Best strategy for (beginner's) improvement

In last 3 years, my ratings rose from 700 to 1700 blitz. So, I would like to give some guidance to lower rated players based on my experience because I was hoping for a similar guidance when I was at that rating. I had to figure out these things on my own. So, I'll help others. I'll give specific advise based on ratings because general advise like 'study, review, play...etc' is really useless. So, I'll try to be specific with my advise. Ratings mentioned below are blitz ratings. Generally, longer time control ratings tend to be atleast 200 points more than blitz rating. Ok, so lets start:

Below 600 rating:

General Exercise - These players have to learn how the pieces move. I would recommend some drills to learn how the pieces move(particularly the knights).

Openings - they randomly push pawns in the opening.

Strategy - play e4 and develop your pieces and castle.

Caveat - But, I would add one caveat that my rating never went below 600, so I don't have first hand knowledge.

600 -1000 rating:

Openings - scholars mate, Damiano's defence. You will see that players at this level randomly push pawns without knowing what they are doing.

General Exercise - Drills for piece movement would still be useful( particularly knights).

Tactical training -  one move checkmate. Basic checkmate patterns using queens. Basic backrank mate.

Endgame - Checkmate with 2 rooks vs king. And also queen +rook vs king. They will be useful for finishing off games where you have clear advantage.

Strategy - at this level your opponents will bring out their queens out very early. You can use that to develop all your pieces with a tempo by attacking his queen. Keep opponent queen under constant attack. Play E4 and Develop your pieces and castle.

 Tips - the most important point at this level is - don't trust your opponent's judgement. Whenever your opponent moves a piece, check if it en prise. Of course, the same applies to your moves.

1000- 1400:

Openings up to 1200 - blackburne shilling gambit, Jerome Gambit, fried liver attack, philidor defence.

Openings up to 1400 - Kings Gambit,  Italian game, giuoco piano, scotch game.

Tactics Training - 2-3 move mates(particularly those involving some sacrifices). Concentrate on escape squares of the king or any trapped piece. Whenever, you are under attack, see if you can counter attack the opponent's king or queen. Basic tactics like pins, fork and discovered attacks.

Strategy - open files for rooks and 7th rank for rook. Simplification when ahead on material. 

Endgame - basic endgame checkmates like king+queen vs king and king+rook vs king. King activity(restricting opponent king activity).

Tips - At this stage, you will have to learn to play with your minor pieces.

1400-1800 rating:  

Openings - asymmetric e4 defences. The most common are French and Sicilian. In sicilian, you see dragon and accelerated dragon from 1300 to 1500. Beyond 1500, you see other sicilians. You will also see Giuoco piano. But Giuoco piano is quite popular from 1200 onwards. As white, players will also use Ruy Lopez and scotch.

Tactics training - basic checkmate patterns like anastassia, greco, anderssen, Arabian, smother,...etc. Advanced back rank mate. Advanced pins,  forks and discovered attacks. Basic zwischenzug I.e. Intermediate move of opponent. Basic removing the guard and overloading( generally queen).

End Game -  Queen+king vs king+soldier. King opposition (king + soldier vs king). Promoting and creating a passed pawn on 3rd or 6th rank. Connected pawns on 3rd/6th rank versus rook(or bishop or horse).

 Strategy - long diagonals for bishop. Using bishop pair(particularly to trap rook).

Tips - learn to use the diagonals effectively.

general recommendations:
a) solve tactics. 10-15 per day. Solve them in a reasonable time(2-3 min per puzzle). Solve it in your head before moving the piece. Don't guess.
b) play games.... as many as you can. Play lots of blitz and bullet. Play very few rapid games(1-2  30|0 per week). The main purpose of playing lots of games is to gain experience. But people can fall in losing streaks and lose lots of points in a single day. So, to avoid that when you lose about 25 points(I.e. 3 games in a row), then take a break. Its very difficult to take a break when you are losing( or winning) in a streak. So, I suggest shift the format(like from blitz to bullet).
c) Don't review your games too much or too deeply. Just find the turning point of the game by going over the game once and then move on. Game review time must be around 10% of  game time. There is no point in second guessing every move. 
d) Don't study too much. Only study what is needed( you will find out what to study when you play lot of games). Study for 1-2 hr on weekends. And then try to implement what you studied in your games. Dont study the games of any GMs...etc. Those games are irrelevant to <2000 games. If you want to study the games of masters, then study the games of Morphy(and perhaps Lasker). Don't become a chess book collector. Knowledge that <1800 player needs is available freely all over the net. And it is basic. The real challenge is to implement that in a game.
e) don't resign after blunder(like dropping a piece). Play on for as long as you can(try to get a draw or a stalemate if not a lucky win). By the same token, don't assume the game is won as soon as your opponent blundered a piece. You still have to checkmate him in time(unless opponent resigns).

f) blunder check: Don't trust your opponent's judgement. Whenever your opponent moves a piece, check if he has made a mistake or a blunder. Of course, the same applies to your moves.

g) Time management: time is an important factor in any format. Try to keep up with your opponent on clock. Otherwise, you'll get into time pressure and lose. But, take your time during critical junctures in the game.

h) one general recommendation to all players below 1800 is to avoid d4 and Ruy Lopez. They are very positional and theoretical openings. They are better left for advanced stages.

OK, these are my views. Any constructive criticism or feedback is welcome. Hope you will benefit from advise and succeed in getting better at chess. All the best.

>>The guy has no idea what "good book" is.Simple as that.

Well, yeah, I'm not sure if you actually took the time and really looked at that list, because claiming that he wouldn't know what a good book is, when his list contains books by Soltis, Euwe, Averbach, Nunn, Chernev and Silman (and even stuff by Yussupov and Dvoretsky, which you would have seen had you actually taken the time to look at the list) just speaks volumes about your objective approach to that person. Don't know why that is, also don't care.

And his advanced list is written for players with 1700 USCF (and higher) in mind. so it's probably understandable that it doesn't contain too much stuff by the game's greatest. in the end, it's not a list of the best chess books in the world, and you might argue each entry depending ony your own preferences. But also Heisman doesn't claim so and admits in his very first sentence that there are lot of good books not on this list. So instead of spewing vitriol about a person who's not even here, why don't you do something constructive and present your own list with all those better books the OP should read instead?

I think that part of the idea is that "better" depends on who is doing the reading.

"... Just because a book contains lots of information that you don’t know, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be extremely helpful in making you better at this point in your chess development. ..." - Dan Heisman (2001)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140626180930/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman06.pdf

1) Slower games at this point. The clock adds pressure and you don't want to be rushed while you're still learning how to find your moves.

2) Books are helpful at any stage. I found Yasser Sierawan's "Winning Chess" series quite helpful at the beginner's level.

3) Look over the game on your own, after it's been played. Try to find mistakes you might've made along the way. Try to find improvements. Then, after you've found all you can on your own, look over the game with a stronger player (or an engine) to see what you might've missed.

Do this with every single game you play. Don't get lazy and skip this step. This step is, arguably, the most important step of all, and it's where most of your improvement will come from.

4) Don't worry about ratings at this point. Worry about learning. Consider every loss a learning opportunity. Don't get mad at losses, or frustrated. Be grateful. A loss means you did something wrong. And if you did something wrong, it means you can learn from it, and get stronger because of it.

5) A reasonable goal would be to learn something new each time you play a game.

 That is a great piece of advice, thanks for that. I mean I do analyze my games after playing, but it never came up to me to pose the very simple question: "What did I learn from this game specificially?". Guess I should make a habit out of it.

Yes, but the Advanced List is complete BS. There's no way HTRYC and Chess for Zebras are 1700+ books. HTRYC 4th Edition can easily be read by anyone 1300 and up, and Chess for Zebras deals with things that go on in every class player's head, and contrary to what Heisman is implying, this psychological baggage is worse in lower-rated players, not nonexistent as he seems to think.

For the OP: The linked article gives another lot of reading recommendations and might be worth reading just for that.

I can't comment on Chess for Zebras, but from Heisman's explanation, I tend to agree that it covers topics that might not be really important for the beginner and the low-rated amateur. Or, to put it another way, there are things more important the player should strife to learn first. Tactics, for example, and I couldn't care less about psychology as long as I still lose games by horribly blundering away material already won (though the fact that up to this point, I could hold my own against someone rated ~330 points higher than me gives me hope for the future).

I also agree with him on HTRYC and what he says about this book in the article linked. Sure you can read it way before reaching 1700 (btw. if I get the difference between USCF, ELO and DWZ right, that number might sound more impressive than it actually is), but the question is if you really profit from doing so, when you might not even have understood much more basic stuff. I know that I started reading it, but had to put it back on the shelf because I felt that I still have to learn more basic stuff.

In my mind, the good thing about Heismann's recommendations is that it gives you a certain sequence in which you can read these books. And no one is stopping you from going fast forward if you feel that you learn faster than his recommendations seem to imply. But I know for a fact that I have a whole shelf of books in my home that are way too advanced for me. There's certainly no damage reading them and I might even pick up a few things, but I also know that I did miss a lot of things, because I'm just not advanced enough to completely understand them.

Learn from ur mistakes and get tactics training book. It will allow you to protect pieces and understand opponent attack.

I dunno about that.   There is the usual junk you have to wade through, but there has been a lot of helpful information too in the forums.  

Get a coach.

Somebody who is better than you.

If that isnt an option, then get a friend.

Somebody who is the same level as you. And loves to study chess as much as you.

And then, STUDY.

Study your games. His games. Magnus Carlsens games.

Study. Study. Study.

 I don't think that that was what Heisman was actually referring to within this quote (also wouldn't make any sense when he just recommended an awful lots of books to study). As said I don't know the book but looking for a review I found this:

>>Rowson makes a key distinction, between knowledge and skill, saying that in order to improve we need not more knowledge but more skill. This is the difference between passive knowledge and the ability to work through a problem or decide how to play a position. Skill comes through painstaking training and practice, rather than by reading books or learning openings. Skill is a way of dealing with things, not a derivation from theory. Knowledge helps only when it descends into habits. Skill improves when our unconscious thought processes improve.

Suggested training is solving problems, playing practice games, and trying to win against strong software from a winning position. Simply put, you learn by doing, which in chess means thinking. We do not learn by "reading and nodding". The main skill needed in chess is in making decisions, so this is what we need to practise. Rowson also suggests setting the clock for 20 minutes to study a difficult chess position and to compare it with an expert analysis. <<

Guess he had this in mind when he wrote that sentence.

But I'm in no position to defend Heismann. Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong about him. No matter what, I don't think that every book on his list is bad reading, which is why I posted it, after all. If the OP thinks that some of those books could be interesting, he can still look for a second (third) opinion.

Woah. First of all, how can a, say, 1300 player who has a solid grasp of tactical patterns not gain anything from HTRYC? Even if you haven't mastered avoiding two-move and three-move tactics, that doesn't mean you don't benefit from learning positional basics. Tactics and positional play coexist. If you leave out one of them, your chess suffers, and chess itself becomes a boring, colourless game.

My second point is that you don't have to understand everything in a chess book at first. A better approach, I would think, is to read HTRYC even if you think it's above your level, use what you've learned to better your play, even if just by 50 rating points or so, and come back to it when you're a little bit better.

Also, the book itself is incredibly easy to understand.

To the "psychology" part. Psychology, no matter what @DeirdreSkye thinks, is not an insignificant trinket that only matters to titled players. Chess psychology is very much alive and well at the class level, and is a factor in a lot of mistakes and blunders. And again, this is what @DeirdreSkye gets wrong. She assumes that everything is okay inside a class player's head during the game, when in reality forces such as laziness, constant double-checking and even stress are at play. This is why knowledge alone cannot make you a strong player: how can you apply that knowledge easily and consistently in the turbulent situation that is a chess game?

@DeirdreSkye

Well and know I seriously think about linking Silman's review of that book just to see if you would take  the opportunity to pile horse shit onto another well known name just for heavily disagreeing with you.

I haven't piled horse shit on any book author, unless you're talking to @DeirdreSkye.

 Well, first of all, I'm not saying you can't get anything out of those books (and neither is Heismann). I also totally agree with your second paragraph about going back to a book and give it another read.

On the other hand, as someone who used to teach mathematics, I can totally relate to the thought of teaching the basics first and then building the advanced stuff on top of it. And that's what I get out of Heismann's approach. He tries to give the learner a curriculum that gives them a firm foundation from which to advance step by step, so that when they reach the more advanced stuff, they can comprehend it as a whole and don't have to go back later on, just because they only understood half of the stuff at the first read.

True enough.

1. wrong

2. wrong

3. wrong

4. correct

5.wrong

"... most of the roadblocks to improvement are from the failure to eliminate errors, rather than the failure to add new information. ... Of course, if you only eliminate errors and never learn new information that will surely stifle your improvement as well, so both methods of improvement are important and necessary. ... You need both theory and practice in tennis, golf, chess, math, or just about any subject of sufficient complexity. ... Tournament play gives you the kind of concentrated, slow chess that often helps improve your game, ... many of these basic ideas are explained in Averbakh's Essential Chess Endgames. ... Review each of your games, identifying opening (and other) mistakes with the goal of not repeatedly making the same mistake. ... any long-term instructor that does not spend at least some time listening to his student think out loud is likely not addressing an important aspect of that student's needs. ... if you want to improve at chess, you have to work hard at it. ... studying the most basic tactics over and over until you can recognize them almost instantly is likely the single best thing you can do when you begin studying chess! ..." - NM Dan Heisman

"... chess work should be less focused on 'learning', and more about 'training' and 'practising' whereby you force yourself to think. ..." - GM Jonathan Rowson in the first part of Chess For Zebras

I am continuing my previous post in this thread which was talking about <1800. It was based on my experience. But now, I want to write about 1800+. This post is speculative...

1800 - 2200:

Openings - Vienna game, petroff defense, bishop opening, Scandinavian defense, caro kann, modern defense and pirc.

Tactics - basic interference. 3-4 move pins, forks, discovered attacks. Deflection(involving sacrifices). 

Strategy - attacking weak pawns (back pawns).

End game - rook and pawn end games. Lucena and philidor.

2200 - 2600:

Opening - D4 openings(symmetric and asymmetric).

Tactics - 6-7 move check mate. 5-6 move winning a piece. Advanced interference(involving sacrifices).

End game - pawn breaks and pawn races.  bishop end games(same and opposite).

Strategy - advanced Outpost for horse. Good bishop vs bad bishop. Knowing when and what to trade.

2600+ :

Openings - reti, English, Kings Indian attack

Tactics - 7-8 move mate. 6-7 move winning a piece. 

Strategy - don't commit to a plan too early. Using opponent's history to make preparations(particularly opening prep)

End game - philidor positions.