Advice to improve?

    I'm additcted to strategy games. Not in the sense that I take them seriously but in that I truely enjoy them.I started playing chess when I was wee lad and I learned through trial and error and loosing (what seemed like) hundreds of games in a row. I've since progressed to playing on-line and when I primarily enjoy playing fast games (3 min blitz). However, I've come to a point in my life where as a personal challenge I would like to discapline and apply myself to something. Chess is a game and I would like to keep it that way.

    I've started playing on-line chess rather than live chess so that I would take more time to consider my moves. I've noticed that I often come out of the openings in a poor position. This is probabally due to the fact that I've never studied openings and honestly don't know what a scicillian is. So I've decided to try and learn some openings and what the advantages and disadvantages of each are.

I've been considering this book as a possible tool: http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Chess-Openings-Unlocking-Mysteries/dp/1904600603/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236189825&sr=8-1

If anyone has any advice on this book or books/resources I should consider instead I would be most greatful.

  I've started playing on-line chess rather than live chess so that I would take more time to consider my moves. I've noticed that I often come out of the openings in a poor position.

You may not be aware of this, but it is perfectly legal to use a database (for example the Chess.com Game Explorer) in on-line chess here... so if you are 'winging it' and your opponent is researching moves with the database you are doing great if you are only coming out of the opening, "poorly" -- you ought to be getting creamed.

Online chess + Game Explorer + Investigation & curiosity + time can take you a long way, and you can learn a lot. I think Correspondence Chess (which is essentially what Chess.com Online chess is) has long been considered an excellent chess discipline/study.  It is quite the opposite of blitz! Use the analysis board, take your time. 

You sound like someone who would benefit from looking at J. Silman's 'How to Reassess your Chess' -- it can help you tie all the phases of the game together, and really a crucial moment in chess is the transition from opening to middlegame... you don't really know an opening until you understand how it typically transitions into a middle game... -- there's a thread current now called "to conquer an opening system" which you should look at, it is right to the point of your question.

I liked Reinfeld Winning Chess Openings, and the newest edition of MCO “whatever it is now” would also a good buy.

This guy has never studied chess before.  If he starts with how to reassess your chess he won't learn anything.  It would be like giving a child War and Peace as their first novel. 

Chessville has some excellent articles on how to study chess, and I can't really say it any better then them.

However, let me recommend three books

Winning Chess Tactics

Winning Chess Strategies

Logical chess: Move by move

These books admittedly are quite basic for your level (normally I would recommend a fourth book, Everyones Second Chess book by dan heismen, but thats getting too basic) but I love how comprehensive the books are.  They really lay a solid foundation for your chess skills, something I believe thats important.  Learning three things from a beginner book will often be better then learning thirty from an advanced book, because you apply concepts in advanced books so rarely.  The third book is just a classic that everybody should read at least once.

Strongly disagree... He doesn't sound like he's done much studying, but he has managed a 1640+ rating in online chess, and that's as a new comer to slower chess. He's says he's been playing his whole life, just not seriously. (Btw, If someone told me they'd been reading their whole life and were just starting to get serious about literature War & Peace just might be on the list of books I reccommend... it's a great book and not that difficult at all, just long... skim the long bit about Pierre becoming a Mason, that's part's dull...)

Reassess Your Chess gives you some foundational ideas to work with-- Silman wrote it with 1300 to 1800 level players in mind, it's not an advanced book. Pure beginners do seem to be overwhelmed by it... I admit that. 

The books you reccommend are good too... Seirwan is nice writer... He and Silman are buddies I believe and always reccommend each other's books! LOL.*Edit* (oh hell I was just looking at Amazon's Winning Chess Strategies to make sure I'd remembered correctly and it was by Seirwan and I notice that now Jeremy Silman is given "with Jeremy Silman" credit as a co-author.  That's funny... I think Silman's name has gotten so big in the "learn chess" game, and Seiwan's US championship has gotten dusty... so now putting the weak IM Silman's name on the at-one-time strong-GM Seirawan's book is good marketting!

I'm not impressed (at all) with Dan Heisman though. I think he's regurgitating the same old same old that's been around for 100 years or more and and it has never been effective teaching...it's the stuff Silman was reacting too when he wrote Reassess your chess.

Don't get too involved in opening study right now. The most you want to do is pick a couple easy ones for each color and try to stick with those. You'll know it's time to get more into the opening when you get over 1800 or so.

The tactics trainer is going to help you improve the fastest. Pattern recognition is the biggest piece of the chess puzzle.

   In the past, my primary means for improving has been playing opponents better than I am. However, I'm finding it less common for opponents (significantly) better than I am to agree play me.

    I've also used the tactics trainer sporadically. I'm currently a 1702 but I suffer from the same problems that I do in on-line chess; I move to quickly. In the problems I pass my time is frequently less than half the average solve time. I feel fairly comfortable with most of the basic tactics on a conceptual level (pins, forks, skewers, revealed attacks, double checks, etc). These are what I commonly encounter in the tactics trainer. Where I feel that I am weak is knowing how to make solid move to improve my position without having a specific tactic directly associated.

    I am currently participating in a tournament where my average opponent is about 1750 and in the opening stages I am constantly finding myself asking the same type of question. "Is it more important that I develop my Knight at the point or should I push this Pawn? " This is on reason that caused me to think that I'm seriously weak in openings. I've noticed that if I can make transition from the opening with a half way decent position I do better because the territory is less familiar to my opponent.

I checked out chessville; its a good read. I'll try and pick up one or two of these books and take the time to read them. But I really do feel that I should know that the first move of some of these openings and more importantly what type of positions they create.

Also if any of you feel so inclined I would deeply appreciate an unrated on-line game and some pointers.

Thank you to all of you who have replied thus far, Cheers!

It sounds like you'd benefit more from an improved Strategic knowledge then. A strong understanding in positional/strategic play can have nothing but a good affect on your openings as well.

I like Sierawan's book "Winning Chess Strategy", that helped me a lot and I've just barely scratched the surface on unlocking all of that books wisdom. Another book I'm a big fan of and I think a LOT of people are a big fan of is "The Amateur's Mind: Turning Chess Misconception into Chess Mastery."

He talks about how to judge the various differences in a position and how to make use of the imbalances in your favor. He has his students think through their moves and write down their thoughts and critics the thinking as he goes through the game. It's a book that you can sit down and read without a chess board and see where players like yourself go wrong in the thought process.

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JG27Pyth,

I'm not sure what happened to your last post; but from what I remember of it:

A) I've never used any game database to aid me in any of games.

B) I've starting taking tactics training more seriously. In the past two days I've gotten my rating briefly over 2000 and I am already noticing a difference in how I look at the board.

C) Most likely the reason my last three on-line chess games were vanilla safe games is because thats exactly how I have been playing. In blitz game when I play folks with higher ratings I get cut to pieces if I try anything more than basic. I'm trying to shore up my understanding of the board so I can play less safely without getting completely massacred.

D) I'm going order 'How to Reassess your Chess' and give it a read.

E) I'll also start using notes to point out my opponents best move.

And one last final question, possibly an ignorant one: What is this analysis board of which you speak?

The 3 steps:

1: Study(Especially Yasser Seirawan's books)until you can't tell black from white

2: Take a nap

3:Study some more

Hey JT... I deleted my message because it was so obnoxiously long I felt like you must think I'm trying to overwhelm you with information. I'm glad you read it and found it useful.

The analysis board is found when you are playing online chess by  clicking on the "moves" tab (the "messages" tab is open by default) ... you will see a the moves list and below it a link to "analysis board" and another that says "get pgn"

The steps you're taking will should lead to improvement -- Be aware, chess improvement is notoriously fickle... it seems to come (or more often NOT come) according to its own mysterious perogatives.

Tactics are the nuts and bolts the nails and glue -- if they aren't in place, everything falls apart, doesn't matter how beautiful and original your "plans" are, your house just crumbles... but that said, we frequently face moves where we don't have any particularly sharp tactical point to respond to -- we have our choice of what to do -- so what exactly are we supposed to be doing? It really helps to know how to look at the board for good ideas in those times when you have the move and are wondering what to do. That's all strategy is (a way of looking for the next good idea) most of the time.

It's true that at lower levels the vast majority of games are decided on tactics that arise out of basic mistakes, but the better you and your opponents get the less often outright blunders determine the game -- the mistakes get deeper and the pressures of strategy become a real factor in the game. 

A) Did you really not use the database for that last loss of yours? Wow, both you and your opponent seem to follow the moves of a single game in the database very closely many moves deep into the game.

B) -- good!

C)  "I'm trying to shore up my understanding of the board so I can play less safely without getting completely massacred."  Yes -- this is exactly right. Naturally if you don't have clear ideas of how to proceed you default to something that seems safe. If your opponent has ideas and plans of how to proceed while your moves are passive you end up in hotwater. 

D) It's an excellent book, in places very easy in others, difficult. It probably isn't going to improve your play overnight. I think my experience with ReAYC was typical. I dipped in paying close attention to what seemed to be the most interesting parts, and skimming all the chapters, getting excited by many new ideas to try and also by Silman's straight-talkin' style -- then the first time I went to apply his ideas I got nowhere. In terms of performance : I wasn't a lick better than before reading. Did I waste my time? Not at all. The ideas in RAYC needed to percolate and have been percolating and growing with me. I find that I am getting better at doing what Silman says one needs to do: devise plans that are in accordance with situation on the board.

But there is no quick fix for chess improvement (De la Maza of "Rapid Chess Improvement" basically demands you pack what for a normal, rather dedicated chess student would be five years of tactics study into six months -- it's easy, just devote most if not all of your waking hours into obsessively doing chess problems! He then declares his method rapid.)

Good luck... i could blather on, but I'm already in danger of deleting this post  for being too babbedddy blaabeddy blab...people must think I'm completely in love with sound of my own voice.

dont study opening study tactics it is far more important