How to get out of the beginner level of chess?

I started playing chess pretty seriously about 2 months ago or so, and it's a lot of fun, I like it. However, it's frustrating to be floating at 500-650 for a long time. Sometimes I can beat other people at my level, but sometimes they beat me and I feel like they are geniuses and I made stupid blunders I couldn't see for some reason.

Does anyone have any tips to help me get better and play better? I have no clue where to go from here and my overall goal is to get to around a 1500 (I know that won't happen over night, but it's my major goal).

Here you go:

https://www.chess.com/blog/nklristic/the-beginners-tale-first-steps-to-chess-improvement

I hope you'll reach your goals. Good luck.

The list is long, I'll kick it off. Firstly play long games, 10 sec and 10 minutes will not help you improve. Aim to play at least G30 or longer a few times a week if you can. Even daily. The reason is you need time to look and think to develop the right skills and knowledge. With fast games you'll mainly be reacting based on what comes quickly and naturally. The thing is, what comes quickly and naturally needs to change. You need to change your habits and slow chess will help. Second do 5 to 10 tactical puzzles every day, this will strengthen your calculation and visualisation skills (evaluating the position in a few moves time) and tactical knowledge. You may as well get this habit going straight away because if you are serious about your goal, expect to do daily puzzles for the next 12 months. Thirdly, learn some basic positional chess, you should at least be able to point to weak squares and pawns, open files and diagonals and know how to take advantage of them. One way to learn is by playing through annotated GM games for beginners. Logical Chess by Chernev is a good book for this. Fourthly, learn about Opening Principles and use them always. After you've stopped blundering material, the above should get you to 1500.

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

Other people have already pointed out, you have some homework to do. 

I've taken a look at your opening repertoire. My suggestion is to start working on consistency! You can't improve your play if you change your approach every single game. Looking at your last 45 games as white (since Mar-01), you played 3 different openings.

Let's look at e4, as it is your main line. You played it 38 times. Out of these 38 times you faced e5 as the most common response (21 times). On move 2 you already play 5 different moves.. I suggest you pick an opening and start working on improving that one line.

Regarding your favorite line, 2.Qh5. You've played it 10 times out of 21 situations in the last two weeks. I  recommend dropping that line, since even at your rating people don't fall for that. Especially since your goal is "playing chess pretty seriously".  

Hi! My name is Lauren Goodkind and I’m a chess coach based and chess book author based in California. 

I have tips to help you improve your chess skills so you can win more games.  

I recommend playing with a slow time control, such as game in 30 minutes.  You need time to think.  Beginners tend to make a lot of silly moves with very little time.  This makes sense since there’s a lot of pieces on the board.  
 I also offer a  free beginner’s free eBook on my website, www.ChessByLauren.com in case you are interested. The book is about asking questions before each move.  
   Before each move, I highly encourage you ask questions before every move such as, “If I move here, is it safe?”, “Can I safely capture a piece?”, and more.  

Also consider all checks and captures on your side and also your opponent’s side. 

Learn basic tactics such as the fork, discovered attack, pin, and more.  I offer interactive puzzles on my website: https://www.chessbylauren.com/two-choice-puzzles.php  
If you are serious about chess, I highly recommend you hiring a chess coach to help you.  
I hope that this helps.  

I know this probably sounds like useless advice, but I improved by playing every single day, and simply learning from my losses until I started losing less! With the lockdown we've had in England, I've had a lot of time though, so perhaps this isn't possible for you, but I was playing 20 or so games a day (truly I have such a life LOL). It paid off though; I'm far from a chess genius omg, but I rose from the 500s slowly to the 900s, where I am now, drifting between 8-900. It jsut takes time and practice, and I hope to improve still more with time!

Dear AltusY,

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.

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!