Am I learning Chess in a decent manner?

I picked up chess in April 2023 and started playing games casually on various sites for about 1.5 months straight. Fast forward to early June 2023 and I decided to take a hiatus from playing games just for the sake of it and to instead focus on improving at chess.

Currently I have been dedicating my time in the following activities so as to improve gradually at chess-

1) Solving about 50 to 75 tactical puzzles everyday

2) Learning basic endgames and the corresponding principles. I have picked up the book, Silman's Complete Endgame Course for this purpose (only focusing on the first 2 parts which deals with simple checkmates and the principle of Opposition)

3) Learning openings and middlegame ideas (the latter being my Achilles Heel). I have picked up the book, Understanding Chess Move by Move by John Nunn for this purpose. I have been following the book by trying my level best to analyze the positions given in the book OTB.

4) Watching a few chess videos on different platforms. For example, Daniel Naroditsky's Master Class Speedrun playlist on Youtube

All comments and criticisms are appreciated. Have a nice day.

Sounds pretty good.

However, if you don't play, how will you know if you have learned anything?

Start playing some games now. I favor 10/5, as it's long enough to think a bit, but not so long that you can't fit in two or three games in a sitting. You can't just stop playing games while you study. They go hand in hand. Also, may I recommend you go to chessgames.com and play over some of the great master games. They're also available on chess.com, but chessgames.com is a lot easier to navigate.

Improving Your Chess - Resources for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/improving-your-chess-resources-for-beginners-and-beyond

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell

Play a lot, analyze your games, and primarily study tactics. Your knowledge of openings, endgame, middlegame, etc. will come from analyzing your games and going over grandmaster games. Only study one of those specific topics if it is clear you are specifically losing because of that topic.

Source: https://www.gautamnarula.com/how-to-get-good-at-chess-fast/

As a coach, I can help you with any part of that process, as well as teach you EXACTLY how to think at every stage of the game. Good luck!

I think playing is one of the most important things along with doing tactical puzzles in early stage.

I used to only do puzzles coz I enjoyed them very much, I still do. But I play more rapid games recently, and found out that there're lots of things in a real game that puzzles can't teach you.

For puzzles, you always know there's a tactical shot, but in a real game nobody will point out if there's a tactical oppotunity in that position or not. A lot of the times, there's none, and you'd see a false oppotunity and sac a piece for nothing or you'd spend too much time calculating a tactical line when there's none.

I'm currently at 2300 puzzle but only 1200 rapid. So, I'm doing less puzzles and spending my time on rapid games and post-game analysis.

I'm still very inexperienced in a real game, and I often find solid or dry positions difficult to play coz there's not many tactical shots for me to exploit.

In conclusion, don't waste too much time on puzzles, play more games, and study openings if you have time.

Good luck with your next game.

@justbefair and @MSteen

Thanks for your respective comments. The thing is that the last time I played games, I faced a devastating tilt which resulted in a loss of 170 Elo in a single day (yeah I was foolish enough to think that it was a good idea to play games after games looking for a handful of wins instead of calling it a day after a few losses). That affected my chess psychology so badly that I ended up closing my chess.com account and wanted to start afresh. However, I am trying my level best to get rid of this newfound fear of playing games and facing an another tilt.

@RussBell

I have found many helpful guides and resources from your articles. I will surely check it out.

@Martytec

You are correct about puzzles. Seeing how most of the times there is no scope of tactical opportunity in real games, I have now allocated a better chunk of my time in studying middlegame plans and a reasonable amount of opening theory.

Thanks for the advice. By the way, nice to see you again (you helped me out in a forum post from my previous account, related to transposing from the Queen's Gambit to the Catalan)