Improving Tactics (and Improving in General)

Greetings! I played chess as a teenager and had an 1194 with the Canadian Chess Federation, but I didn't take chess all that seriously. I didn't study or practice seriously enough

Now I am 40, and I am more willing to be diligent and study, but like most in middle age, my brain probably isn't as quick to learn as it was as a teenager. I have been playing a lot of blitz, which is fun, but I understand won't help me improve, which makes sense.

So, how do I improve? Is it too late to improve? I would love to get to be a 1400 or 1600 level player in a couple of years. Is this realistic at all? I have been playing more correspondence games, starting to go through lessons, and doing puzzles. 

I keep reading that at my level, the focus should be tactics, tactics, tactics. Cool. What does that entail? What should I be doing?

To summarize, as a re-beginner, 1) how do I improve my tactics? 2) I think it helps me to have a goal in mind. I know I am too old and talentless to become a great chess player. I would still like to see improvement. Is 1400 by the end of 2021 and 1600 by the end of 2022 at all plausible?

It is plausible.

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

What a useful piece! Thanks so much!

Less of the old. I'm 44 and started playing chess in January this year. My chess.com rating is around 1400 so I think it would be pretty doable for you to make 1400 to 1600 in a few years. My tactics rating is about 1800. My advice on tactics is based on my own experience. Others may have different views. Practice tactics puzzles little and often, say 5 to 10 a day. There are two ways. Simpler puzzles based on basic tactical patterns that are easy enough for you to solve quickly. This helps develop fast pattern recognition and intuition. Harder puzzles that may take you several minutes to solve. This develops ability to calculate and evaluate a few variations 3 or 4 moves deep. Be patient. I reacon it was 3 months before I started to see the benefits of tactics training in my games. But my calculation and vision has steadily strengthened. I've become more confident with open games and piece play. Wants this happened, I started work on better piece activity and then my rating started to climb.

Thanks! This is helpful. By tactics puzzles, which puzzles would this be? Are they on Chess.com?

Yes the Puzzles on chess.com. There are a few options. I think there is an option called Puzzle Learning for selecting a practicing different types of tactics. Then there is Rated Puzzles which presents random puzzles and you find the solution. There is a technique to solving them. The solution is mate or material advantage based on Forced Moves. If you are not familiar with forced moves then there is a lesson on here in the lessons section. Once you understand the basic technique they tend to teach themselves meaning that you will learn from your mistakes what you should be doing. A good book for learning tactics is Chess Tactics for Students by Bains Amazon have it.

I should add that there terms puzzles and tactics gets used interchangeably but generally doing puzzles means tactics training and vice versa.

Getting to 1600 is completely realistic for you if you have time to train yourself properly.

Someone whispered to my ear that the guy who wrote the article in post #2 is 30 something years old, so it is not too late for you. I am sure you can turn chess into serious hobby if you wish to do so. Good luck and welcome to the site.

For tactics I recommend Winning Chess: How to See Three Moves Ahead by Irving Chernev and Fred Reinfied. Each chapter of the book focuses on specific tactical motif (pins, forks, etc.) and presents problems featuring those motifs.

The repetition of solving pin after pin after pin helps burn that pattern into your mind. And chess is largely about pattern recognition.

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

I'm 64 and I gained over 150 rating points in a month, a couple of years ago.

In addition to the tactics practice here (puzzles), try chesstempo.com tactics training.  Start at beginner and work through them until they become more obvious to you.  That's what I'm doing, in similar shoes (played remotely in my youth, never formally though, and dabbled for a few weeks here and there, only now at 48 making a more concerted effort to learn and improve)

Thank you all this is very helpful!

Another major thing to focus on is not giving away pieces for free. This is often the largest problem that occurs at the rating your chess.com ratings indicate. Play some longer time controls in one sitting, long enough to have time to think over your moves.

Thanks! I've shifted from blitz to correspondence chess with 24 hour limits. 1hr per side is tricky. I have small kids and it's hard to ensure 2 hours uninterrupted.

Welcome to the club. I mainly play correspondence (daily) for the same reason. And practice tactics puzzles freezing on the touchline while my son is at football. 😁

Thank you for making this post! As a 40 something year old I was wondering the same thing. I also played in my 20s with a similar rating to yours, back when the only online chess I knew about was on yahoo games. It's refreshing to know we can still achieve a decent rating even at our age lol.

 Hey spoon! Great question! In a chess game you will find various stages. The opening, middle game, and endgame. When people excessively say to study tactics as a beginner it's because it decides the outcome of the game the majority of the time at that level. Bad positioning and being a pawn down isn't as important as blundering an absolute pin. For tactics figure out how you like to learn. Maybe get a book or do online puzzles. Lichess has a free tactics page which is very useful and the puzzles here on chess.com are good as well.  It might benefit you to play through them on a real board. Play lots of games and be aware. Longer time controls will increase your chance of spotting them! It is perfectly reasonable to see a 200 point gain in a year! (even for an adult) Just stay consistent and you might even get higher than expected!
 Good luck!