4 years to become a chess master

There are quit alot of 2000+ player, I don't know where you live, but in my city there are hundreds of them.

I think you should join some otb-tournaments in the B-class. Try A  if you are allowed.

Those A-class monsters isnt so scary as they sound.  1701 blitz tells me that you have enough strenght to play interesting games with strong players. Actually I guess 1701 blitz is a typical A-class rating, with strenght around 1800-1850 Fide.

@Debistro : it may also be the case that you don't play in FIDE events that much yourself and are a bit under-rated. So you think class A and expert players are stronger than they really are.

Haha, I guess you didn't know that in my last OTB tournament I beat a 2113, and 1800s and my only regret was blundering a totally won game against a nearly 2000 player (a piece up and having a strong attack). I finished above a CM and a NM by the way, and in the prizes. I haven't played blitz here for a long while, but on Playchess I do. And yes, I am rated much higher there than my old rating here.

I am not trying to play up or play down a 2000 rating. Again, I am saying, if the OP really is 2000-2100, why is his blitz and standard that low? Normally, if you are rated at that range, your blitz/bullet/standard would show. They don't have to be 2000 above, but <1200 is really too low (to back up his claim). That's all I am sayin.

Good luck OP, I'm sure if you put in the time and effort you will get results. As someone who recently broke through to 2200 from 2000 this year, I would suggest doing tactical puzzles everyday and studying games everyday. Lots of games, I must have played over 1500+ master games this last year and deeply studied 600-700. Also I did a lot of endgame training, covering 5-6 chapters in Dvoretsky's book and playing through many of the problems in Lev Alburtson's endgame book and Endgame Strategy by Mikhail Shereshevsky.

I can tell about my club. We have 110 members. 96 is on the ratinglist.17 is above 2000 Fide. I am at 1428 Fide.  We are maybe stronger than average, and the third largest club in Norway.

http://www.nordstrandsjakk.no/?page_id=1108

Maybe the OP is using the USCF standard. Ok, for USCF it is long established that USCF is inflated compared to Fide ratings, something like 150-200 points above it. This might go some way to explain the conundrum, but again, his blitz is still kinda low..... That said, good luck to him over the next 4 years, lol.

But it was very few blitzgames.

I am worse at blitz, because I am restarting chess as a semi-old man. I am chanceless in 3+2, and only half of my games in 10 minutes are decent.

A lot of players are much better in longchess, when they have time to figure ut good moves if the opening isnt automatized.

I saw that Hicetnuc is at ca 2100 fide and 1650 blitz, so I guess around 1700 blitz is a level packed with masterclassplayers.

sorry but your plan is trash. Studying one year tactics then one year positional chess... what the hell. Thats NOT how you should do it. You should at least mix things up. I will tell you how I got to master level without even having such a strict plan as you. First of all I worked on my opening repertoire, I chose a pretty easy one that I can play at all levels and which gives me solid play and fits my style(d4 with white and e5 and Nf6 with black. Mostly main lines and solid variations.) It is important that you know the plans in your lines and why you play the moves you play and NOT that you know 100 heavy theory lines. Just pick simple short lines with clear plans and reasonable play. You should start to work on your opening repertoire first because you need to get practise with it to get a better understanding of it. A good opening repertoire is the fundament of every masters strength. I always hated the french(with both colours), thats why I dont play e4. When I would now play with the french as black against some opponent of my calibre then I would lose most of the games just because I dont have the understanding of the opening, I dont know which pieces are good or important, I dont know the main plans and I dont know the accuries of the opening lines.

What I did then is very simple and definetely the most important step. I played tournament games!!! I played many many OTB tournaments to get practise and experience. Alone from this my playing strength improved well.

The next step is what most players do not do! They dont analyse their games, they dont look at their mistakes, they dont learn anything from their losses! They wont understand why they lost and they wont understand the opening plans better. They will just play the same stuff every time and make the same mistakes every time. Why? Simply because they never learned where they could improve their moves. I analysed most of my games deeply (mainly without engines. Engine help just to check if I could have won tactically.) and tried to find improvements for my play. I checked whether my opening line was good, if my plan was the right one and so on. I also tried to think about my thinking process during the game. Why did I make this move? What were my intentions?

The last step of my road to master was the trainings program of course. I am very sure you can get very very far just by playing and analysing properly but of course a trainings program is also extremly helpfull. Always remember, you cant improve in chess when you dont do anything for it. No matter how shortly you study, you will improve from it. I studied only on weekends and not even every weekend. See how far you can come with that... My trainings program always included some tactics at the beginning(very very important!) and then analysis of games or positions. I had a coach but thats not nessecary when you have the right books with good annotations. Why to analyse games? Because this is the most important thing to improve your chess! Your thinking process at the moment is flawed, so you need to find out what is flawed. When you analyse games in depth you will find out variations and motifs(positional and tactical) you didnt know before. When this happens to you you can be very happy! Because this means you gained knowledge, you gained important chess knowledge and improved your general chess strength. One day you will see how much knowledge you gained, you will see the time you invested was worth it, you will see you are a master. Cheers

Chess_Troller. Very good input. All of it. My first goal myself is to cut down the number of online-games, and give myself time to analyze. I am attending a class in my club, and plays some otb-tournaments.

Quote "Just learn the first 10 moves of the main lines and try to understand the ideas, where the pieces belong." /Quote

Uhm that alone takes a long time for us mortals. "just" 10 moves? lol

Let me give you some example of what I mean. A player wants to reach master level, he first of all wants to work on his opening repertoire. <he chooses to play a kingside fianchetto (the move order doesnt matter). First of all he looks at some games and plans with the opening to understand where the pieces belong to and so on. In one game he looked at white chose the following development(I only played moves for white...):

The player likes this and has now a clear plan of where to develop his pieces. He looks at some plans for white.

He plays tournament games now and uses this opening. One time he played against a strong player and got totally crushed with the plan above with Ne1-f4:(I again just played white moves except d5 and the end which is just made to illustrate why the f4 plan might be not so good sometimes when the d4 square is weak.)

Th player analyses the game and notices "Oh I left the d4 square weakend and allowed my opponent to open up the center and make use of it." He learned his lesson and keeps in mind that often before he plays moves like Ne1-f4 he has to secure the d4 square. He gained opening knowledge and his understanding of the kingside fianchetto improved.

What I wanted to illustrate you is the typical learning process that every chessplayer who wants to improve has to go through.You will learn more and more over the time when you understand what you did wrong and why you made a move. 

His story may be true, and I'm not saying I believe him or disbelieve him, but his ratings here don't support it.

This was my first thought.

Dont go by my rating here.  Online chess doesnt do a lot for me, its more to pass time during my lunch. 

Was he an FM or IM... well he eventually became IM

on chess.com who had a 1800-1900 online rating. Of course he had a lot of games going, but yeah, can't just go off chess.com ratings.

Mentally I break up study into a few groups:

Drills -- solving positions with a single specific solution,
Studying -- learning new ideas from a book or analysis of any game or position,
Practice -- playing serious games, usually OTB tournament games.

I think ideally you can cover all of these every week or two, although of course that's not always practical.

As for study content, the more you know about one area the more you can learn about another. So it's inefficient to group all your tactics together, all your endgames together, etc. I'd say pick something you're weak in or interested in and spend a month, then change it up. You can always come back to it later. This also helps prevent burnout.

Visualizing and planning all the success is the wrong path to take. Gradual but focused learning will make the process seem effortless once you follow the basic principle: Amateurs practice until they get it right; professionals practice until they can't get it wrong.

Practice in short sprints with full effort and take regular breaks. The most common mistake is to overtrain and fail to retain the material you just practiced. Begin by assessing your strengths and weaknesses. Once you have identified those, gradually improve in those areas. Spend more time on your weak areas and make sure you repeat often until they become second nature.

It is impossible to get ca 1750 onlinerating without beeing able to understand chess at atleast b-classlevel.