First ignore kindaspongey's post , he tries to sell books without even caring if they are good for you. Most of them are actually harmful(especially the opening repertoire ones).
Good advice by in post #17. Learning how to protect your pieces is important.
I will add a few things that you might find helpful:
It is important to play lobng time control games and analyse them. When you blunder something it's not the blunder that is important , it's the reason of the blunder. If don't identify the reason you won't fix it and the same mistake will be repeated over and over again.
Here is an example:
Your opponent played 5...f6. This move clearly threatens Bg5. Yet you do nothing to protect Bg5 and you play Bb5 instead.
The blunder is not the problem. There is a very serious problem behind this blunder.You pay no attention to your opponent's moves! The same mitsake is repeated again and again.
Always examine carefully your opponent's moves and learn to defend against direct threats.
A little later another serious mistake:
With 7.Nxg5 you capture a pawn that is protected by the queen.
Again the blunder is not important but the problem behind the blunder is very important. Examine carefully your moves and be sure they are safe.Esoecially when you are going to capture something be sure that it is not adequately protected.
If you don't learn to defend your pieces , playing good chess is impossible and neither oepnings tactics or endgames can help you.
I will give you some heneral studying guidelines so that you have something to keep you busy. Playing long time control games must be your main training but studying will speed the process.
Reading some annotated games will help you understand how to think. I suggest Logical Chess Move by Move as your first book and then you can try Soltis "Pawn Structure Chess".
Endgames are very important. They are the best way to quickly develop skills and the best investment for the future. Howell's "Essential Chess Endings" is a good book to start. It has only the absolutely necessary.
Don't bother too much with openings, they are useless at that level. The annotated games in Chernev's book will tell you everything you need to know about openings. But analyse your games and find out what you did wrong and play only long time control games(at least 30 minutes for now and 60 minutes later or dailies). Many good people here (and some bad ones like me) will help you with that(just post the game with your thoughts). Fix one tiny little thing after each game and you will be an expert in no time!
Tactics are also important but only if you have developed a thinking process. Focus in 2-3 of them analyse them deeply and try to understand the "mechanism".Try to understand which pieces are the critical pieces in the tactic. If one seems too complicated put it on a file and go to the next one. Return to the complicated 1 month later and see if you can understand it.A book that explains the various tactical themes will be very useful(Neishtadt's Test your tactical ability is a good book to start).
I can send you for free all these books in pdf. You can take a look and decide if you want to buy any of them(you can find them all in Amazon).
Good luck!
Thanks for the advice and the move analysis. Real great stuff. I have chernevs book and will get started taking it a bit more seriously on top of all the other sound advice from everyone.
... The annotated games in Chernev's book [, Logical Chess Move by Move,] will tell you everything you need to know about openings. ...
"... While this is a great book, there are some areas where it is showing its age (having first been issued nearly a half century ago). It is notable, for example, that by far the most popular opening represented is the Queen's Gambit Declined; by contrast, today's favorite Sicilian Defense is found in just one game. There is just one Queen's Indian and one Nimzo-Indian included; there are no games featuring the popular King's Indian, Grunfeld, or Benoni Defenses. ..." - Randy Bauer