Improve ratings

Hey,
I am currently around 1400 in rapids. I want to get to above 1800 by the end of next year.
I have enrolled in chessly to learn about various openings.

What are the other things I need to do to improve my ratings and sustain at that level?

Issues I noticed in my games:
1. Lose concentration during the match and then make silly mistakes (1 move blunder)

2. Misses tactics

3. Not sure how to evaluate positions (especially in middlegame) and how to make proper plans

4. Forget the lines learned in chessly courses during actual matches.

I like doing puzzles a lot and strongly recommend lichess puzzles

i am also trying to get above 1800 next year, but it is not gonna be easy

play long time controls such as 30 minute, i tried it today and by spending time in the middlegame i got a very solid 93% accuracy in that game

Send me friend request

1. enable the mode "0 distractions" in the settings
2. do a lot of tactics (puzzle rush or AimChess)
3. get books from the openings you play, they will explain what to do afterwards the opening phase
4. repeat the drills of the openings on the website

bro you literelly copied my exact comment

Following! I've also set the 1800 goal and have many aspects you've described.

I caution you not to spend too much time on openings and not to worry about improving so rapidly. Chess improvement is not easy, and 400 points in a year is a lot. It's achievable for some people though, especially if improvers have a process-oriented mindset rather than a goals-oriented one. But I am glad that you have identified some of your weaknesses, so I will address those now.

You are a step closer to realizing that chess is, indeed, much more about not blundering than playing brilliant moves. Many people believe they are underrated because they play very well and achieve a good position before hanging a stupid tactic. In fact, they are really just that bad because they play those blunders so often.

One of the best ways to build up chess stamina is by playing an in-person action tournament. That means multiple rounds of ~30-60 minutes per side in one day. There aren't many better ways of building stamina than simply playing a lot and trying very hard in a single day. If you can't do that, you should try to achieve a high score on Puzzle Rush Survival. At some point in the puzzle rush, you will find your brain saying "this seems right. Good enough, I'll play this move." Once you start suffering from goodenoughitis and you are able to push through it, you'll know you're building your stamina. After training your stamina, try to play some longer games online and focus on prophylaxis and not blundering anything.

This has lots to do with the stamina aspect. Other bits are thought process, where you play hope chess instead of considering all your opponent's potential replies to your moves, and hand waving and moving on general principles rather than calculating out concrete lines. Also do puzzles obviously.

KMAPS. King safety, material, activity of pieces, pawn structure, space. Those are your elements of positional evaluation, in rough order of priority, and you can use that to make rough evaluations; you will also get better at evaluating by going over annotated master games and engine-reviewing your own games. Of course, plans involve improving the KMAPS, but another general principle is to build strength where your pieces and pawns are "pointing."

The reason you are forgetting the chessly lines is (possibly) you are trying to study the repertoire, memorize the lines, and then put it into practice. This is not the most efficient way of studying. It is often better to simply play lots of games (blitz is fine for openings) and look up your lines every time you see a move you don't recognize. You can slowly and organically build your repertoire rather than trying to memorize it all at once.

I am acutally a chessly user as well! Based on what you said, you should be working on the tactics masterclass and lots of the middlegame courses (how to make a plan, how to use your pieces, etc.) Levy has a full chapter on evlauating positions in his "how to make a plan" course. As for the opening, I went through some of your games, and noticed you play a lot of 1. e4 and that is completely fine. The problem is the amount of lines you feel like you would need to learn. So for you, if you are forgetting a lot of the lines, then an opening like the london might be a better option. It might feel natural to not want to switch to d4 after a long time of playing e4, but it isnt too late to switch. But if you REALLY dont want to do that, then there are the other courses you should study. (One vs e5, one vs c5, and the etc. course.) For the black pieces, I noticed you play Nf6 after e4 and d4. Again, there is lots of theory behind this, (Alekhine and sometimes you play a grunfeld) I would recomend soemthing like his modern defense course, as you can play it against anything and there is less theory. If you really want to stick with what you have always played then you can study the alekhine and grunfeld courses. Finally, a good way to progress your repertoire is to do these 2 things. 1. Play a long game and review how well you played your opening and applied the ideas from the course into your game. 2. Play a bunch of blitz games and compare the ones that were good compared to the course, the ones where you forgot the lines, and then pick a study or to to go over again and review.

So long story short

1. Most important, study tactics masterclass and the "how to make a plan" course on chessly

2. Try learning openings with less lines

3. To ingrain your knowledge of the openings, after each session, go back and review the studies where you felt like you forgot the lines or the middlegame ideas mentioned in the courses.

Opening- Develop pieces Control the center

Castle king before move 10

Middlegame- Connect rooks,

try to create weaknesses and attack them

try to keep your bishops alive for the endgame,

DO NOT BLUNDER
spot opponent blunders.

play active in general and attack!

Endgame- Activate your king,

push passed pawns,

use your bishops to apply pressure down the board,

learn different endgames.

Tactical play- to get tactics, you need a strong position but once you have that strong positon, you need to be able to see tactics coming. so you need to learn tactics( all 54 of them)

Positional play- improve your least active piece,

trade opponents active pieces for your bad pieces,

play where you have more space,

play where you want to attack.

I am curently 1220 in rapid and I want to be 2000 by teh start of 2026. How can I do that. Can any of the members of the Improvers Club help me with this issue.

Practice puzzles. Do atleast 20 puzzles each day. You shall notice the progress after a few weeks and shall reach higher ratings. You should mostly focus on middle game and endgame.

Things I did back in the past to improve from 1600 to 1800.

Became more solid with my openings. Most important was fixing common errors I did early on which got me into weak positions. I also got rid of my old repertoir as white against the sicilian. This is something I still can do a lot to improve on, especially looking at what my plan should be when I go from opening stage to the middle game.

Became better at looking at my opponents position during the middle game and making it more difficult for him to make good moves. An example is that you limit your opponents knights by good pawn moves. I did this by spending time looking at what I would want to do if I had my opponents position. When I just look at my own position I play worse.

Improved my endgame. Not sure exactly what I did, but I tried to look at endgames I lost to spot what my opponent did better to win the position.

https://www.chess.com/blog/Not_SPEEDER/my-improvement-in-15-days