5 Tips To Break 1600 For Good! The top mistakes players rated 1600 are making and how to fix them!

What's up guys ?

The results are in , I've analyzed 100 games from players rated 1600 to see what kind of mistakes they're making and why they're losing the games in this video .

I'm gonna share with you what I found and give you some tips on how you can fix those issues so you can get past 1600 .

And by the way , if you're wondering , it does take a lot of time to go through 100 games and analyze each one .

I do actually open up each game individually and look through and see what mistakes were made and what caused the player to lose .

So if you do learn something from this video , if you don't mind hitting the thumbs up and consider subscribing , that really helps me out a lot and I really appreciate it .

All right , without any further ado , let's jump right in .

All right .

So here are the results at the top of the list .

We have blunders at 41% and tactics mistakes at 26% .

So , really interesting thing about the blunders is that 41% is higher than what I saw when I looked at the 1400 rated player games .

If you remember back from that video , there was less blunders in those games than at the 1600 level .

And honestly , I can't really tell you why that happened or , or what was going on there .

Maybe it just had to do with the sample size , the 100 games that I happened to look at .

I really was expecting to see less mistakes at the 1600 level , but it didn't happen .

So I'm not gonna spend a lot of time talking about blunders .

I think everybody knows what they are .

You just have to be as careful as you can to make less and less of them if you want to get past 1600 .

But I will show you one quick example .

So this is a game both by 1600 rated players and black gets off to a very bad start .

You can see right here .

He ends up losing his rook , so he falls for this little fork , loses a rook and he continues to play on .

And I wanted to point out something that he does , which is was pretty smart if you ever lose material like this , one of the best ways to give yourself a chance to win the game is to try to go for some sort of attack on , on the opponent's king .

Because if you're able to check mate him , it doesn't matter how many pieces you're down right now , it doesn't always work , but he did a really good job of setting up a little trick and it worked out .

So he brings his rook over .

Um And then right here , so he's lining up this bishop on this diagonal , which is smart .

And then after white retreats , he decides to trade this piece because it's forcing White's queen back .

And then he's able to capture with his queen .

And what he's accomplished by doing that is creating this battery .

So in chess , it's called a battery when you have two pieces that are lined up on the same diagonal or on the same file .

So black actually has two batteries .

Here .

One is going this way on the file and , and one is like I said , here on the diagonal and it's really a pretty obvious threat in , in my mind .

Um If , if white was doing any sort of blunder check , he would have noticed that , hey , um my pawns being attacked twice and my king's right there , I have to be careful .

No , he's got it defended .

So he's fine and even just a simple move like rookie won and , and White's completely winning , but this guy just captured the pawn and that was it game over .

So I was really surprised to see this kind of mistake at the 1600 level , but you saw the data , I mean , 40/40 percent of the games were , were blundered .

So , so the takeaway is do a blunder check and be careful .

You never know when you know something like this might happen and completely one game becomes a loss .

So let's move on .

All right .

So next on the list , we have tactics mistakes .

I've said this before .

But again , the best way to get better at this is just to practice , you have to practice and practice and practice .

And as you do more and more tactics , you'll get better at them .

I will show you one quick game .

So I'm gonna go quickly through this game .

The opening was pretty standard .

Both players did a good job , developed their pieces castled .

Nothing really to look at right here .

So I just want to get to the point where the tactics shows up .

OK ?

So right here .

Um OK , black plays before and he's trying to trade some pawns and , and there's nothing wrong with , you know , creating some queens site space like he's doing .

But he failed to realize that when white played queen F three , white was setting up a little tactic .

And so after black played a four , then before white was able to do it , bishop takes H six .

So this happens a lot when the H pawn is pushed forward .

So like whites , you know , h pawn is up .

If the pawn is pushed forward and there's a piece attacking your night , you have to watch out for the bishop sack , right ?

Because if black tries to recapture this white's queen's coming in and taking the night .

And so it's essentially a free pawn for white because of this little tactic .

So now that white was able to remove that age pawn , not only does black have one less pawn defending his king .

He's also got some pressure here with white has a lot of pieces on the king side and he kind of falls apart after these next couple moves .

And here black played nine at five trying to , you know , put pressure on the bishop .

He blocked the queen from , from the night .

So now he can take it , but he's just blundering at peace , right ?

Um Nothing really to look at here .

It just fell apart for Black and another little tactic discovered , check on the queen and after king F eight , he loses the win .

He could have played King G7 .

It's still not a good position for , for Black .

But anyway , Queen's gone came over .

So just work on your tactics .

That's really the only tip I have .

You have to just practice and you'll get better overtime , right ?

So third on the list , we have lack of opening knowledge .

So 16% of the games that I looked at players were getting into trouble because they just didn't really know what to do in certain opening lines .

And so it looks like the 1600 level is really when it starts to get a lot more important that you understand some more opening principles .

And even some opening theory in some cases prior to 1600 it didn't come up very often at all .

But like I said , now , 16% of the time is enough when it really benefits you to really learn some opening theory .

So let's take a look at two quick examples of some of the games that I looked at .

All right .

So the first game black plays this knight to D four , which is called the Blackburn Shilling Gambit .

And it's a very tricky line .

A lot of times white will go for this free pawn , which really isn't free .

And then uh black plays queen G five .

Sacrificing this .

And after queen takes G two , it's actually really good for black .

I have a video on my channel , I'll link it down below if you want to see how that works .

Very tricky line for black .

Um But in this case , white was smart enough and didn't take it .

He just captured the knight .

It looks like black was just playing for that trap .

And after white captured , he didn't really know what to do .

And after queen age five , he just fell for this cheap little trick .

And uh you know , the fork picks up the rook and it was over , he resigned a few moves later .

So there's nothing wrong with playing for a trap like this .

I've actually played this myself and it can be a lot of fun when white captured on E five .

You play queen G five .

But you have to know a little bit if they do a better move .

Like , oh if they take on D four , you have to have some idea of what to do .

So like against queen H five , queen F six would have been a good move .

Defenses D four pawn defends the , the checkmate .

It's not great for black , but it's playable and it's worth taking a little bit of extra time to learn a few of the important lines if you're going to play a certain , a certain line , right ?

The next example , I'm gonna show you about openings is what it's called the Stafford gambit .

This has been going around youtube quite a bit .

A lot of youtubers are kind of talking about this .

It's very tricky to play uh against if you're white and somebody plays it as black against you .

You have to be very careful , you can get into a lot of trouble if you don't know what you're doing .

Um So this will be a good one to , to be aware of .

So E four E 59396 after you capture night C six , this is the Stafford gambit .

And the idea is that after white captures was what happened in this game .

But the idea is that black has a lead in development .

So his nights out White's pieces are still in the back rank and black has all these open files and diagonals really , he can put his piece wherever he wants and get a really nice attack on White's king .

And that's exactly what happened in this game .

And White didn't know the proper way to defend it or what kind of setup he should go , go about and I'll just show you what happened .

So bishop C four .

Bishop C five , he decided to castle .

And after nine G four , black has a really strong attack .

He's got pressure on F two and he's got queen H four coming next and this bishop is defending its , it's very tricky for White .

And sure enough , uh White tried Queen F three .

After castles .

There's a checkmate thread on H two .

He played H three .

And then these guys got forked by the night .

And after Queenie two bishops sacrificed on age three , queen comes in and it's all over and White has to sacrifice his queen to stay alive .

And Black went on to win pretty easily .

So you can see from this example , there really wasn't much of a game here .

Black knew what he was doing .

He understood the Stafford gambit and the ideas behind it .

White didn't White got into trouble right out of the opening and now he's just losing .

And so opening preparation becomes much more important , especially in lines like this .

When someone plays a gambit on you and you accept it .

If you don't know what you're doing , you can very easily get into big trouble .

And by the way , if you are wondering what you should play against the Stafford gambit , there's nothing wrong with accepting it .

Um But then the engine recommends Queenie two .

The idea is you're gonna go ahead and defend these ponds right away .

And after something like Bishop C five , you can play Knight C three .

And if Black tries to go with 94 again , putting pressure here , you can play Knight to D one defending it .

Uh This is what the engine likes .

I haven't actually studied the Stafford gambit in depth .

If you guys want to see a video on this , let me know in the comments below and maybe I'll put something together and we can kind of analyze what exactly White's best plan is , but this is good as far as stockfish is concerned , White's almost up two ponds here .

Everything's pretty much defended .

That's the way to go , but it is very tricky to play against if you don't know what you're doing .

So opening theory much more important at the 1600 level .

Right .

Fourth on the list , we have time pressure , 7% of the games .

I think it's pretty self-explanatory .

Players got low on time and either lost on time or just blundered because they didn't have time to think about the position .

I'm not gonna talk too much about that .

You just have to learn how to manage your time properly , which is really a topic for another video .

So I'm gonna go ahead and move on to the last one on the list , which is bad endgame technique right now , even though this is at the bottom of the list and only six out of these 100 games , it made an impact in this is really , really important .

And I think as you get to 1718 100 it's gonna become more and more common than most games are decided by endgame technique .

So if you haven't studied end games up to this point , now would be a really good time to get serious about that .

It's gonna make a huge difference .

If you don't know where to start , I'll link a book down below that .

I read when I was kind of learning about endgames .

It helped me a lot .

It's sort of intermediate level .

It's not super basic , but it's also not that advanced .

It covers a lot of the , the basic stuff that you really should be aware of .

I've made it to 2200 with what I would say is , is a relatively basic endgame knowledge .

I haven't studied endgames extensively , but I do know the basics and understand some , some basic things .

So check that book out if you're interested , but now I want to just show you a couple of games .

All right .

So this was a game between 2 , 1600 rated players .

I'm gonna go quickly through the opening .

It was a little strange , but summary is that black came out on top up a piece and I want to get to the end game where things started to fall apart .

So , ok .

So right here .

OK .

So right here , um White plays Rick Tay six .

All right .

So let's just look at this position for a second .

Everything is pretty much equal .

Rook Rook night night , there's four pawns , four pawns .

The only difference is that black has an extra bishop or an extra piece .

And if you have an extra piece at the end of the game , you should be able to win 90% of the time .

This is gonna be a win for black .

But what I saw at the 1600 level is that quite a few people didn't know what to do , they would get in a position like this where they're completely winning and they just didn't know what they should do .

So I want to pose a question for you in this position or really in any end games in general , what is the most important thing you want to put it in the comments below what you think the most important thing in an end game is um I'll read them later and see how many people got it right ?

Or you can wait till I tell you and then put that answer in anyway , the most important thing in an endgame are the pawns .

OK ?

The ponds are the most important thing .

If you , if you remove all these ponds and I have a rook at night and the bishop against the rook at , at night , I'm not going to be able to win .

You know , unless by some miracle , my opponent blunders a rook or a night or something , I'm not going to be able to win that .

Right .

I need a pawn to get a queen .

That's how I'm going to win or that's how I'm gonna lose .

Right ?

If , if one of white's pawns becomes a queen , pawns are the most important part in an endgame .

That means you have to defend your pawns .

You can't lose pawns for free at the end of the game .

So knowing that what is black's best move in this position ?

Well , if you said bishop E eight , you would be correct .

Bishop E eight is the best move because it defends this pawn .

You know , it's kind of a defensive move that's fine .

There's nothing wrong with that .

You see this pawn's defended , this pawn's defended by the night .

This is defended by the rook that's defend .

Everything is defended and black's not gonna lose any pawns .

Let me show you what was actually played in the game .

So black decided to play king G7 .

Now , there's nothing wrong with trying to use your king in the end game .

In fact , that's a good thing to do .

The problem is not at the expense of a free pawn .

So white simply captured the pond and then black made another mistake .

Nine E four .

Now , why is that such a bad move ?

Well , there's actually two reasons .

Number one , the knight was defending this pawn .

Now , it's not so white can just capture it number two .

And this is what happened in the game .

Why can play check and skewer this pawn over here .

And so after king trade trade , so just like that , black just lost two ponds , right ?

He had a paw here and he had a pa here that are now gone .

And so Black's winning chances just went way down .

Now , I would say this is still a win for black with correct play , but it's much more difficult because now he only has two ponds .

If these ponds get traded for these ponds , guess what ?

Black is not gonna be able to win with the rook and bishop most likely .

So protecting your pawns is super , super important .

So if we go back right here when black played king D seven , that was a terrible mistake .

If he plays bishop E eight , everything is good for black .

Now , he's got all these pawns .

All he has to do is defend the pawns and then he can carry on with his plan , maybe king D seven and go about his business .

But giving up those pawns was a crucial mistake .

And I saw a lot of games where 1600 rated players didn't make it a priority to defend their pawns at the end of the game , ok ?

And I'll just show you what happened .

Um lost those two pawns and then proceeded to trade off that one and then lost the last pawn and ended up actually losing the bishop to a little pin here .

But even had he not lost that , you know , black is not gonna win this game .

Best case scenario , black would probably get a draw but by losing those pawns , he lost all his winning chances .

So take away from this lesson is pawns are the most important thing in an endgame .

That's how you win end games , you get pawns to become queens .

So if you don't have any pawns left , how are you gonna win ?

Um So remember that next time you're in an endgame ?

Ok .

Pawns are the most important part .

All right guys .

Well , like I said earlier , it does take a lot of time to go through 100 games and analyze each one of them .

So if you did learn something from this video and enjoyed it , please hit the thumbs up button , helps me out a lot and I really appreciate it .

If you're enjoying this series , be on the lookout for the next video where I'll look at 1800 rated players games and see what kind of mistakes they're making and how to get past that level .

But as always , stay sharp , play smart and take care