Improve Your Chess Now #4- Climbing the ELO Ladder, 1600-1700

Happy Days are Here, 1700+ rating is mine!

 Disclaimer! I'm sharing my story and what I did to make my improvements. I'm not saying this is the best or the only way, nor that it will work for you. But it should help most people in one way or another!

Keep the Good Work Up!

My rating is still climbing and I keep wining over higher rated users.

But let's come clear about a couple of things.

Blunders - sure, still keeps showing up. They pop up when my head is somewhere else. One only need a second of non focus to derail the mind (at least my old mind)!

Passive play - Oh hey there. A new problem has started to show up. Now with players in the 1650+ and over 1700 more and more players play in a more active way. Meaning, play passively and they will punish you, even without blunders. Adjustment needed.

Openings and Tactics

I keep working on the openings. Playing them over and over again. Getting a better feel for their strength and weaknesses for each game.

More tactics training added as I have saved a number of games using tactics after playing with pawns and pieces down after blunders!

Time Problems

In a number of games. Especially with opponents playing well and/or struggling after blunders or playing bad, I get in time problems. I can absolutely see that my mouse handling is quite slow compared to the youngens (even though I work with a computer all day, every day). My thinking at this time also was a bit unfocused (and still is) so when time gets short and blunders or at least bad moves starts coming fast and hard.

More calculation training as well as time management (can't do much about my mouse handling) has been added.