Improving is hard

I have been playing chess casually for 14 years and I've noticed how hard it is to improve. One lesson I take away from this as a low rated player and a total novice is that the real win is to enjoy the game, keep coming back, and always try to learn. I have learned openings, endgames, middlegames, strategies, and more. I have read books, talked with strong players and played with many strong players over that time. I am by no means done playing or trying to improve, and please, if you're a stronger player than me reading this, feel free to give suggestions, but I think more important than mastery is enjoyment. 

Hmmm...there is a way to improve to 1300+. I think you need to start documenting your training. How many puzzles have you done daily? How many games have you played? What lessons did you learn. Document this in a journal. At the end of the month, take a look at your training progress. Raise it up and notch or two. What did you promise yourself you would do and didn't. Improvement is basically : Work + Feedback. Feedback is essential. I'm also teaching and finding a guaranteed way to improve by 200-300 points for under 1200s.

I think that's fine, but enjoyment has to exist. The heartless pursuit of mastery with no enjoyment makes for a very dull game, but if you enjoy the process of mastering the game, I say all the better reason to play.

It is hard but worth it

Just practicing games puzzles and learning more about the game

You're right, but seeing your rating go up definitely is fun haha.

As a player who started out at 200 blitz and has now worked himself up to 1700 rapid (and hopefully much farther in the future!), I think the main way improvement comes from is effort. Not just learning material, but using it and putting in effort to habitualize the things you learn. No point in learning how to attack doubled twins if you don't actually use it. No point in learning Anastasia's mate if you miss it in your next match.

Just a little tip of mine.

At your rating, what I learned was only a couple of moves of 2 opening (Italian and sicilian defense), and those openings brought me over the above 1,2k rating. So, maybe try to learn openings? Idk if it'll work for you, but for me, it does.

Good point. Was there anything you found helped you turn the knowledge you learned into habit? Or is it mostly just repetition and consistent effort?

I personally usually play the Italian with white and the Caro-Kann with black. I should probably drill the moves more though.

Not really anything special- I just started playing longer games and talking to myself during games. Talking to myself helps a lot because it keeps me focused and I don’t go into autopilot, which especially happens to me in the early middle game. Just getting in the habit of talking to myself helped.

Also, notice a lot of people talking about openings so here’s what I have to say about them. First, you cannot survive by just following the opening principles. Even below 1000 this is disastrous. Learning opening theory early on is good for two reasons- 1) you learn the right moves, despite if they follow the principles or not; and 2) it teaches you about the plans, imbalances, and what you should be looking for in the middlegame. Here’s an example of how this works-

Additionally, I think that you should choose openings that get you into positions you’re comfortable with. You might struggle to find this- I jump around openings a lot myself. But look at the kind of positions you do best in. It might be open positions. So you should play e4, e5, and hope and pray your opening doesn’t play 1. d4. I will say that it’s very hard to be good at both open, semi-open, semi-closed, and closed positions equally. I am much better at Semi-Closed positions than anything else, and as a result I have really struggled against 1. e4. But there will be something you’ll find that you’ll like, and that’s the key. Build your repertoire around what you’re good at, not whatever looked cool in a GothamChess video.

You also mentioned you read some books, may I ask which ones? And ask me anything else you’re wondering about, I’m happy to help!

Thank you for the annotations! I have begun 100 endgames you must know, which I find incredibly dry even though it's helped, tried "How to Win at Chess" by levy rozman, but that was slightly too shallow for my liking, and I'm looking next to books like Silman's endgame course and reassess your chess. Unfortunately, as an adult improver it's been hard for me to dedicate much time to reading these books, but I have skimmed over a few others in the past.

That’s great nonetheless @Flamin-ingo (not quoting the whole post because it’d get too long)! I haven’t tried 100 Endgames you must know, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. I personally highly recommend Simple Chess by Michael Stean, and after that The Amateur’s Mind by Silman, which I am currently reading and it is amazing! I think it is much better than How To Reasses Your Chess because not only does it talk about the imbalances, it goes over why you’re losing by looking at amateur games in reflection of pro games, and all the thinking errors of why you’re not capitalizing on your knowledge.

As for endgames, Silmans book is good, but I feel it is much more important to work on and practice practical endgames- a lot of books don’t do this, but I’m about to get Endgame Strategy by Shereshevsky, and I think that will do the trick.

I also recommend finding the PDF of Fundamental Chess Openings, it’s pretty easy to find you can just look it up. It has pretty much everything so if you ever wanna see some lines or see the explanation behind certain openings or variations, it’s a really good source.

I have heard good things about Shereshevesky's book @outwittedyou

Also, if you'd be interested, Hangingpawns on youtube made a website called chessreads that compiles books by rating level, and it lets people leave reviews on the book to help give a balanced review instead of just his.

When I started playing chess seriously, I read everything on chess that I could put my hands on. After the classic instruction books (by Reinfeld, Chernev, Horowitz, and others), I found books most helpful that explained a master’s thinking during the game. Euwe’s Chess Master versus Chess Amateur and Fine’s Lessons from My Games come to mind.

When I teach students chess, I focus on general principles. I think these are more important than tactical patterns or specific opening sequences. They apply no matter what type of opening was used and, I think, they are easier to remember.

Hi!

Chess is a challenging game but improving doesn't have to feel so hard, especially when you enjoy playing. What does make it hard is trying to navigate the overwhelming sources of information on your own, without a plan or someone to guide you.

If you feel like you ve been plateauing for a while, working with a coach can help you improve more confidently and with clearer direction.

Feel free to reach out anytime if you’d like more details.

Good luck!

maafernan chess.com coach