Since I'm asked some of these questions too often, I want to collect my answers here so that every new time I can provide better versions of them with less effort.
- How to improve
- How do you put your picture on your lichess profile
- What is your favorite opening
- How can I follow your stream from mobile
- How can I get my free lesson for subscribing
- Can we play a correspondence game
- You didn't accept my challenge
- Can you follow me
There's no easy answer to this question, because every player is different,
with their strengths and weaknesses. But thankfully chess is so wide and complex
that I think every aspect of it that you decide to work on, you'll get some
improvement.
That being said, it's usually recommended for players that are not so strong
yet (let's say under 2000 FIDE ELO), to focus on tactics and endgames.
Again, any other aspect of chess that you might be interested to work on (such as
openings), as long as you enjoy it, there's nothing wrong about training it, but the
impact of it in games and results will not be as strong as the case of tactics and
endgames. Tactics and endgames are the fastest way to increase your
understanding of the game.
--{ How to train tactics? }--------------------------------------------------------------------
Puzzles.
Lichess is good enough for that: https://lichess.org/training
Other sites (chess24, chess.com, chesstempo.com, ...) also.
The important thing is to do it often. It's like learning to play an
instrument or to talk a new language. If you do it on a daily basis, even if
it's a small amount per day, you'll get to a point where most ideas will come
naturally to your mind the same way the hand of a pianist predicts the next
chord in a song without having to think. Daily training, no matter how small
it is, is how you grow intuition.
--{ How to study endgames? }-------------------------------------------------------------------
Many endgames you can solve them over the board during a game.
The problem is that you usually reach the endgame tired, and in a game you
need to calculate not just one endgame, but all endgames arising from a
certain position. Also, the endgame is the part of the game that has the more
direct impact in the result of the game. Also, many endgames tend to repeat.
Because of all that, studying endgames is of vital importance to improve your
scores.
Anyone can study endgames on their own, because as pointed out, you can
actually solve most of them without help. They involve few pieces, so you can
calculate most of it, even long lines. Nowadays we have engines to practice
playing against and tablebases (on lichess analysis board, for example) which
can tell you the evaluation and the best moves in a specific endgame position.
There's nothing like working on a position to understand it and learn it.
However, because it's hard to learn things that we ignore that we don't know,
it's very helpful to have help from other people who already studied. That can
be in the form of study material (book, video, lichess study, ...) or a person
(a coach or a chess buddy who can guide you).
Host the photo somewhere online (imgur.com or a similar website)
Then, just put the URL to the image as biography in the lichess profile.
I have no favorite opening.
I think there's no way to watch the stream from the lichess mobile app, only
on the website. From the app, you cannot even see whether I'm streaming or not :-(
If you're interested in watching my stream I recommend you to use either the
lichess website, or the twitch mobile app if you really want to watch from mobile.
My channel on twitch is: https://www.twitch.tv/pepellou
There's also the discord app for mobile. I announce schedule and updates on my
discord server so people can know in advance when I'm going to stream
(although sometimes I go live without being scheduled).
Here is an invite to the discord server: https://discord.gg/2esMbJy
As a perk for your amazing support to my twitch channel, I offer you a free chess lesson, as you know.
Please let me know WHEN, WHAT and HOW to do it according to the following:
--{ WHEN? }------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What works best for me is:
________> Monday to Thursday from 1pm to 4pm (CET times)
________> Friday from 2pm to 4pm (CET times)
Let me know if some of those works for you.
Out of that, we can try to find too, but more complicated.
--{ WHAT? }------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let me know if you want me to prepare any specific topic for the session.
In general, there's nothing wrong with just meeting and answering your
questions, but having a concrete topic might help you get more value from it.
Just to inspire you, some typical concrete topics:
________> a specific opening or line (Alapin, French, Pirc, ...)
________> a specific type of endgame (K + P vs K, Phillidor, bishop vs knight, ...)
________> a game analysis
________> a specific middlegame strategical theme (bishop pair, second weakness, pawn structures, ...)
Some typical general topics:
________> Strategical thinking, how to make plans
________> How to study openings
________> How to study endgames
________> Basic endgames
________> Opening principles
--{ HOW? }--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
¿Private or public?
Most people prefer a private lesson, but I have nothing against doing it on
stream if you prefer.
¿Tools?
Unless you have a different suggestion, we'll use a lichess study.
For the voice, let me know if you prefer: discord, skype, zoom or other.
--
--{ Answer template, for your copy-paste comfort <3 }--------------------------
Hi Pepe,
How about doing it on [ INSERT DATE ]?
It would be nice to focus the session on [ INSERT TOPIC ]
I want it [ public / private ] and we can use [ discord / skype / zoom / other ]
<3
Thanks for your interest, but I don't really feel comfortable
playing correspondence chess anymore.
Feel free to challenge me to another time control any time :-)
I'm sorry if that made you feel bad :-(
I generally try to accept challenges from everyone, not just friends. But
sometimes I'm either not taking challenges or seeking for a particular
time-control/variant.
When I'm streaming, it's easier to reach me because you can see what I'm doing
and talk to me in the chat.
When I'm not streaming, I spend much time on lichess not playing (i.e. doing
tactics or studies), but I try to give fast feedback (i.e. reject challenges
if I cannot play at the moment). If I'm not accepting nor rejecting your challenge
it's very likely that I didn't realize it's there.
Thanks for reaching, whatever your reason was to do it.
If I'm not following you, it's very likely that you don't meet any of the usual
aspects that make me follow a lichess user. From the top of my head those would be:
* A chess player I admire
* A chess player that I have as a reference in a particular opening or variant
* A chess player that I love or that I have a particular trust relationship with
* A member of my chess team
* A student
There might be more cases.
Feel free to introduce yourself so that I really know you and the reasons why
you think I should follow you.