Learning chess as an adult

Well, he got a lot better at tactics anyway.  I don't mean to be flip, but I genuinely don't remember.  He only did the 1,000 puzzle a day thing once but said it forever changed his view of the board.  I really should search for a link, but I'm not sure if I posted in his thread.  Lots of ways to get better. You can't get better without hard work, but you won't work hard unless you're enjoying yourself.

that is an impressive increase in rating in just a little over 2 years. I'll take a look at some of those articles, thanks again for the help.

I was in a very similar situation a few years ago. Hadn't played since HS for the most part, thought I was pretty good then (one of the top players in the club).

Started playing again in 2007, started going to a local club in 2008 and started playing tournaments (had played a couple of rated game in HS). Almost the same age as you then too.

I had a lot of trouble breaking 1200 USCF. I just kept doing poorly in tournaments. I studied some, did some tactics, played some online chess and of course, played OTB casual and tournament games.

The things that helped me improve the most were doing more tactics, playing over master level games and taking more time on making moves during games.

One thing to be aware of, improvement isn't necessarily continuous. After I started making a concerted effort to improve, I had a really good tourney, jumping almost 300 points and broke 1500, for the first time, six months later. From late October 2011 until August 2012 I went up a little over 400 points. The lag there was at least 6 months, from starting to study more seriously and try and play more slowly.

Over the past couple of years, I have had poorer tourney performances and have fluctuated some, though I have stabalized a bit in the low to mid-1500s over the past year. I'm still studying and I feel that I'm getting better overall, though I'm not seeing it as well in my tourney performances.

I'm still missing tactics in games, though not as much as I used to. I think one of my biggest weaknesses now is evaluation of positions and coming up with plans based on that. So, most of my time is spent analyzing my games for missed tactics and I'm starting to work on exercises to improve evaluation (and by extension analysis).

I still think tactical study is a key component and most of your games (and I know mine) are decided on tactical themes. Doing a lot of tactics and trying to figure out the ones you get wrong and finding the tactical misses in your own games, is important, and will likely provide a lot of improvement.

Very good post Martin and is encouraging as well. That seems to be some quick improvement, it also has you at 2000+ rating in online chess games, that's really good. Do you think the pressure from tournaments might be a factor in your play?

I'm pretty over rated in online here. I would guess by around 200 points.

But yeah, pressure during tournaments, along with mis-evaluating positions, plays a pretty good part.

I had one tourney this Summer where I started playing too quickly towards the endgame in two games and blundered away winning positions. Had I slowed down I'm pretty positive I would have found better plans, so I'm still working on that in some cases. In my first game, which ended up as a draw, I also miscalculated/analysed a tactical position, which would have put me up material early on and may have given me a won endgame.

In casual games at the club I do pretty well against a player that is currently over 1700. Casual games don't mean a whole lot but I should be able to do as well in tourneys as I do against that player I would think.

After re-reading my previous post, I should clarify that my rating increase over that year span was 400 total. It kind of reads like 700 instead.

400 is still impressive, I'd be thrilled if I see that much improvement in a year. I signed up for a chess club here and apparantely they have a USCF rated game every week with 30/60 time controls. I'm hoping that will help me figure out where I'm at skill wise and give me some practice with OTB games. The club has many different skill levels including several masters and a couple of Grandmasters so I'm going to utilize that and ask them questions if they let me! I've mostly been playing over the internet, doing the tutorials and a few tactics puzzles. I'm going to focus more on tactics since that seems to be the general consensus on the fastest way to improve. my current rating is 1050 or something like that here but I have no way of knowing if that is accurate or not since I've been destroyed by 1000 rated players and ended up easily beating other ones. On the games here, would you suggest I play the online ones like you have or are the live games fine? I'm trying to play the ones with longer time controls 30min per side.

SocialPanda, thank you for the articles about MDLM with all the details referred in them. I didn't know he is suspected for cheating and of course I can't judge myself without evidence. I hope he didn't do it, who knows... More research and evaluation of his games will be needed to judge. However, cheating is something you can never be completely sure that you have found out.

It's possible to learn chess as an adult and improve as an adult.

NM Todd Bardwick wrote an article on how he generally sees adults improve.  He seems to think most adults should be able to get to class B without much trouble.

http://www.coloradomasterchess.com/Informant/Ratings%20and%20Expectations.htm

Many players falsely expect a linear move up the rating scale through the alphabet levels to expert, master, and beyond.  This rarely happens.  Normally players move up the rating scale in a stair step fashion.  A plateau (small or large), then a vertical jump to the next plateau. 

• Most adults quickly reach the 1000 level. 
• The next major plateau where many players stop at is the Class B range (1600-1799).  The numerical rating jump here is quite large and perhaps intimidating, but the increase in chess knowledge is relatively small.  <snip> 
• With proper coaching and/or a little natural talent, this rating jump from 1000 to Class B is easily attainable in 1-2 years
• Class B becomes a major sticking point for many players.  After reaching Class B, the rating points get much tougher. As a player reaches 1800, he is statistically better than 80% or so of all rated adult chess players. 

I can definitely say that getting from 1000 to 1600 doesn't take much time at all.  Like he explains, you're moving along the meaty part of the rating bell curve.  There's not a ton of difference between a 1200 and a 1500.

I think a lot of people have already hit on the high points for improvement.

1. Proper tactics training.  You don't have to be De Le Maza crazy, you just have to practice enough that you can meet Heisman's Bain Test.   You'll find even Class B/A players make simple tactics errors.
2. Reading annotated master games meant for instruction (Chernev, McDonald, Giddens).  This develops your chess candidate move intuition.  It's how you know "a4 feels like the right plan here, let me analyze it".
3. Playing slow games and managing your time properly.  This is where you implement the things you've learned.  This is where you build your experience for playing certain types of positions.  And this is where you find your bad habits and remove them by analyzing your games with stronger players.

Don't go crazy studying endgames.  They have their purpose, but at the class level, games are decided by extra material.  Knowing the Philidor and Lucena positions are nice, but they come up once every 200 games or so.  Other obscure stuff like B+N checkmate comes up once every 4000 games.  You'll see people occasionally post about getting this in a game and being so excited that they got the mate, but it's one of those things that the time spent studying it could've been doing something else (chess or otherwise).    You'll learn most about what you need in endgames by reading the annotated master games.  

Your endgame knowledge should be general principle stuff (rooks behind passed pawns, push the passer in a pawn island, etc) along with how to checkmate with superior force Q+K v K, K+R v K.  Even K+P v K endgames should be pretty rare at most class games, but knowing that is better than knowing the B+N checkmate.  Plus pawn endgames are good for practicing calculation.

You probably would do well with some basic primers on counting when it comes to material. I looked at one of your games, briefly, and you traded a bishop for a pawn when you were already down a pawn. Voluntarily going down in material with no real compensation will lose a lot of games

One of the things I've been finding useful is not to just trade material when the trades are available. Unless there is a tactical continuation, you are often better off keeping pieces on the board and keeping tension in your positions. Don't be afraid to trade but often initiating the trades might not be best.

Breaking this up into one last post so I don't have some ridiculous wall of text...

Don't go crazy over reading lots of middlegame strategy books either.  Pick your opening repertoire and learn the common middlegame plans for those openings.   A single, general purpose strategy book is good to read once and refer back to occasionally when you have questions.  A good primer is Coakley's "Winning Chess Strategy for Kids".  It's a good tactics exercise and endgame book to boot.  

Stay away from Pachman, Silman, Nimzowitch, Euwe, etc strategy books until you've been playing for a while and don't routinely miss tactics for you or your opponent.  Once your rating starts climbing and post-game engine analysis doesn't show any reasonable missed tactics, you're ready for a book like that.  However, if you read good annotated master game books (Giddens, McDonald, Chernev) you get a lot of the same thing anyway, making those books less necessary.  Those are "classics" though and some people swear up and down that reading "My System" raised their rating 800 points, improved their quality of life and got them dates with supermodels.  YMMV.

May the lord have mercy on your soul 

Heh, chess is great, welcome back!  Playing as slowly and as seriously as you can against slightly better opponents is important to improve... i.e. OTB tournaments if you can.

Tactics are indeed a quick way to improve for beginners.  Especially adults can fall into the trap of being interested in the beauty of strategy, and don't take the time to acquire the tedious and necessary skill of careful calculation of forcing moves and learning these patterns (basically that's tactics).  

Michael de la Mesa is a good example, but don't expect his progress.  Tactics improve your play for sure, it's just like many adults he studied the "fun" stuff and didn't improve.  Then when he finally did hit tactics (as hard as anyone you'll find out) he improved dramatically as that was his weakest link (and tactics are fundamental, you can't skip them)... but it wasn't all due to tactics, you'll need a little of everything to make it to class A, and certainly expert (which de la Mesa had).

Wow SilentKnigte for that information, I'll read the articles, your posts were very helpful. I think I have a good place to start at least!

@ Martin: I realized how bad I am by having the computer analyze my games and the games are typically won or lost by who makes the worst and most blunders according to the computer I make somewhere between 7-8 inaccurcies, 3-4 mistakes and at least 1 blunder per game. Only 4 or 5 moves are optimal and the rest are sub-optimal. I was watching a game with the computer last night and was laughing at how bad I was making silly mistakes in fact, I think one of moves was so bad the computer said I went from winning to losing the game in a single move lol. I got my work cut out for me.

I did read Michael de la Mesa's articles, they seem fairly legit. I am probably like everyone else, I like results and will try different things until I get them, those pointers he gives out seems like a good start.

 As with the above advice mate, play and enjoy