Information Overload! Where to start?

Hi all,

I’ve recently started playing chess and would say I have the basics down. I feel that it is time to take my game to the next level and start studying. But where do you start? Do you study openings? Tactics? Endgames? Then there’s the dilemma of, do you get books or do courses on the likes of Chessable…?

You can see why my heads in a spin!!

Any help and direct would be much appreciated - Thanks

Time block and do all that's what I'm doing and I'm improving!

Start with what you do know.

You know how the pieces move and how much they’re worth?

You know what a checkmate is? How to do a basic one? (Look up scholar’s mate for a basic pattern but don’t overuse it)

You know opening principles, aka, the priorities in the beginning game?

If you know these, I suggest learning principles of middle and endgame. They’re nice and broad terms that should give you a framework.

From there you can get more specific: tactics and positioning.

For me, I’m not the best at studying so I just looked at a quick opening principle primer and did tactics (after knowing the pieces, castling, basic checkmate, forks and pins). I’m stuck at 650.

I’ll be studying mid and end game principles as my next target.

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

Start by memorizing ECO and names and variations of all the openings after that start endgame especially k+n+n vs k+p

in order to improve, you need to learn it all

my advice, stick with e4 or d4 and try control the center each games.

try to castling before move 10 and avoid create a hole in front of castled king

constantly see chess board condition and search for enemy threat.

move your piece from enemy threat or defend your chess piece using another pieces

do chess tempo tactic exercise everyday ( choose one of pin, skewer, or fork/double attack tactical motif). do the easy difficulty, if you already have good result with pin, you could change the tactic motif to skewer/fork, or vice versa.

download chess king app (mate in 1, simple defense).

mate in 1 help develop your calculation and checkmate knowledge, while simple defense would train you to spot enemy threat and rescue your hanging piece.

for end game you need to learn: 1) king & queen vs enemy king, 2) king & rook vs enemy king, 3) king & 2 rooks vs enemy king. there are many people that teach this checkmates, but personally i prefer NM Robert Ramirez youtube videos.

i think if you do all of this, in less than 1 month you could reach more than 800 rapid elo.

btw, if you reach around 600-700 elo you will need to learn how not get checkmate easily by simple checkmate opening like: wayward queen attack opening.

then if you reach 800 elo you need to learn pawn breakthrough, because most people will play accelerated london system that creating pawn blockade around the center of the board.

Focus on tactics and endgames. Don't study openings because your opponents aren't going to play most of the moves you study—same reason for not using chessable because it's really a website focused on openings.

There is so much good information on chess out there that it is easy to get overwhelmed. Both tactics and endgames you mentioned are great places to start.

If you want advice a bit more tailored to you (than just generic responses), then perhaps we could play one or two unrated live chess games and I can offer thoughts more specific to your game

I also have a chess YouTube channel aimed at more beginner to intermediate level chess players (I also cover more advanced topics occasionally), so those videos may be useful for you too.

https://www.youtube.com/@kesetokaiba/videos

Thank you all for the responses. A lot to take away and a bit more direction to follow

'Logical Chess' book. You have it on youtube as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eTB7oHeRgM&list=PLUrgfsyInqNa1S4i8DsGJwzx1Uhn2AqlT