How to improve my chess skills??

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I love playing chess, and right from childhood, i was amazed by tactics in chess. But somehow i did not play much during primitive years of my childhood. I again started playing chess in chess.com from summer of 2019. Since then , i have been learning chess. So i thought how should i impro

I love playing chess, and right from childhood, i was amazed by tactics in chess. But somehow i did not play much during primitive years of my childhood. I again started playing chess in chess.com from summer of 2019. Since then , i have been learning chess. So i thought how should i improve my game? I decided to approach statistically.I had to take the help of web scraping , API calls tableau visualization to achieve this.

Web scraping, API calls

For web scraping. i used the method urrlib.request and beautiful soup. I was able to get my games played in chess.com thru web scraping , API calls. Getting the games that i played from chess.com was the hardest part. Chess.com has a public API which allows you to get the data (games) that you have played on their website.

API calls looked like this:

Web scrapping code is below:

 

Api data looks like the below

 

 

From the above data, i was able to do data wrangling and manipulation to get to a structured format as below

 

From API calls i got few fields and from Web scraping i got few more fields.I was able to link the API data and webscrapped data with the Help of common URL link number as URL is same for both API data and webscrapped data. 

Visual representation using Tableau

Every chess player has a rating and it is called ELO rating. Higher the ELO rating, better the player's chess play. I decided to track my own ELO rating.The below figure shows my ELO rating from January 2020 to March 2020.

As you can see, my ELO rating has improved slowly but steadily. Around starting week of march, i was almost averaging 1300 ELO points, which is very good for beginner like me. Norway Grand master -world number 1 player-Magnus carlen's ELO rating is around 2887 (lol).The graph is for blitz game played, which is 10 mins game below graph shows for bullet game , which is 1 min game.

I am around 1000 ELO almost 200 points lower in bullet games than blitz. This shows it is difficult to play and win in a faster time format. This is true for every chess player around the world except if the chess player is a super grand master.

From the above two graphs it clearly shows that i have to start improving my game in a faster time format and get more wins to increase my ELO. ELO rating is only one indicator of your chess skills, there are several other.

 

Win percentage Loss percentage

As you can see i have a 50% wins and 45 % losses with 4 % draws . I have played 1164 games from January 2020 and March 2020.

Though i have 50 % wins , win percentage does not look really great. It shows i need to get more wins. How cool is it to check mate your opponent's king. Lets have a closer look on how i have won games.

I have won more games by making good moves and made my opponents to think a lot and make them lose on time as shown. timeout 229 and i have checkmated my opponents 140 times. So, if i have to improve my chess points and ratings, i need to play more complicated moves and confuse my opponents and make them lose on time.

My detailed result as below for both bullet and blitz games:

As you can see, i have lost many games on bullet because of timeout. So, if i slightly play faster i may be able to win games in bullet. I have also resigned many games in Blitz . This could be because i am simply a piece down(piece here is queen,two knights, two rook, two bishops) or in a bad position of getting checkmated, almost in the verge of losing a game. At 1200-1300 ELO resignation is not very common and most players at that ELO level play till the very end of the game and if i play till very end of the game without resigning , i may be able to reduce my loss%.

Color of piece

Usually players like to play with white pieces because you have one move advantage and you can play aggressive openings and players with black pieces usually take more moves to develop all pieces than white in certain openings and hence, win % with white is more with players playing white pieces. But in my case, my win percentage is almost equal with both colors.

Win % with white pieces is 25.52% and black is 24.48% , not much disparity. May be i should check with more months data to confirm that this is actually the case, but from January 2020 to March 2020 , this seems to be the case. So, i should continue to play the same way with both white and black pieces.

Chess openings

Chess opening theory is really essential for any chess player as it defines how solid your games could go . By opening theory, i mean if a player with white piece plays 1) E4 (with e2 pawn) it is called kings pawn opening player with black piece replies with 1) C5(with c7 pawn) it is called Sicilian defense. Likewise, there are many chess openings that needs to be learnt. Lets see how i have fared with chess openings:

As you can see here. my win% is more with Sicilian defense, But i have also lost more games with Sicilian defense. Hence it is a double edged sword to play Sicilian defense, but i am really doing great if i play with kings pawn opening, though it is only 25% wins , my loss % is considerably low and the disparity between win and loss percentage in kings pawn opening is the least. Hence, playing kings pawn opening will increase my chances of wining a game if i play with white piece in general playing Sicilian with black pieces is goodI also see that i have not played more openings and i have to look out for learning new tactical openings.Below is the visual representation of the same.

Chess is a battle among hundreds of thousands of chess players from different countries. Lets see how i have fared against each country:

The above image shows my wins against all countries , My best wins have been against India , USA, Russia Brazil. However, if we look closer:

My wins are mostly against Indian chess players. However, my losses were equally higher against Indian players. Though on the periphery it looks like i have beaten Indian players, it is actually against Brazil players that i have fared well. Nonetheless, it is quite subjective to say that if i play more games against players from Brazil, i will have more wins. But, i can definitely give it a shot and playing against Brazil players can be a lucky win for me.

Game type strategy analysis

Within a chess game, a game can be classified into three categories: Opening game, Middle game End game. I have set my data set into three categories:

If total number of moves played in the game is from 0 to 15: Opening game

if total number of moves played in the game is from 16 to 49:Middle game

If total number of moves played in the game is from 50 or above:End game

Typically opening, middle and end game differs for different ELO rating. With my ELO of average 1250, above classification should hold good. Lets see where my strengths are:

Definitely, i am a middle game finisher. Most of my games have ended in the middle games with 50 win% i am a middle game player. It could be that my openings were quite good for each of those middle game finishes. But in general, My openings and end-games are poor and i need to work on it.

Chess is a game of skills but more so chess is a game of precision and accuracy. So, time of the day when chess is played matters a lot.

 

Lets see during which hour of the day i am doing good.I am doing really well, between 4AM-5AM UTC , 12AM-1AM EST as disparity between wins and losses is least. with 36 wins and 24 losses, playing chess in that time helps to win lots of games

Summary

  • I have to start improving my games in a faster time format: bullet and get more wins to increase my ELO
  • For improving my chess points and ratings, i need to play more complicated moves and confuse my opponents and make them lose on time
  • If i slightly play faster in bullet games, i may be able to win more games.
  • Playing till very end of the blitz game without resigning may to reduce my loss%.
  • With both white and black pieces, i should continue to play the same way to get more wins.
  • Playing kings pawn opening with white piece playing Sicilian defense with black pieces may increase my chances of wining a game.
  • Winning against a particular country's player is subjective , but playing against Brazilians have been good for my wins.
  • Most of my games have ended in the middle games with 50 wins%, i am a middle game player.
  • 12AM-1AM EST is the best time to play chess. Playing chess in that time helps to win lots of games.

Thanks for the read. Chess is the biggest online game especially in pandemic crisis and hit me up if you have any questions.

 

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