Another how to improve thread, with a (long) story by a new member

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With ChessBase the software will build your opening tree in 2-3 years.  Without ChessBase it will take you 8-10 years to build your opening tree by hand. 

Iknow I built an opening tree by hand,  I took me 8 years.

dude a chess reportoire is SO over-rated.

I don't know how the op feels.  but at my 1270 ish rating it feels utterly unimportant.

If I can get my peices out with hanging stuff in a familiar-ish kind of opening I'm good to go.  working on some kind of intricate deep memorized set of moves would be not only arduous

it would be practically counter-productive.  

No one needs even 1% of the opening tree that force recommends to get to 1600, which is what the OP stated.

I know this from experience.

Funny thing is, my record against 2000+ in OTB is better when I played openings that took me out of book very soon, like on move 4 or something, and it wasn't because my opponent played something bad.

If you want to stay at 1600-1800 when you are 46, that Is fine. 

Counterexample:

Chris Bush plays the worst openings by far of anyone I know with an OTB rating of over 1400 - his typical response is e4+d3+Be2+Bd2 and some other random moves that he throws out in 5 seconds (in slow chess) against pretty much everything. He's at least 50, but I'd guess 60+. 

Last time I played him, he'd consistently maintained 2000-2100 for years, and was 2100+ when I played him. He almost drew me playing his horrific openings, and even beat my friend the next round an even worse opening, who was 2100 at time and 2200 now.

He's quite sharp at tactics, and doesn't waste time with openings, unlike a lot of <1800 adults I see who've been studying for 20 years with no improvement. 

I hope the OP sees this, and understands how unimportant openings are for his goal, and how they definitely won't stop him one bit. 

If y'all read the OP's their original goal was to make 1500-1600 in 3 to 5 years....that can be done pretty easy....well I did it with zero study....just started playing at the local club at 50 years old with no study at all, just played once a week for 3-4 hours OTB for 5 years and was 1500+....it was fun....only played a little as a kid with friends and no tournaments or club play, quit at 14.....just started to study just a little in last few years and it went up again a little (I'm only talking about classical 30 minutes or more)....chess is like all else in life you get out what you put in....I have too many other interests to spend all my time on chess, so I balance it.

The best use of time to improve is to spend the $100 on a Diamond membership. Danny Rench (not sure of spelling off hand) has an amazing video series on tactics which will improve your game quickly. The videos are just great., and so much more enjoyable than trying to go though books particularly when you still need to learn basic positional ideas. There are also courses on Chess.com which is just a much easier way to learn. Rather than books, Chess.com allows very interactive ways of learning which makes progress much faster than with books. You don't have enough basic knowledge yet to be reading books like How to Reassess Your Chess. Video commentary of live chess tournaments is also helpful, but you need to be very focused and at your level it could be a little difficult. Get the membership and hold off on more books.

Thanks for the nice article. I wise I would read it some times in near future. 

"Counterexample:

Chris Bush plays the worst openings by far of anyone I know with an OTB rating of over 1400 - his typical response is e4+d3+Be2+Bd2 and some other random moves that he throws out in 5 seconds (in slow chess) against pretty much everything. He's at least 50, but I'd guess 60+. 

Last time I played him, he'd consistently maintained 2000-2100 for years, and was 2100+ when I played him. He almost drew me playing his horrific openings, and even beat my friend the next round an even worse opening, who was 2100 at time and 2200 now.

He's quite sharp at tactics, and doesn't waste time with openings, unlike a lot of <1800 adults I see who've been studying for 20 years with no improvement. 

I hope the OP sees this, and understands how unimportant openings are for his goal, and how they definitely won't stop him one bit."

Wow CherubEngel, your friend Chris Bush is impressive!   

+1

I think those below 1400 don't really need to know very much about the opening, except for the ideas in the openings they play.

I play the Najdorf - I don't have chessbase... what opening tree? 

I'm no expert at all but do you really need ALL those books? Why not just get 1 book on how to play the middlegame and 1 book on tactics? You can also do tactics puzzles on the internet to help your tactics if you're into that. You will end up going over a book more than once because it's unrealistic to expect to "master" the concepts in one read-through.

They don't realize that one book contains a ton of knowledge, and falsely think quantity > quality, which quickly became nothing but a waste of time.

Then they wonder why they can't apply anything they read in their games.

The issue is that many of these guys aren't thinking about buying 5-6 books or something until they get +800 rating or something.

They want to read 5-6 books in the next 3 months and feel like they're training hard, when in reality they just get a lot of superficial knowledge.

LOL

I haven't read any of Silman's books, but I know about his idea of imbalances. I think it's an interesting idea and worth thinking about. I'm not saying to read his 400+ page book about it, but just knowing about the concept is interesting.

What I did when I was under 1800 worked... and more importantly was pretty fun.

Just play over random games and look for an opening that lead to an interesting game. Look at a few more games with that opening to get some basic ideas, then try it out in your next tournament.

I'd play stuff I'd didn't even know existed a week ago and do fine. And when you're playing something that's interesting you're more motivated / creative at the board I think.

Maybe this works until 2500 , I don't know, but in the beginning I think it's pretty good.

I have Silman's book on imbalances, and I don't think it's that bad. 

The best chapter by far is chapter 4, which teaches you to not fear your opponent and play psychologically challenging moves, which I find very very important.