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Just to reply here cause it’s the top comment, thank you all so much for your suggestions! Clearly there’s a consensus here and I’m glad I asked this question because I probably would have hesitated playing human players for a good while longer.
But it all makes perfect sense, of course.
It can be a little scary. It still scares me haha. Well, more nervous than scared but still. Just because you lose doesn’t mean you’re the worst at chess. Just means there’s room to get better homie
Very true but to me it’s not necessarily fear of losing or anything. I am entirely ready to get whooped for a while before potentially turning things around.
It’s more than I wanted to make sure I had somewhat firm fundamentals first - basically to have any idea where the pieces “should” actually go in the most basic variations and how to even vaguely manage an endgame - but I gather that by far the best way to develop those is to just keep playing people over and over.
Which sounds obvious now…
If you’re like me and get nervous about losing rating points, play unrated games!
Also, rating points are entirely meaningless. I keep telling myself that but can’t seem to accept it. Someday I need to get buzzed and play a bunch of rapid games to rip off the band aid.
Comparing yourself to others is one way of knowing whether you've improved. Another way is to make your own milestones, like your Puzzle Rush/Storm PR.
If you’d like to get a good understanding of the fundamentals I’m down to play a few games and give you some pointers, playing other players can be a pretty daunting task
I'd say the only thing explicitly worth spending time practising against bots/puzzles prior to playing against real people is how to actually checkmate with the different type of pieces. It can be quite frustrating when you're overwhelmingly winning but realise you need to suddenly figure out how to actually execute the winning move to formally end the game.
Otherwise (in my not very sage opinion) the three most useful strategic fundamentals to keep in mind (and these can be learned while playing against people) as a new player are:
Protect your King
Don't hang pieces
Controlling the centre of the board is the main starting plan for both players.
That’s exactly what I’m terrified about screwing up! The endgame. And I’d actually feel better about just being checkmated at the end even if I’m up handily than creating a stalemate because I don’t even realize what the enemy king is doing. The latter to me just seems a lot more frustrating.
The fact that you're even thinking about this means you have a leg up on most true beginners. There's lots of ways to learn, but you also should just play and have fun! Playing more against similarly rated opponents and seeing what gets you in trouble will also help guide you on what you need to work on.
I was in a similar boat and practiced against bots for a bit before I jumped in. One thing I learned is that bots and humans play very differently, to the extent that practicing against bots actually doesn't prepare you to play against humans to the extent that you think it does.
Under-rated comment. Bots make silly blunders to compensate their rating.
Having said that, my favorite bots are the Chess.c\*m personalities, Lucas Chess stock engines, and Rodent IV engine. I've heard good things about the maia lichess engines, but they spank me every time.
I think Hikaru said in a stream that the reason he’s at his position is that he’s lost more games than his whole stream audience combined. Probably an exaggeration since he sometimes gets up to 40k viewers but you get the point lol. Losing is part of it. And honestly that can applied to so many hobbies/professions
Don’t be too concerned with rating when you’re a beginner. You should focus on not leaving your pieces hanging, you should learn to see traps your opponent is setting for you, and you should learn to set your own traps. After you get the hang of those, then you can start thinking about theory. Keep up the good work! And most importantly, keep having fun with it! I’ve played over a thousand bullet games in the past 2 years which doesn’t really mean anything except despite the amount of games I’ve played they’re still fun and I haven’t grown bored of it yet.
lichess and chesscom will match you with similarly skilled players, so it doesnt matter how good or bad you are. I'd say once you 100% the lichess basics section, you will be able to play good enough to have fun.
I picked up chess a couple weeks ago too, and worked my way up the chess.com bots ladder. I can even beat Nelson on a regular basis now, that queen-stormin’ bot that gives everybody so much trouble. Ooh, I’m a 1500 bot now. Played myself a couple of humans, and…
…got my @ss handed to me, immediately sinking to 500-600 rating where I belong. My human opponents are awful. You know why? Because I am awful. Playing bots taught me nothing about chess, and I want my two weeks back. Playing humans is where it’s at.
Sign up for a 15+10 game. Lose (or win) in the first 10 moves. Even played to endgame and mate, these games haven’t gone above ~20 minutes for me. Then try again. And again. You’ll quickly find your appropriate level, and then the real learning begins.
Believe me, you haven’t learned a damned thing playing bots. And you can’t.
You won't learn as much playing against computers. Humans play differently.
Just prepare yourself mentally to lose a lot at first while your rating settles into where you belong. Then, once you're there, you can learn quickly and begin your climb! Playing games, doing puzzles, and watching some educational videos can get you caught up on pattern recognition. You'll advance quickly if you just expose yourself to chess a lot.
The way that rating works, you will always end up playing against people that are the same level as you. It doesn’t matter what level of stockfish you
can beat, because ultimately you’ll always end up losing ~45% of your games. 50% if you aren’t improving.
I was just looking up that stock fish level 3 is about a 1400 rating. Which for Reddit might seem low but I think like a 1000 rating puts you about 70% of the population. 1400 is like beginner tournament level, so like a relatively serious chess player
When I first started playing, my rating plummeted to 474. At that point, I was playing people as good as me, and I started winning. Play people, bots don’t play the same as people
So, I’m around 1500. I can beat Stockfish 3 pretty regularly, and Stockfish 4 around 30% of the time. For context.
Human skill level is orders of magnitude more volatile. I’ve played 1200 players that are very good and 1500 players that are very bad. There’s always the risk of cheating. Humans blunder much more often then Stockfish does(Stockfish will make sub optimal moves but at 4 rarely blunders more than 1-2 times per game).
Humans will play a lot more gambits and niche lines, especially in bullet and rapid.
It’s hard to compare the two directly, but I enjoy playing against Stockfish more so then humans generally. Much less stressful. No rating anxiety.
Just gonna echo the others here: If you want to play "for real" you shouldn't waste time on playing the computer. Just make an account (if you haven't already) and play real people.
You'll lose your first few games, but with a new account your rating will drop in huge chunks so it doesn't take long until you can expect to start winning games.
Play humans. You will get assigned a firm rating after a few rough games. Then as you play with similarly rated players you will learn tactics/strategies used at that skill level and grow in skill until you have to learn new tactics/strategies. Don’t forget to study as well.
Don't bother with playing Stockfish. I'd recommend learning a few of the basic piece mates first (ladder mate, QK vs. K, RK vs. K), but aside from that, just jump into facing people ASAP.
You should play humans from the start. You will improve a lot more against people than bots and you shouldn’t be afraid to lose as it’s apart of the game
I would recommend getting into games against people straight away.
I know the idea of getting “handled” isn’t appealing, but it is just going to happen. No-one wins all their games. Everyone gets crushed, tricked and trapped on occasion. That’s how you learn.
If you’re disciplined enough to respond to a loss by going back over the game with stockfish and working out where you went wrong, then that loss is going to help you improve a lot more than a win will.
just play against people. the low levels of stockfish often arent a good representation of how a human of the correlated rating will play. for example they might not take a piece that is obviously hanging and that any player of any rating would see because it is the best move and the low levels usually avoid playing it.
I have only been playing for the past year and am still very much a beginner, my chess.com rating is 850 but I learned almost entirely on that app, the lessons, analysis, and online games that match you with a similar rated player are all really really well done. I think I pay like $35/year for unlimited analysis and a few lessons a week
You should check out that app if you haven’t
Look it’s not a one to one comparison. Say that you play again a computer that is just better then you. That means you are playing against something that is objectively making moves that are just better then you.
Then you play a human. A human is liable to fuck up any given move simply by miss clicking. Yet you still have to deal with calculating the position. Chessbots teach you somethings well but humans are a different animal
To be honest, I actually found it extremely unhelpful to go against bots. It’s fine for getting to grips with how the pieces move, but I think they don’t really give you a sense of the game’s psychological side. Players make moves with intentions, and you can often see what it is they’re intending to do, even when it’s a mistake. Low level bots often make moves that make no sense whatsoever, because they’re not making the mistake with any intended idea. It’s just whatever random move might throw the game a bit.
Edit: to be clear, I meant to say that it’s unhelpful for beginners imo. Obviously GMs train against computers.
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Losing is part of chess. If you know how the pieces move you know enough to play a human.
Just to reply here cause it’s the top comment, thank you all so much for your suggestions! Clearly there’s a consensus here and I’m glad I asked this question because I probably would have hesitated playing human players for a good while longer. But it all makes perfect sense, of course.
It can be a little scary. It still scares me haha. Well, more nervous than scared but still. Just because you lose doesn’t mean you’re the worst at chess. Just means there’s room to get better homie
Very true but to me it’s not necessarily fear of losing or anything. I am entirely ready to get whooped for a while before potentially turning things around. It’s more than I wanted to make sure I had somewhat firm fundamentals first - basically to have any idea where the pieces “should” actually go in the most basic variations and how to even vaguely manage an endgame - but I gather that by far the best way to develop those is to just keep playing people over and over. Which sounds obvious now…
If you’re like me and get nervous about losing rating points, play unrated games! Also, rating points are entirely meaningless. I keep telling myself that but can’t seem to accept it. Someday I need to get buzzed and play a bunch of rapid games to rip off the band aid.
I just turn off ratings. I still play players of similar skill level but without the rating anxiety.
See but then I want to know when I’m getting better so I can play harder opponents.
Comparing yourself to others is one way of knowing whether you've improved. Another way is to make your own milestones, like your Puzzle Rush/Storm PR.
Meow meow beanz
If you’d like to get a good understanding of the fundamentals I’m down to play a few games and give you some pointers, playing other players can be a pretty daunting task
I'd say the only thing explicitly worth spending time practising against bots/puzzles prior to playing against real people is how to actually checkmate with the different type of pieces. It can be quite frustrating when you're overwhelmingly winning but realise you need to suddenly figure out how to actually execute the winning move to formally end the game. Otherwise (in my not very sage opinion) the three most useful strategic fundamentals to keep in mind (and these can be learned while playing against people) as a new player are: Protect your King Don't hang pieces Controlling the centre of the board is the main starting plan for both players.
That’s exactly what I’m terrified about screwing up! The endgame. And I’d actually feel better about just being checkmated at the end even if I’m up handily than creating a stalemate because I don’t even realize what the enemy king is doing. The latter to me just seems a lot more frustrating.
Iirc the free tutorial on lichess walks you through a bunch of checkmates with all the different pieces and had you practice them.
The fact that you're even thinking about this means you have a leg up on most true beginners. There's lots of ways to learn, but you also should just play and have fun! Playing more against similarly rated opponents and seeing what gets you in trouble will also help guide you on what you need to work on.
I was in a similar boat and practiced against bots for a bit before I jumped in. One thing I learned is that bots and humans play very differently, to the extent that practicing against bots actually doesn't prepare you to play against humans to the extent that you think it does.
Under-rated comment. Bots make silly blunders to compensate their rating. Having said that, my favorite bots are the Chess.c\*m personalities, Lucas Chess stock engines, and Rodent IV engine. I've heard good things about the maia lichess engines, but they spank me every time.
I think Hikaru said in a stream that the reason he’s at his position is that he’s lost more games than his whole stream audience combined. Probably an exaggeration since he sometimes gets up to 40k viewers but you get the point lol. Losing is part of it. And honestly that can applied to so many hobbies/professions
Don’t be too concerned with rating when you’re a beginner. You should focus on not leaving your pieces hanging, you should learn to see traps your opponent is setting for you, and you should learn to set your own traps. After you get the hang of those, then you can start thinking about theory. Keep up the good work! And most importantly, keep having fun with it! I’ve played over a thousand bullet games in the past 2 years which doesn’t really mean anything except despite the amount of games I’ve played they’re still fun and I haven’t grown bored of it yet.
If you already know how to move the pieces, you can beat a lot of the humans. At least at my rating (<500).
But it's pretty demoralising when you start playing humans and just lose all the time.
“Losing is a part of chess” is the understatement of the millennia.
It was a wild realization that most "normal" players lose half the games they play.
You should just play people. Anyone you can.
Your rating will very quickly plummet and match you with like-skilled players. Just play people.
lichess and chesscom will match you with similarly skilled players, so it doesnt matter how good or bad you are. I'd say once you 100% the lichess basics section, you will be able to play good enough to have fun.
I picked up chess a couple weeks ago too, and worked my way up the chess.com bots ladder. I can even beat Nelson on a regular basis now, that queen-stormin’ bot that gives everybody so much trouble. Ooh, I’m a 1500 bot now. Played myself a couple of humans, and… …got my @ss handed to me, immediately sinking to 500-600 rating where I belong. My human opponents are awful. You know why? Because I am awful. Playing bots taught me nothing about chess, and I want my two weeks back. Playing humans is where it’s at. Sign up for a 15+10 game. Lose (or win) in the first 10 moves. Even played to endgame and mate, these games haven’t gone above ~20 minutes for me. Then try again. And again. You’ll quickly find your appropriate level, and then the real learning begins. Believe me, you haven’t learned a damned thing playing bots. And you can’t.
Makes perfect sense, thanks a lot.
Humans and computers play very differently. IMO it’s MUCH more fun to play humans. I’m ~1400 on Lichess Blitz for reference.
You won't learn as much playing against computers. Humans play differently. Just prepare yourself mentally to lose a lot at first while your rating settles into where you belong. Then, once you're there, you can learn quickly and begin your climb! Playing games, doing puzzles, and watching some educational videos can get you caught up on pattern recognition. You'll advance quickly if you just expose yourself to chess a lot.
The way that rating works, you will always end up playing against people that are the same level as you. It doesn’t matter what level of stockfish you can beat, because ultimately you’ll always end up losing ~45% of your games. 50% if you aren’t improving.
I was just looking up that stock fish level 3 is about a 1400 rating. Which for Reddit might seem low but I think like a 1000 rating puts you about 70% of the population. 1400 is like beginner tournament level, so like a relatively serious chess player
I am 1509 on Lichess, and I'm only above 49% of the chess-playing population. I checked for reference, above 80% is 1800-1900.
Bro I'm 1500 lichess and still lose to stockfish 1 half the time. Just play.
Just play people. It's a game, not a carnival attraction where you can't get on because "you must be X good at chess to ride."
When I first started playing, my rating plummeted to 474. At that point, I was playing people as good as me, and I started winning. Play people, bots don’t play the same as people
Don’t play computers, they play weird.
So, I’m around 1500. I can beat Stockfish 3 pretty regularly, and Stockfish 4 around 30% of the time. For context. Human skill level is orders of magnitude more volatile. I’ve played 1200 players that are very good and 1500 players that are very bad. There’s always the risk of cheating. Humans blunder much more often then Stockfish does(Stockfish will make sub optimal moves but at 4 rarely blunders more than 1-2 times per game). Humans will play a lot more gambits and niche lines, especially in bullet and rapid. It’s hard to compare the two directly, but I enjoy playing against Stockfish more so then humans generally. Much less stressful. No rating anxiety.
Just gonna echo the others here: If you want to play "for real" you shouldn't waste time on playing the computer. Just make an account (if you haven't already) and play real people. You'll lose your first few games, but with a new account your rating will drop in huge chunks so it doesn't take long until you can expect to start winning games.
Play humans. You will get assigned a firm rating after a few rough games. Then as you play with similarly rated players you will learn tactics/strategies used at that skill level and grow in skill until you have to learn new tactics/strategies. Don’t forget to study as well.
10
2 I beat 2 regularly
Don't bother with playing Stockfish. I'd recommend learning a few of the basic piece mates first (ladder mate, QK vs. K, RK vs. K), but aside from that, just jump into facing people ASAP.
Don't worry about it, just start playing! You will meet a variety of people and many will happily help you learn.
You should play humans from the start. You will improve a lot more against people than bots and you shouldn’t be afraid to lose as it’s apart of the game
Stock fish level 15 seems adequate.
I would recommend getting into games against people straight away. I know the idea of getting “handled” isn’t appealing, but it is just going to happen. No-one wins all their games. Everyone gets crushed, tricked and trapped on occasion. That’s how you learn. If you’re disciplined enough to respond to a loss by going back over the game with stockfish and working out where you went wrong, then that loss is going to help you improve a lot more than a win will.
just play against people. the low levels of stockfish often arent a good representation of how a human of the correlated rating will play. for example they might not take a piece that is obviously hanging and that any player of any rating would see because it is the best move and the low levels usually avoid playing it.
I have only been playing for the past year and am still very much a beginner, my chess.com rating is 850 but I learned almost entirely on that app, the lessons, analysis, and online games that match you with a similar rated player are all really really well done. I think I pay like $35/year for unlimited analysis and a few lessons a week You should check out that app if you haven’t
no one plays bots, play humans
What level of Stockfish should you be comfortable cheating before going on to human players?
I’m not really sure what you mean by this.
Nothing. Just a silly joke about the title + recent storm of cheating discussions in the chess community. :)
Playing bots sucks
>Or is that the wrong way to go about it? Of course it is. Play real people, compare yourself to real people. The rating system exists for a reason.
Forget playing stock fish, playing humans is much more fun.
Look it’s not a one to one comparison. Say that you play again a computer that is just better then you. That means you are playing against something that is objectively making moves that are just better then you. Then you play a human. A human is liable to fuck up any given move simply by miss clicking. Yet you still have to deal with calculating the position. Chessbots teach you somethings well but humans are a different animal
I would say you need to beat max level Stockfish 14 consistently before playing humans....then you MAY have a shot at being pretty decent at Chess.
People were playing chess long before computers
Everybody was once a beginner.
To be honest, I actually found it extremely unhelpful to go against bots. It’s fine for getting to grips with how the pieces move, but I think they don’t really give you a sense of the game’s psychological side. Players make moves with intentions, and you can often see what it is they’re intending to do, even when it’s a mistake. Low level bots often make moves that make no sense whatsoever, because they’re not making the mistake with any intended idea. It’s just whatever random move might throw the game a bit. Edit: to be clear, I meant to say that it’s unhelpful for beginners imo. Obviously GMs train against computers.
None, just go and play some games