1950ish to 2200 in three summers

How did I do it?  I improved my rating from 1950-2200 by doing tactics and tactics alone on chesstempo.com.  100 hours of tactics this past summer and 100 hours of tactics on chesstempo.com in the summer of 2015.  I am a college student so I am usually only able to play during the summers due to college exams and papers etc.  So, all I did during the summers was study tactics (literally nothing else).  And my rating improved 250 rating points in three summers!!  I realized that chess improvement does not occur by studying lots of openings, and positional chess (don't get me wrong that is important), but tactics is the bread and butter of chess.  If you can't calculate or don't have a good chess immagination all the openings knowledge and positional knowledge in the world can't help you.  This is what I realized back in the summer of 2014, and so I did lots and lots of tactics and was able to get my rating from 1950-2050.  Then the next summer of 2015 I studied tactics harder then ever.  I put in 100 hours of tactics study on chesstempo.com in May, June, July and August of 2015 and I had the best tournament of my life at the US Open!  I beat 3 players at or over 2200 drew with a 2300 and 2400, and my rating went from 2050-2136 in one tournament!  I nearly skipped the 2000's!  Then this past summer I put in another 100 hours of tactics study on chesstempo.com and my rating went from 2136-2209!!

You see, the real key to improvement is not how much you know about chess, but how hard you train your chess calculating ability.  This is what I have found and this is how I gained 250 rating points in three summers!

I would love to hear from what you all have to think.  Feel free to post a comment on what you all think about this.

Great article, thanks!

Glad you liked it!

I have a question about the time. When you say 100 hours for May, June, July, and August do you mean 100 hours each month or 100 hours combined over 4 months?

That's great progress, and I say congratulations  but if it's less than 1 hour of tactics a day I don't think many will be able to copy your success!

Thank you very much, your article will help a lot of players!

But I think tactics are different in each site. Do you think chess.com's problems are good? Were your problems time limited?

Chess.com's problems are good too, but I prefer chesstempo.com tactics because they are more difficult (in my opinion), and have a better rating system than chess.com tactics tactics rating system is.  But both are good though, and doing any tactics is good for chess improvement.  Chess.com's tactics and chesstempo.com's tactics are both timed, but not neccessarily time limited since you can think for all day on a certain problem and as long as you get the problem correct your tactics rating still goes up (for both chess.com and chesstempo.com).

Hi.  Yeah I meant 100 hours for the whole entire summer (combined total hours), so basically 1 hour per day the whole summer.  The way you can track this easily is with the chesstempo.com summary page.  It actually keeps track of the total amount of time you spend doing tactics on their.  Chess.com I think also keeps track of the total amount of time you spend doing tactics trainer tactics too.

Congratulations and thanks for the article.

Thanks! 

And just to counterpoint your great progress with more deflating stats:

I've logged 300+ hrs on Chesstempo over the past 4 years. Unfortunately, with my lack of talent, that seems to get me to the 1400 level in blitz chess on chess.com (probably not much higher in OTB ratings - I haven't played a rated OTB game in years.) My ratings gains from 1400-1650 are mostly nontactical in nature, meaning I'm not winning those games through superior tactical kills, but rather from a better positional buildup.

I think if you're starting off at 1900 even before serious tactical study, you're talking significant chess talent. But it's doubtful that the average patzer (like me) will got to 2200 with tactics study in 300 hours like you have.

Perhaps there is something about your tactics training that you are not doing right.  How hard do you work to try and "figure" out the solution to the problems?  I do the "don't move until you see it approach", so when I do tactics, I sometimes take 30-60 minutes on certain problems.  Working to "try" and find the solution is often the part that makes one better.  Not just doing tactics and guessing some random move.  However, if you are trying the same thing, this is a very interesting problem, that I have only seen in older adults that are already over the hill (40+ years old).  I would also like to point out, that tactics is probably the only difference between a 1400 and a 1600 which is why your story is really sad.   Do you do the standard tactics or the blitz tactics on chesstempo.com?  The standard tactics are the only ones I would suggest that you do, so that you have a unlimited amount of time to try and find the solution, and don't just guess.  Putting in the "effort" on every single problem is the important part.

Thanks for that opening post and the tips. If you can share anymore advice, please do. BTW, I totally agree with your view. My impression so far has also been same. Chess is mainly a tactical game. Positional understanding(whatever that is) is more or less equal for about +/-200 ratings. The main difference in ratings is due to tactics.

Just for the record, what age are you?  I did not get it.  I know someone on this forum who would be interested in your improvement.  He worries excessively that his age is big for improvement.  He is only 18.

Hi there.  I just turned 21.  I was 18 when I started doing this training method and was only 1900 (thus the three years it took me to get to 2200).  Hopefully I can keep improving and maybe get to FM or IM in a couple years.  Then I would like to become a Grandmaster after than (tough goal I know).  So an 18 year old should not get worried about his age although maybe he is a little old if he wants to become like world champion or something.

Nie ambitions!  Goodluck.

Hope he gets to read this post.

Believe it or not, I pretty much just do only tactics.  I did read through some a Kasparov's: "On My Great Predecessors" series but that is literally the only reading I have done in the last 3 years.  I only read (skimmed really) through the first volume and that was it.

Hi. I find that if I do a 'block' of tactics training over a week, I can eek out a 50 point increase in my ratings over subsequent weeks. I've only bothered to do this a couple of times but it does work for me. My biggest hurdle is finding time to do this and, incredibly important for me - what mood I am in.

If I am stressed I just get beaten over and over by players in the 1000's. I'm mid 1400's currently and sliding.......

thank you for the nice advice !!
but how did you get 1950 first ?