How does one improve their game?  I was average when younger (grade school through junior high) then other sports took time away and I'm just now getting back into it 7 or 8 years later.  It would seem to me that regardless of the amount of time playing, improvement won't come without study, but when I pour over books that I find it seems fruitless.

 

Thoughts?

 

Can I just load up chessproblems.com and do that 4 hours a day? 

I would recommend studying tactics and strategies through programs or books, and augmenting that study with sites like chessproblems.com, as going through those problems will not help your play if you do not understand the reason the solutions are correct.

study end games and analyse your own games you cant improve if you dont know where your going wrong.

 

try playing a game against someone 200 points higher then you. at the end of the game have your opponent tell you what he thinks of the game, what you need improvements on. i think this will have you quickly figure out what you need to improve on.

      this works well for me when i try to help opponents 200 points lower then me. i tell them on what move i was confident of a win, usually when they make a bad move. i view the game and within minutes i can figure out how they need to improve. 

 also try reviewing some of your favorite chess players games. i usually try and figure out what the next move is going to be and then after i am wrong i try and figure out why they made that move.

i hope these things are more exciting then reading a book or doing puzzles.  

Play often. The study strategies mentioned above will speed up your improvement but without playing I think they will have a much reduced effect.