2 Ideas for improvement

I am 1400 and am failing to make progress in my game despite some effort;  So here are two ideas that I think will help me, and I wanted to bounce them off the forum to get your feedback.

#1.  Stick to 45 minute per side games;  Designate 1 minute per move regardless of the move.  Sure I will never get past move 45, but hopefully all those 45 moves will be stronger and of higher quality and in future games, I will designate 30 seconds per move;

#2.  I really think more progress might be made if my studies and playing were on a real physical tournament board at the house, instead of a computer screen.  It is so easy on a screen to gloss over an icon, a section, a file, an area, but OTB play allows a better awareness of what is going on;  Can anyone relate?

#3.  Stop playing more than 4 games per day.  2 white, 2 black.  by the 5-7th game the mind is too fatigued to properly concentrate and do anything in-depth beyond "one-move" cheap shots.  Again 4 longer games is better than 10 short ones.

I have plenty of books and youtube videos, but some of my problem is just keeping the TV on during a game, or surfing the web when it is my opponent's move.

Your feedback?

I'd say #2 and #3 are good points. OTB gives important experience. And many many blitz games are fun, but not so usefull.

#1 I would recommend you not to think of it as 1 minute per move. I think an important step towards improving is this: take whatever time you need (within reason) to think of a plan, something you want to achieve. Also think how this might be stopped by your opponent and what he might do while you are executing your plan. Once you find a plan you are satisfied with. Think of the move order you want to execute your plan in. If all of this checks out, you can start executing it, and really put pressure on your opponent, since you can now make a few moves pretty fast, having your plan in mind. Use your opponents time to 'fine-tune' your plan if you find there might be some error. This way you might spend some extra time once, and then win it back later, since the pressure will be on your opponent. If you train this and get better at making a plan etc, you will improve alot, thats why you need to train this in OTB games.

Hope this may help you.

To some extent, I think you may be approaching this the wrong way. At your level, I think the best way to improve is to identify the parts of the game that you're having trouble with. Stuck on middlegame tactics? Open up tactics trainer and study each solution until you fully understand it. Opening repertoire feeling a bit shoddy? Go through the Game Explorer, learn some of the popular moves, and also ask yourself why those moves are played so often. Having trouble converting an advantage to a win? Submit your close losses for computer analysis to see where you slipped.

I looked at your two most recent games and one loss and I came to a couple (shallow) conclusions.

First off in your game vs bigblue, you struggled with the closed pawn structure allowing a very powerful knight on c6 (which was then promptly given away from the Bishop on e7???) whereas in your game vs jchen8182 you played very confidently in an open position. In your loss I looked at you fell for a two move fork where you needed to see a change in pawn structure and failed to catch it.

suggestions

1) Do at least 5-10 tactics problems a day - on the train, during your lunch break, etc. I think for an aspiring club player there is no better medicine than constant exposure to chess patterns and being in the habit of calculating.

2) go over your past games carefully - download your pgn files, look at them on chessbase or w/e and really work to find better moves. Find the critical moves and analyze them taking notes on the variations you see.

3) play solitaire chess - take a master game (I would suggest Capablanca, Alekhine or similar era as the games tend to be more readily understandable for a club player)

4) play a couple long games regularly - as you state.

5) be patient improvement takes time, sometimes your rating will go down even though your chess strength is going up. Don't be discouraged.

Wow Nimzo, you went to too much trouble, but thanks.  Now I am paranoid, because if you hunt through my games, you'll find several horrible games of mine, ha ha.  I need to delete the ones that embarrass me the most, like losing my queen in 5 moves on a botched Petroff;

Thanks to everyone for your time, insight, and help, it means a lot, and have benefited from it all.

No reason to delete your bad games, they are the past and you can learn quite a bit from studying them. Over the course of your improvement you should go back to these games again and see if your assessments have improved.

Every year or so I go over my old tournament games and try to find improvements on my annotations. I am always surprised what new things I find that I didn't see before.

on a side note Nimzo, my wife grew up in the Chicago vicinity;,