After 6 years of playing, I am only 1500

As the title suggests, I have been playing chess.com for about 6 years now. I have only just managed to reach 1500 blitz.

I was at the approximately 1200 blitz mark, and simply playing random openings, and didn't really know anything more than how to move the pieces at this point.

After completing all the chess.com lessons and learning the London system and doing some study on a Sicilian variation, I've managed to sneak up to 1500 blitz. However, it's required a tremendous amount of focus to get to this rating. 

I've seen numerous posts of people improving far, far beyond my rating in a much shorter amount of time (e.g., from 1000 to 1800 in about 6 months). What am I doing wrong? How can I get from 1500 to 1800? This is my key question. Thank you!

No offence but maybe chess is not for you, maybe try checkers

"Chess is not for you" - Why would chess not be for me? 

I can sympathise. (ignore those other harsh comments). I have been a member about 1.5 years and watched many videos. I feel reasonably educated in chess, and can still only manage about 900. For me, I know, I have 3 main problems.
1. Mental faculties. Im age 68. I dont necessarily blame that, but I definitely have a problem monitoring the 3 or 4 basic possibilities simultaneously for every move. Basically I play chess to try to improve mental faculties and can definitely see an improvement - even though some may laugh at 900. I am very disappointed myself, but the clear improvement, helps me stick with the frustrated enjoyment.

2. Personality. It seems the better I get (in my own head) the more I move without caution or thinking. Too many blunders. Chess also teaches us to be humble. Never underestimate the opponent.  I tend to forget to think "Why would he make that move?" 

3. Many times I follow a fixed opening strategy to get all my pieces into position first - without noticing that the opponent has done something that I wasnt expecting and I move straight into an unseen problem.

Frustrating - yes. But the score system does not lie. Every time you move to a higher level you play better opponents. Any decrease in your focus, mental ability, awareness, or any just moving blindly, will be more exposed and more immediately attacked. Whenever my ability increases it seems my carelessness increases too.

Hope that helps. (PS my chess knowledge should probably be rated at least 1500-1600. My poor mental approach and carelessness gives me about -600 (deducts 600) from blunders and mis-moves.  (Aaarrrggghhh! as I often say, but I dont seem to learn).

Anybody else got any enlightening pointers to add?

Thanks schaunRooe for a more reasonable response!

First of all, while I’m sure a younger person would have less trouble with the game, I certainly don’t think it has a tremendous impact. A friend of mine has been playing for 3 years and has a rating of about 600 at the moment, and he’s 25 years old. So to be completely honest, achieving a rating of 900 at 68 years of age after 1.5 years of being a member is really a fantastic achievement, nice work.

My rating was stuck at about 1350 for the past few months, dropping as low as 1190 at some points. However, I have spent about 1.5 weeks off of social media, YouTube, etc, and my mental capacity, mental health, and strangely my chess rating have greatly improved. I’ve moved from 1790 on puzzles to 2240, and from 1350 to 1526 in blitz. I find this pretty amazing, and evidence that our brains are much more complex than we realise. Sometimes it just takes some positive lifestyle changes to unlock ability we didn’t know we had.

I don’t know and can’t say. How much time do you dedicate weekly? How old are you? Do you study endgames and positional play?

Chess if for anyone who enjoys it. If you love playing chess, it’s for you. Though your progress is slower than average, you should just enjoy exploring and learning this wonderful game.

Try longer time controls (rapid or even classic) where you have the time to think thoroughly about every move you make. This doesn't mean you should stop playing Blitz, but playing longer time controls can make you overall better at the game which could also make you better at Blitz

Thanks for making my day! I joined in April and started around 500. In 2 months (300 games) I got to 1100.... at age 76.  (I only do rapid)

Rating is not your worth. It's just a way to make sure you are matched appropriately. You won't be any happier at 1800 than you are at 1500. Enjoy it at your level....do your best and keep working at it. 

Ignore upbeatmonk, he is an angry troll who’s account will soon be deleted. Probably would use an engine if you played a game against him.

Have fun reporting. We won’t see your posts just now, maybe I should just tell UpBeatAngle directly.

He’s mad at UpBeatAngle for dealing with him, so he creates tons of accounts each day to mess with us!

Why did you change your account name so soon? We already know who you are

Focus first on slower time controls like rapid. It is through playing and learning from games where we are given plenty of time to calculate that we also get better at faster games.

Hey JenniferAlex aka upbeatmonk. New account I see, how ya going? Want to switch back to your main?

You are not fooling anyone with your abundant new accounts.

Thanks all.. I will play slower games instead of blitz and see if that helps me.

Yes, play slower games. After all, if you can't play chess slowly, you can't play it quickly. 

im 100% sure i can get you up to 1600 rapid , blitz is not my thing but i think if you improve your rapid you will become better at blitz. if you want i can coach you for free.

This kind of comment at one forum with where the owner is asking how to improve in chess indirectly.. oof trash arguments by trash people