I have always had a hand in hand play-a-long with theory, but I have played some good club players who never looked at a book.
They quickly learned to get out pieces and get stuck in maybe from other more bookish types.
I would be surprized if once you get to 1300-1500 the book makes a lot of difference. Its similar to learning openings by heart it has little effect on playing strength.
Glen,
Thanks for the post. I feel sometimes by not knowing the first 8 moves or so of the most common book openings and defenses it puts me in bad spots right off the start. I want to advance my level of play, and I guess Im having trouble on where to start. So many books, openings, defenses, theory etc.
C
For me my start get well with IM Jeremy Silmans books ...
How-Reassess-Your-Chess
Rating of 1000 to go around 1300 - 1500 points
1600 - 1800 Pawn Structure in chess by Andrew Soltis was very good for some structural idea ... out of print :-( ... there's a good wikipedia site about the idea ...
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawn_structure
- Pawn Structure chess games ... http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1010010
2000 ...
Also this Jeremy Silman book ... " Endgames complete courses " book helped me to broke the 2000 mark (this is the best endgame courses I've read ... I'm sad I read it after dvoretsky Endgame manual ...) :-)
To get nice positional foundation ... I think a lot of practice , puzzle solving (the recent series built up your chess by GM Arthur Yussupov are very good to know every theme with simple way)
After you do enough puzzle that's you are resolving problem quicker than ever ... that's a good sign of getting on the master level ... after it you don't need to think about it ...
The experience are required to get to the other level ...
3 importants tips not to forget during a game...
- Do not underestimate your opponent ... watch his attack on your side, block it after think about your attack ...
- Be able to play both side of the board anytime ... more wide are your posibilities more you are unpredictable ....
- Be able to watch your weaknesses , patch it before the opponent think about it.
I hope all the things that's I wrote, will help you or anybody to gain some points ...
I wish you a good trips on the road of mastery
It depends on various factors :
When I coach adult people, I expect an average adult beginner (meaning with no club or competition experience) to reach 1500-1700 OTB level within 3 years if they train seriously.
I would expect an uncoached adult beginner to reach 1300-1500 in the same timeframe.
To add to the above:
- Do not equate studying/adding chess knowledge to filling a container with water ... where you can say "more time, more volume, more liquid! jackpot!" It doesn't work that way.
- Add plusses (knowledge) and remove minuses (bad habits/thought processes) together ... don't wait too long to deal with bad habits ... get with a coach/stronger player and have him/her point out what you're doing wrong. In your case, with years of playing without critique, this will be a MAJOR factor in determining how much you can improve.
- Mental discipline is key. When I see a stronger player, I usually notice 3 things besides their vast amounts of knowledge/patterns
a) He follows a tactically safe thought process more consistently across each move of his games than me, never rushing, using his time well.
b) His will to win and not stop fighting till the bitter end is way greater than mine.
c) While I may shrug away some of my mistakes as "oh well, oops, this happens" and casually walk into another game, he is bubbling with rage like a volcano inside for making his mistakes ... some small enough for me to not even care/be aware of. I forget the entire game in less than a day .. but not this guy, the mistakes he made give him nightmares and he would rather die than make them ever again. In other words, his ability to self-correct is miles ahead of mine.
It's these guys (exhibiting a + b + c) who show rapid and often dramatic improvement ... sometimes with a fraction of the books that most chess bookworms (including me :) ) seem to think is necessary to get better.
Thank you all for commenting, some really good stuff here and I would like to explore it even further, maybe even playing you a few games to see where you think I am at, therefore where I should start to focus my study. However, I am about to leave Afghanistan after being away from my family for a year, I will try to check chess.com in transit but I will not be able to seriously comment or ask questions on your posts until I get back. Like I said thanks again for the posts!
Constantine
For me my start get well with IM Jeremy Silmans books ...
How-Reassess-Your-Chess
Rating of 1000 to go around 1300 - 1500 points
1600 - 1800 Pawn Structure in chess by Andrew Soltis was very good for some structural idea ... out of print :-( ... there's a good wikipedia site about the idea ...
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawn_structure
- Pawn Structure chess games ... http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1010010
2000 ...
Also this Jeremy Silman book ... " Endgames complete courses " book helped me to broke the 2000 mark (this is the best endgame courses I've read ... I'm sad I read it after dvoretsky Endgame manual ...) :-)
To get nice positional foundation ... I think a lot of practice , puzzle solving (the recent series built up your chess by GM Arthur Yussupov are very good to know every theme with simple way)
After you do enough puzzle that's you are resolving problem quicker than ever ... that's a good sign of getting on the master level ... after it you don't need to think about it ...
The experience are required to get to the other level ...
3 importants tips not to forget during a game...
- Do not underestimate your opponent ... watch his attack on your side, block it after think about your attack ...
- Be able to play both side of the board anytime ... more wide are your posibilities more you are unpredictable ....
- Be able to watch your weaknesses , patch it before the opponent think about it.
I hope all the things that's I wrote, will help you or anybody to gain some points ...
I wish you a good trips on the road of mastery
You mean here on chess.com bullet rating right? Its rather impressive, if your OTB rating was boosted that much, just my reading a few books.
How much of a jump in play can one generally expect when one has never studied chess, and then studied seriously? Has anyone out there been in this situation that they have been playing online chess for years but never studied theory, then decided to study seriously? What were your gains? How did you start? Did your years of fly by the cuff play hurt your book theory?