1700 plateau

You may remember my 1400-1500 and 1600 plateaus. Well, your advice worked! What to do for 1700?

Awesome!

At least for me, getting to 1700 was mostly just experience and practice with what worked for 1600. It was 1800 which was a bit tougher and starting to obtain a deeper understanding of positional concepts.

You may recall my advice for 1600 mostly things like identifying weak squares and outposts. Getting to 1800 rating is deepening this knowledge and adding to it things like studying different pawn structures in mainline openings and maybe even starting to learn about the many different types of pawn levers, significance (or lack of) with pawn majorities and getting much better at converting winning imbalances into a win.

Analyse your lost games.
Study annotated grandmaster games.
Study Endgames.

Pawn levers and pawn breaks are not the same thing. All pawn breaks are pawn levers, but not all pawn levers are pawn breaks

A pawn break is when the pawn is advanced in such a way as to "break" up an enemy pawn chain.

A pawn lever is (in its simplest terms) any time enemy pawns are have tension of pawn captures (diagonal to enemy pawns). The common examples of a pawn lever would be like this example:

However, there are many types of pawn levers and each have their own nuances to learn and study. For instance, the Austrian Defense is the Queen's Gambit goes for an early pawn lever called a "Cross Lever."

Although I don't have a video specifically on pawn levers, maybe I'll make one; here is my channel link, so you'll be notified if I create a video on various types of pawn levers and their significance

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

Me too! I can't thank you two enough! You guys have helped me overcome 2 plateaus!

1800 now!

Also, since this thread was bumped again, my above diagrams were useful, but since then I've actually turned this topic into a video which shares a little more

Consistency is key to improvement in chess. Stay disciplined in your training regimen, setting aside regular time for study, practice and play. Maintain a positive attitude, be patient with yourself and persevere through setbacks and challenges.

Pawn levers are new concept to me, thank you for explanation! I got help too

Awesome @Asnitte