The Most Efficient Path to Improvement in Chess: What Actually Works?

As chess players, we all strive for measurable improvement — whether it's increasing our rating, mastering specific positions, or achieving long-term strategic understanding. However, with so much content available (books, courses, videos, engines, streamers), it's become increasingly difficult to separate truly effective methods from noise.

This thread aims to establish a serious, fact-based discussion on what training methods yield real improvement, particularly for club players and beyond (ELO 1000–2200+). Please share your experience backed by results, data, or reputable sources if possible.

I'll go first:

I started playing seriously during the lockdowns. My favorite opening is the London System because I'm lazy (don’t judge 😅). My most embarrassing moment? Hanging a queen in a winning position with 30 seconds on the clock. Still hurts. Currently trying to stop playing bullet and focus on actually learning something. 😂

Jump in and share your story! Let’s make this a place where we can celebrate each other's progress and laugh at the inevitable mistakes that come with the territory.

Looking forward to hearing from everyone. 👇

I see my carliftmate talk about chess. I start. I blunder the queen. Actually queenssssss. Puzzles, didn’t care about review because too lazyyyy, and blundered a couple more queens. I went up to 1100 because of that system that gives you alot of elo when you start chess.com and then lost it alllll! I went to 700, tilted to 600. Quit for 2 days. Came back because chess is too addicting and started watching good chess channels(for teaching) because Levy has more entertainment and not so much teaching. After that I am here. Bit boring of a story I know. And yes, I blundered a couuuuple more queens. Just a bit. Not aprox 30. Definetlyyy.

The single most efficient path, and what I constantly drill with my students, isn't a secret opening or a magic book, but a disciplined process of self-analysis. Instead of just consuming more content, the key is to analyze your own lost games—without an engine at first—to find the one or two key moments where things went wrong. Once you identify a recurring pattern, like missing a specific tactic or mishandling a certain type of endgame, you can dedicate your study time to fixing that specific, personal weakness.

Question no. 1: What is the #1 way to improve at chess? (Answers how to review and puzzles)
You should review and do puzzles daily and when you review you should ask these questions. A: Is my opening correct? If no remember it, if yes, do it. B: what did I miss? Opportunities are tactics, squares you could have put your pieces on, and pawn structure/weaknesses and this will help you remember those things. C: what mistakes did I make and how to prevent it? For example you allowed a tactic so you should find out how to prevent that. To do puzzles you need ask yourself. Why does this tactic work? If you can’t figure out why use analysis(after every puzzle there is an analysis button). The things you need to find are weaknesses which is king safety, pieces with a loose defense, and pawns structure. A loose piece is when a piece has a defender, but the defender has a small amount of options before letting go of the defense. How to use what you learned from a puzzle? Look at your opponent’s side and do cca(search cca online). This removes passive moves to choose from. If a move makes a king safety weakness then I would consider it and that goes for loose pieces. If you will sacrifice a knight for 2 pawns, but the pawns are passed I would check it.

I've been playing for over two decades, and my biggest improvements have come from three things:

1) Playing a lot of games.

2) Losing a lot of games.

3) Learning from each of those losses.

You need to play to expose yourself to different positions and ideas - and to test your abilities against similar opponents.

And you have to lose to be shown the areas where you need to improve.

Finally, you need to learn from those losses - otherwise, you won't improve from them at all.

Analyze your games to find things that you could have done better. Incorporate these new ideas into your gameplay. This is how you'll level up.

In contrast to #5

1) Playing very few games - I average 1 or 2 rapid per day.

2) Thoroughly reviewing all of my games

3) Playing at least 30 minutes of chess puzzles each day

4) Having fun

Everyone learns differently. I think some people can brute force it by playing as many games as possible, but that is not the only way. For me I've found it more important to play a game or two, review them, do puzzles, and then sleep on everything so my brain can process it. Plus limiting the amount of games means I'm more able to be in a good mood and not tilt.

My rating has gone up around 200 points since the start of summer. You could make the argument that if I was playing more games, maybe it would go up faster, but it works for me. I'm trying to get to 1500 by the end of the year, and so far I'm on target.

I agree about players learning differently. Great point. I generally recommend a high volume for most players, simply to increase the amount of positions and patterns that one gets exposed to.

But either way, as long as you're reviewing and learning, I'd consider that a win - whether it's two games or twenty.

Your approach sounds like it's working for you, so as the saying goes: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

As they say: "A book a day keeps the Grandmasters at bay."

We can identify several different learning channels.

Some people learn most readily by a hands-on approach... by actually DOING it (and usually losing). Like MaetsNori above, my mind works that way. I try, I lose, I figure out WHY I lost, and I try again.

Other people learn most readily in back-and-forth conversation with a stronger player (the Socratic method?), or from watching videos, or from reading books. Analyzing your own games (by hand, not with a computer) has helped a lot of people. Playing over old Master games from the 1840-1940 period can help a lot. Different learning channels.

I would recommend trying out a combination of learning channels (different methods) and see what sticks.

Serious chess study should be quality of study over quantity of study.

Use a real board, pieces and books. That's considered active learning. You need to do the same thing over and over until its a learned memory.

Watching videos are call passive learning. Nothing wrong with videos as long as you play them out with a real board and pieces, and ask "why?". And watch them numerous times. If all you do is just watch a video and do nothing else with it you can expect to retain about 10% of what you watched.

Doing 100 tactics a day and not understanding the "why" behind each tactic will not accomplish anything. Doing 3 tactics a day, understanding the motif and the "why" will teach you much more than 100 tactics.