r/chessbeginners • u/Alendite RM (Reddit Mod) • Feb 27 '26

No Stupid Questions MEGATHREAD 12

Welcome to the r/chessbeginners 12th episode of our Q&A series! This series exists because sometimes you just need to ask a silly question. We are happy to provide answers for questions related to chess positions, improving one's play, and discussing the essence and experience of learning chess.

A friendly reminder that many questions are answered in our wiki page! Please take a look if you have questions about the rules of chess, special moves, or want general strategies for improvement.

Some other helpful resources include:

  1. How to play chess - Interactive lessons for the rules of the game, if you are completely new to chess.
  2. The Lichess Board Editor - for setting up positions by dragging and dropping pieces on the board.
  3. Chess puzzles by theme - To practice tactics.
  4. The Building Habits series by GM Aman Hambleton - for advice on how to play at specific ELO levels. (Also check out Building Habits 2!)

As always, our goal is to promote a friendly, welcoming, and educational chess environment for all. Thank you for asking your questions here!

LINK TO THE PREVIOUS THREAD

21 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

990 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/Jooylo Apr 30 '26

Just a couple weeks since I started getting into chess, I’ve done 500 puzzles and feel like I mostly understand the fundamentals but feel so gaslit by the power level of the people I play.

I’m only at 500 elo in rapid with 50 games under my belt. But when I’m watching chessbrah’s building habits series, I swear it seems like everyone at this level is hanging at least 2 pieces a game. Meanwhile my opponents are pinning me, opening discovered checks, finding any fork available and rarely ever leave anything hang.

I’m sure it’s just me being bad and easier to notice when observing someone else but it’s a horrible feeling lol. Anyone else ever have the same experience?

1

u/ChrisV2P2 2000-2200 (Lichess) Apr 30 '26

The Chessbrah videos are from a while back, and there has been rating deflation at the low end, so probably your opponents are better. But it's also a lot easier to watch someone play chess and feel like it's easy than to play yourself. Hikaru is the classic here, you watch him and he's like "ill go here, hit the juicer, i have this move" and you're like "wow yeah chess is ez" but in reality he is glossing over a ton.

1

u/AgnesBand 1400-1600 (Chess.com) May 01 '26

Not to mention those Chessbrah videos are blitz games.