Hovering Around 400. What Should I Learn?

Getting there, slowly but surely.

I recommend to learn basic checkmates like later mate queen and king mate and also rook and king mate. For openings I also recommend learning set-up based openings like London System, and go with the flow learning more tactics in the middle game.   

True, but that was just an example, though a bad one.

I'm actually just about to start checkmate lessons on the site! I've heard of the London opening through various streamers but never looked into it yet. I'll make sure to check it out.

You will get there soon by gerrymandering, even with no study I got myself over 1000 ratings on all the categories, I still don't know any opening theory or any theory stuff. Just try to blunder less and you get the hang of forks, checkmate threats etc and you just rush yourself through the ratings. I still make a lot of blunders in faster time controls, gotta work on my vision and you got A GREAT thing going with the gold membership, the unlimited analysis, some puzzles which I have none. Try playing blitz maybe it will be more fun, as rapid games are long and a loss can be "LONG and DISCOURAGING" but in blitz you can jump back in to another game quickly. 

Thank you! Have you looked at the kindle version of the book? Would you recommend the a physical copy instead, or does it not matter?

Slowly figuring these things out and I'm definitely noticing the amount of times I blunder a piece has lowered significantly for me hah

Lots of good stuff for chess improvement here.....much of it targeted to the beginner-novice.....check it out...

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

you could check out john bartholomews you tube channel, he has 5 videos that go through the basics and he explains it w

very well

Will do! Thank you!

Dear Radicalizing,

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 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!

don't hang stuff

take hanging stuff

best advice lol

Try lots of tactics, and play Puzzle Rush. With the gold membership you have you can do a lot of tactic puzzles. Take lots of lessons, and try to get experience by playing a game with a higher rated player.

Do chess puzzles. I've been doing those and they've helped my game tremendously. they're fun, and they help you learn to take a closer look at all your options before making moves.

lessons, drills, endgames & puzzles.

TX

Totally, I've been having a lot of fun with the puzzles! Such a great resource. It's helping my vision and pattern recognition already.