The Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition program has an academy mode w/ Josh Waitzkin ... it is an amazing piece of software that has helped me tremendously. That combined with the youtube videos....Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St Louis videos really helped me a lot. Highly recommended.
Seriously underrated game. They should make a new one for mobile phones. Would be better than the Magnus apps.
Yeah, it's me.
I have been beating Stockfish regularly in the past, and even have written books on this, with all the games and scores.
Officially, I used to be 2200 some 15 (!) years ago, but now I am 5 or 6 times stronger, without having competed.
Too much noise at tournaments, that's why I don't play there.
Here one review by a fellow Chess.com blogger, Novacek, who has bought and read the book, to give you some idea: https://www.chess.com/blog/novacek/book-review-the-fine-art-of-chess
If you don't believe me, you may ask him yourself.
Yea I remember you. You are 3000+ elo and can wipe the floor with Stockfish.
That's right. 
Truly, if you know a top engine's play by heart, you can also beat it, even regularly.
It's all a matter of knowledge.
Yeah, it's me.
I have been beating Stockfish regularly in the past, and even have written books on this, with all the games and scores.
Officially, I used to be 2200 some 15 (!) years ago, but now I am 5 or 6 times stronger, without having competed.
Too much noise at tournaments, that's why I don't play there.
Here one review by a fellow Chess.com blogger, Novacek, who has bought and read the book, to give you some idea: https://www.chess.com/blog/novacek/book-review-the-fine-art-of-chess
If you don't believe me, you may ask him yourself.
Yea I remember you. You are 3000+ elo and can wipe the floor with Stockfish.
That's right.
Truly, if you know a top engine's play by heart, you can also beat it, even regularly.
It's all a matter of knowledge.
Forgive my insolence, but I was under the impression that Stockfish didn't have a "play" per se. Aside from having a book programmed into it, it plays by means of brute force calculation. So the only way to really beat it is to play the correct moves. It's no longer enough to get an engine into a closed position that requires a long plan. Stockfish can calculate longer than you can effectively plan. Give Magnus Carlsen a two pawn advantage and the white pieces and he'll be lucky to draw. Modern engines running on modern CPUs are very very powerful. I apologize, but I seriously doubt you could ever hope to draw let alone win.,
Thanks everyone for the posts.
@cyboo Cheers.
@Lyudmil_Tsvetkov Please respect the idea of this thread and create your own, for your book and the claim that you are better than Stockfish. Thanks.
@MasterPatzer81 I noticed St. Louis produce great videos.
@CoffeeAnd420 While I agree with all you said (especially endgame weakness) I feel like I need to fix my openings/middle-game ideas, because I very often lose a piece and then fight an uphill battle. P.S. Sometimes I run into "trappy" opponents where they have memorized the first 10-15 moves of a trap. More often than not they get a lead (at minimum time-wise), cause the traps are mostly new for me. (Except Fried-Liver basic variations).
Again: If you spend time on the openings at this point, you're not going to improve at all. You'll simply be doing the same ineffective activity that everyone else who doesn't improve does. Fact. But hey - it's your chess. If you want to read books on the opening at your rating go ahead. It isn't going to help you improve at this point, though.
Sound tactics and basic opening principles are all that is needed in the opening at your level. Period. Guys don't have 10-15 moves memorized sub 1400. I mean, none of this is my opinion - it's established fact.
I have close to that if not that many opening moves memorized. I was obsessed with openings, (still am,) and studied them for weeks aboce all else. I would not reccomend that course to others. Now I need to focus on fixing my many oversight blunders.
Op, you have a diamond membership, so you gotta milk it for all the benefits. The tactics trainer is one of the most helpful tools there is. Do some rated, and a lot of learning tactics. This will help your calculations, and help you to get used to certain themes like underprotected pieces, etc.
Another good thing to do is Puzzle Rush. Don’t try to solve as fast as you can yet: instead, focus on getting the puzzles right. The tactics start of at an elementary level, so if you can wham those themes into your head, it will be easy to spot similar situations in real games. For this I suggest using the (admittedly amazing) Puzzle Rush Survival Mode.
And after all that, Coffee is right. You do need to work on your endgames. I suggest you join this endgame club where we discuss about endgames, play endgame tournaments, and endgame vote chess......Wait, let me find the link. But just saying, endgames are super hard to master. One way I use to force myself to practice endgames is to play in the following style: I exchange off as many pieces as I can, whether or not it gives me a disadvantaged endgame. Then, I try as hard as I can to win. After the game is over (and more likely or not I have lost) I will analyse the game to see where (in the endgame only) i slipped. By doing this, when I study openings to find ones that give me good positions, etc, etc, blah blah blah, I can utilise my endgames skills (still almost zero now 
) to make the most of the positions and pawn structure that come out of the opening. Now let me go find that link.
Ah, here it is. It’s not very active, but it’s still good and the forums have a lot of helpful information. https://www.chess.com/club/endgame-lovers
I don't study openings. I am about 1600 strength OTB for what it's worth. What opening knowledge I have is from playing chess and experience. Not that studying the opening is bad, mind you, I play chess because I enjoy chess. I find studying openings to be boring. If I'm going to study something, I want to study the end game. King and pawn endgames are so exciting I don't think I will ever be sick of them!
Personally, I don’t find going through Master games with annotations very helpful. It’s like the information doesn’t settle in my head: I need hands-on-work (tactics, Puzzle Rush, actual games) to improve. But I can see how it is helpful, ESPECIALLY in puzzle form. So I like Silman’s articles where he asks us to find the next move, those are very good.
Good talk guys.
Just so we are clear I'm trying to do lots of tactics. Hovering around 1450 here. And lately I average 13-15 score for 5 min puzzle rush.
When I say openings I don't mean to study super heavy theory and 10 variations. I mean - have idea about 1 white opening and 2 black openings (main lines) so that I don't fall behind immediately from the beginning. I do much more tactics.
I actually follow this plan: https://www.chess.com/article/view/study-plan-directory - Ratings 1000 - 1399.
My endgame is quite bad. So the idea of exchaning pieces and play more endgames might be actually quite a nice one. (I assume I'd loose a lot initially, I will see, will try once or twice to see how it is).
Now onto the next game:
Game #15. Draw, Black.
I don't think you realize how good of a shape you were in by move 14. Your queen was threatening the h2 pawn, and you had both your bishops locked onto the prize so to speak. At this point in the game, I promise you your opponent was more worried about their king then yours, with that said, their plays would have to involve defense, as there were too many threats towards their king. Retreating your queen in a future move was too passive, there were no threats toward any of your pieces, so I would have just let them feel the pressure. Sometimes they crack and make dumb moves under pressure, I know I do all the time. At any rate, I don't know if its the best move, but I personally would have played my g7 pawn to g5. This gambit dares your opponent to take your pawn, and if they do, they've pretty much handed you the game, considering your d6 bishop in excellent standing point, working together with your queen to eliminate the h2 pawn, putting them in check, and you can probably figure out how to checkmate them from there. Even if they choose not to accept the gambit, try to move that pawn up further on the board, to g4. This little pawn may not seem like much of a threat, until it makes its way to g3 if your opponent doesn't play correctly. At this point, your opponents best play would have been to move their g2 pawn to g3, putting obvious threat to your queen, however, you can just respond by moving your queen to h3. Just understand it from their perspective, if they move their queen, you have them checkmate. And if they can't move their queen, this is giving you a great lead in control over the game. Never retreat any of your pieces when you're in great shape like this, unless your pieces are in danger of being captured. By the way, your on the right path to achieving your goal. Keep your head up, warrior!
Hi @krazykat1975 Yeah I think I didn't consider how it looked for my opponent. I think at the moment I did a quick calculation and decided it wouldn't work, that's why the Q retreat. Cause I felt he would start pushing it away. Of course your perspective makes sense, considering I have a good focus on his king-side.
By the way, have you learned The Quiet Game yet? ( Giucoano Piano?) If you can master this opening along with what you already know, you should climb at least 100 ELO points or more, helping you to your goal.
Hi @krazykat1975 I am trying to stick to "Italian Game" mostly, so yeah. Of course that is when I'm white.
On a side note: I already passed 1400 (around 1500 now), but in daily. However I got a few wins on timeout, you have an analysis button and some people play it like a blitz game, so naturally you get advantage that way.
Game #16, loss, white:
10. Na3 intending an eventual Nb5 or Nc4 or even Nb6 if possible in the ‘future’.
What move do you think you should have played instead of 27. Bc4?
It seems like defense is one of your bigger weaknesses, like when you get attacked you sometimes collapse quicker than necessary. Maybe a recommendation would be to work on defensive instead of offensive tactics problems. Some tactics trainers have a feature where you can select a certain motif to work on (such as defensive moves) although they might require a premium membership to do so (such as chesstempo.com which is a better site for tactics than chess.com in my opinion) but it might be worth it to invest some money to improve your game further.
@cyboo f3 to stop his pawn advance. Probably not the best move, but looks solid to me.
@Clavius Thanks for the analysis. You have some great points.
@Graber7 You are right. My defensive play is on the weak side. I was also thinking about chess tempo. I do puzzles there anyway, so I might purchase premium there also to refine my defenses.
###
Game #17, white, win:
Quite a weird opening for me. I fell behind very quickly. However I managed to fight my way be to at least drawing position and eventually win the game. I think it's quite an entertaining game with lots of blunders and missed opportunities for both sides.
Yeah, it's me.
I have been beating Stockfish regularly in the past, and even have written books on this, with all the games and scores.
Officially, I used to be 2200 some 15 (!) years ago, but now I am 5 or 6 times stronger, without having competed.
Too much noise at tournaments, that's why I don't play there.
Here one review by a fellow Chess.com blogger, Novacek, who has bought and read the book, to give you some idea: https://www.chess.com/blog/novacek/book-review-the-fine-art-of-chess
If you don't believe me, you may ask him yourself.
Yea I remember you. You are 3000+ elo and can wipe the floor with Stockfish.