A modest plan for getting better. Thoughts?

I have heard nothing but rave reviews for anything Seirawan. I'm doing his Tactics course on Chessable right now. He's a great teacher--smart, clear, charming, and a sense of humor.

my 2 cents 1. prefer to play humans 2. don't use take backs in real games 3. challenge yourself to take advantage of bad moves that real humans make 4. don't memorizing openings but watch videos about openings and play with ideas/themes mentioned/explored 5. do the puzzles 6. sometimes do the opposite of what you would normally do if you think someone else might do it

The classical wisdom, given by the 3rd world champion ~100 years ago, is a bit counter intuitive... which is to study endgames first, and openings last. There is various logic to this that I don't feel like typing  Such as there are fewer pieces on the board in endgames so it's easier to handle. It's not as if modern coaches strictly follow this, but I thought I'd mention it. Also that tunnel visioning on openings is a common pitfall for new players. All you really need is the opening principles.

The other bit of old advice is that the newer a player is, the more time they should devote to playing as opposed to study.

Having said that, a book like FCO is the right kind of approach IMO. You should play, and then after the game use reference material to look up the opening. Who left theory first? What are the normal options for each player? Then put the book away. Just sort of... soak up openings that way a little at a time, and only what your opponents are playing... because as you noticed, lower rated players don't play GM level openings

I mean the 2 websites I use for tactics are chess.com and lichess. I use chess.com because I have a diamond membership, but unlimited tactics on chess.com cost money. Lichess is an amazing free alternative. There is no limit to the amount of puzzles you can do. They recently added puzzle storm which I really like (basically 3 minute puzzle rush on chess.com). Their puzzles are great and its a good alternative to chess.com's puzzles.

Also on both sites, if you get a puzzle wrong, you can retry and if you want, it'll give you the solution. It really does help with learning tactics. 

Both are good sites for tactics but lichess's tactics are free

Disagree with everything I didn’t delete here. OP is 1100. Simple “opening principles” should no longer suffice. His example of 2.e5 was not because of lack of theory or a lack of opening principles, it’s because he did not know how to play against an overextended center. (2...Nc6 and d6 would be my choice)

Instead he should start learning general game principles, such as “open the center when leading in development”, “close the center if you want to attack”, “Don’t close the center when your opponent is about to attack”, and “I’ve made no bad moves, why should I adopt a defensive attitude”

There isn’t anything wrong with learning theory, as long as you know why you’re moving. I highly doubt most people go around stuffing their heads with variations, especially at 1200 rapid level.

Also, I disagree that 10mins is unhelpful. I think that 10mins gives you enough time to think, but only for the important parts. Hence, you have to know general game principles better rather than relying on brute force calculation so common in long time controls. And also, you can get a lot out of analyzing a 10min game, and because of how short it is (long to me but whatever), you can get valuable game experience. In the time it takes to play a 30min game you could play 3 10min games.

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@sholomsimon I have Seirwan's tactics book and Chess Tactics for Students by Bain. I prefer Bain. The difference is Bain is a workbook with over 400 puzzles grouped into chapters intended to teach you tactics by doing them. Seirwan's book has far fewer puzzles and more textural explanation. He is teaching tactics by explaining them. Seirwan is a gentleman and great teacher but I confess I quickly got bored with reading what is obvious to me so gave up on his tactics book and stuck with Bain. Only a preference.

I'm terrible at chess, but probably learning endgames is going to pay dividends for you. No use getting a winning position in the middlegame if you're lost when asked to convert it to a full point.

Just my opinion, do whatever you want to do.

Yesterday I played a game where my opponent moved his rook to a square where it was unguarded and under attack by my pawn. I could simply have taken the rook for free. BUT... I didn't notice it and my opponent didn't notice it. The rook sat there unmolested for three moves. I only noticed it when I replayed the game afterwards.

Conclusion: until I stop being blind and stupid it doesn't matter what my plan for improvement is! Hahaha

I know what you mean.  Why obsess about which move should be played on the fourth move of an opening when you hang pieces later?

Best advice (it seems obvious, but it's good to tell yourself this after every move that your opponent has made), ask yourself "ok, what has changed?  is there something new under attack?  is there something that his piece was protecting and now it isn't?" and so forth.  That last question is an important one.  Here's an example from my most recent game:

I was black.  From this position, white played b4.  I was so concerned about his pawns marching up the a file, and what would happen if his a-rook got an open file, or if I should take it with my c pawn, or if I didn't whether he would take my c pawn with it -- in other words all I was doing was focusing on his pawns -- that I didn't notice that his b pawn had been protecting his knight on c3.  I should have played Bxc3, which would have won me a bishop and forked his two rooks!

Thus the question: "what has changed?"  rather than "what did he move and what's his plan?"

You mentioned you have FCO i think that if you soak up the material in this book you will have a better theoretical opening knowledge than most 1400 players or even 1500 players. However you will find this knowledge will not win you games in and of itself because of a few possibilities: A) your opponents will play blunders or mistakes  that are obviously not opening theory and you may not even realize it because you have not practiced tactics enough. or B) your opponent plays a good move however it is not theory and so your left in unknown territory where opening knowledge becomes less relevant or completely irrelevant. or C) you reach an endgame after both playing a decent game. you might even be winning but you don't know the endgame and may very well lose the game in a winning or drawn position, or draw a game you should have won. in terms of the endgame king and pawn endings are very common statistically as basically all endgames can boil down to them. if your looking for a first book on endgames i highly recommend "secrets of pawn endings". Incidentally studying king and pawn endgames is actually a terrific way to train your brain to think tactically as king and pawn endgames generally involve forced variations where often there is only one right move that is not easy to spot at all. btw if your looking for a general endgame book there is FCE (fundamental chess endings)

RorschachTest1 -- thanks.  I think you're absolutely right.  So, I am soaking up stuff from FCO, but also I am reading Emms' book on openings, so that (as you suggested would happen, and it does happen) when somebody strays from the opening, I still feel like I have an idea of what to do.

And, yes, you are also correct that I need to learn tactics and endgames.  So, I just started doing some tactic exercises, taking some chess.com lessons on it, and etc.  Bain's book was recommended and I just ordered that.

And, after that: learn some stuff on end games.

Also: expect blunders when I play rapid chess! ;-)  But I'm thinking (does this sound right?) that as I get better at tactics I will spot and avoid blunders more quickly.

@nklristic I am catching up to you in rapid ratings, I know ur at times + 1500ish but feels good to grow a bit after few months. It will probably takes months or decent study before I get to 1500ish rapid but still, a climb is a climb.

@nklristic, I remember a while back & read some of your articles and you seemed like a total beast, but now It feels good to grow a bit. I mostly play blitz (3|0) and rapid (10|0) and only once played 30|0 by accident in live chess.

just playing a good deal of chess as well as tactics exercises should eventually enable you to play rapid without blundering much. I play rapid games with 15 minutes and a 10 second increment each, and i have plenty of games where i make 0 "blunders" and maybe a couple or even no "mistakes". i don't think that i ever played any games without making multiple "inaccuracies" though, but at 1500 level a few inaccuracies won't decide the game. btw what's great about playing with a 10 second increment is that if you play well and reach a winning endgame your opponent doesn't have much hope of winning on time and you can think for a long time in the opening and middlegame and still potentially grind out a long endgame.

So . . . sort of tangent . . . how does this 10 second increment thing work?

every move you make adds 10 seconds to the clock so if you take 5 seconds to move you actually gain 5 seconds on clock with a 10 second increment.

Hey, I don't know if there is such a thing as a modest plan, but you can always make it faster and simpler. I wrote a short article about it: A simple plan to getting better as a beginner.

I invite you to take a look at it.