICHESSBULLET(+/- 165)LICHESSRAPID(+/- 135)LICHESSCLASSICAL(+/- 130)80011501260900122513651000130012251365146011001380130514551550115014151340150015901200145513801540163012501495142015801670130015301460162017101350157014951660174514001610153517001780145016451575173518101500168516151770184515501725165018051870160017601690184019001650180017301870192517001840177019051950175018751805193519751800191518451960199518501955188519902015190019901925201520351950203019602040205020002070200020652065210021452080211020902200222021552150211023002300223521902400237523102220

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June 18, 2020
Read more about the article Descriptive Data
Analysis / General / Rating Comparison

Descriptive Data

Chessgoals.com contains cleaned data from November 2018 - present on 384 chess players. This post will summarized the most important variables. The majority of the players were ages 10-50, but we still had quite a few players over age 50. Frequencies of age group The dependent variable for most of our analyses was annual rating gain. The median in our data set was 110 points, with the 25th percentile at 25 points and the 75th percentile 218 points. The median weekly hours spent was 7 hours, with 25/75th percentiles at…

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April 27, 2020