improving at puzzles?

Hi, hope all are well.

I was on the site a few years ago and got frustrated because I felt like I was not improving.   I decided I would try again.

I have been working on puzzles - about 10-20 a day - and I feel like I am stuck between 920 and 1000.   

I would appreciate advice on how to improve, what patterns to look for, books, etc.

I believe that puzzles help with tactics and they are part of my overall game improvement plan.

Any advice is welcome, and thank you in advance.

Dear Sids,

I am a certified, full-time chess coach, so I hope I can help you.   Everybody is different, so that's why there isn't only one general way to teach and learn. First of all, you have to discover your biggest weaknesses in the game and start working on them. The most effective way for that is analysing your own games. Of course, if you are a beginner, you can't do it efficiently because you don't know too much about the game yet. There is a built-in engine on chess.com which can show you if a move is good or bad but the only problem that it can't explain you the plans, ideas behind the moves, so you won't know why is it so good or bad.

You can learn from books or Youtube channels as well, and maybe you can find a lot of useful information there but these sources are mostly general things and not personalized at all. That's why you need a good coach sooner or later if you really want to be better at chess. A good coach can help you with identifying your biggest weaknesses and explain everything, so you can leave your mistakes behind you. Of course, you won't apply everything immediately, this is a learning process (like learning languages), but if you are persistent and enthusiastic, you will achieve your goals.

So, the question you asked is not so easy to answer, but I can tell you one thing for sure. In my opinion, chess has 4 main territories (openings, strategies, tactics/combinations and endgames). If you want to improve efficiently, you should improve all of these skills almost at the same time. That's what my training program is based on. My students really like it because the lessons are not boring (because we talk about more than one areas within one lesson) and they feel the improvement on the longer run. Of course, there are always ups and downs but this is completely normal in everyone's career.

I hope this is helpful for you.   Good luck for your chess games!

Begin by looking at all checks from both sides and seeing if they mean anything, then looking at each capture. If that turns up empty look at the most forcing moves. If you are finding certain puzzles difficult post them here. 

Me too, I'm stuck in 900-1000

We have created a training for people of your range in order to enable them to break through thier barriere and improve.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/for-beginners/individual-training-for-beginners-and-intermediate-players