Best ways for a beginner to reach a 1500ELO

Hi

I would welcome tips for a beginner, like myself, on best ways to improve my game. At the moment, probably hovering around 1000-1100, but determined to raise my game at least to a consistent 1500 level. This site has really inspired and encouraged me to work on my game. Thankyou

I have a USCF 1600 friend I'll be interviewing and something he recommended to me before is forget tactical puzzles as fun as they are.  He recommends working on positional understnading and calculation, after those are developed the ability to recognize tactics will naturally flow from those.  He also recommends studying basic technique (i.e., converting a not so obvious win into a win instead of throwing it away for a draw or even loss). 

That's odd. 99% of chess experts do recommend tactics training to novices. 

play against engines.. a lot.. they never commit silly blunders and demands the same from u...
 solve lots of puzzles...
that's all u need..

Probably because it's fun and most novices are children.  Tactic study is fun and can help to some degree, but it leaves huge gaps in one's chess knowledge.  You have to create the positions for the tactics in the first place, and most chess positions have no tactics.  Boring old dry positional study with complex counting/calculation exercises (to help you keep track of all checks, captures, and threats and to evaluate said positions after each of the many forcing variations) often with no sacrificial blow like it or not will improve tactics.  My 1600 USCF friend says so.  His reason also makes sense, tactics flow from certain positional factors such as activity, weak pawns, unsafe king, etc., and the soundness of a tactic needs to be checked via calculation.  No use sacrificing a rook if at the end of the objectively best forcing sequence the opponent holds and you're at best down the exchange without compensation. 

How exactly do you train calculation without training tactics?

By looking at an analytical position with a lot of contact, but no contacts, check and evaluate all the forcing lines, and eliminate candidates until you find what you think is best.  Tactic training you actually have a sac of some sort.  Tactics just aren't any old capture sequences though but usually refer to sacrifices of some sort.  Pins, forks, skewers, etc., are also tactics.  Tactics suppliment strategy usually and not all tactics or exchanges are to win material but sometimes for some strategic long term goal.  For example, checking with a knight on d3, forcing the bishop to take, and the bishop recaptures forcing a permanent weakness on white's light squares (assume a bishop is on d2 to explain why Qxd3 isn't viable here) is a tactic to achieve a strategic goal. 

That's peculiar, a ton of GMs recommend focusing on tactics and calculation until you're atleast 2000 rating. I also know a few FMs from the chess club I frequent that says that tactics and pattern recoqnition is by far the most important thing until you make expert.. However I agree that calculation is increadibly important, paradoxically enough, the best way to train calculation is to do hard tactics problems.. For the op I would recommend spending as much time as you can solving problems from books or on chesstempo.com. Don't think about your time spent on problems or your rating, instead try to go for maximum accuracy. When you fail a problem try to learn why. Also try to be on the lookout for what parameters make tactical operations possible, such as hanging pieces, king safety etc. For books I would recommend Chess Tactics from Scractch by Martin Weteschnik and Winning Chess Excerises for Kids by Jeff Coakly (don't let the name fool you! It's a great puzzle book for beginner/intermeadiate players and it also has puzzles dealing with endgames, positional/strategic play and defence) and once you finish (it has 900 puzzles so it will properly take you a few months if you work on it every day) start working on Artur Yusupovs orange books. In addition to making you better at tactics, these books will also deal with strategy, positional principles and endgames. Around the time you get through the first 3 books (each is around 250 pages filled with tests and so on) you should definetly be able to hold your own against most 1500 Fide rated players. Keep in mind though that this material would properly take you the better part of a year to get through properly if you study for 2 hours a day. Also - learn one solid (and not too teoretical/complicated) defense to 1. e4 and 1. d4 and play it every time slowly refining it as you go. Make sure you play a lot of slow games aswell (best would be 30-45 mins for each player at least) and review them to find your mistakes, join a chess club and start participating in proper otb play and remember to have fun! 

take it easy guys... he just asked for 1500
just dont commit any blunders and bag a few tactics with some opening knowledge.. that's all u need..

I'm pretty sure that tactics does not equal sacrifices, even if the two are closely connected.

I made it up to 1600 USCF being very weak tactically.  I look back at my games and I'm amazed by some of the losses I've had, and how I've thrown them away.  Understanding what positions are good and bad for you, knowing how to formulate a plan, and figuring out how your pieces and pawns work together are what you need to make it up to 1500.  Once you get there tactics matter, because your opponents are strong enough to not just give you what you want.  

Remember, those chess puzzles are great, but you have to actually be able to get your opponent into positions where the material in those puzzles occur! 

Lol you ever play the computers here? At the medium/hard level they regularly make senseless sacs ...

This is my belief from personal experience.  I was able to reach a USCF Class A rating by studying a few annotated game collection books and by solving a huge number of chess problems.

My strongest skill is by far calculation (solving difficult chess exercises requiring concrete calculation of lines with a 3-5 minute time control).  However, I now take chess lessons from Dan Heisman, who tells me that even more important than calculation is tactical pattern recognition, or the ability to recognize solutions to simple tactics in very short time controls (10-15 seconds).

The fastest would be to play long games (preferable over the board tournament games) and solve lots of tactic puzzles frequently (30-60 minutes every day at least).  You'll also need basic endgame, strategy, and opening knowledge.

Doing tactic puzzles has nothing to do with fun.  Noticing forcing moves (tactical patterns) and the ability to calculate them accurately is fundamental to everything else in chess.

Endgames are also very good for calculation practice.  They also stress importance of activity and how the pieces coordinate with each other which is also fundamental to chess.  Endgames allow you to finish off won positions and salvage difficult positions.  The endgame also forms the basis for middlegame strategy.

You need speshul taktiks

Yeah, look at games of GM Krupnyk

Can you write some more about this? 

And can you write some more about improving 'basic technique so that you can convert a win into a ...win. 

And can you write some more about 'b asic positional understanding'.

I find this interesting, relevant (see my just-posted-forum-question below, which may have the OPs question implied as well...) and part of me senses that your friend may be onto something. That maybe tactics puzzles ISN't the way to start learning chess for the Adult learner coming to chess late in life, which would be me. 

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/attention-educators-how-to-improve-memory

I apologize to OP for seeming to hijack your thread, but I think we may be asking the same thing, or at least seeking the same thing. I'm barely 1000, would really like to get somewhere, and a year of playing too many games too fast didn't get me very far. Now I wanna do me some learning. 

That's what I always hear too...

Well, it's up to you, let's be clear about your options though.

1). Hearsay advice from a 1600 player.

2). Any master or coach you bother asking (they will tell you tactics).  Not to the exclusion of everything else (de la Mesa style) but that tactics are a core component.

In fact it's a common trap for adult learners to be attracted to the strategy and interesting ideas of chess.  They spend years never improving because frankly solving tactics all the time is tedious.  So they lack the ability to spot and calculate forcing moves consistently and accurately.

A pretty funny/sad example is the backyard professor.  Loves the prose of Silman.  The idea that concepts rule chess is exciting... and that's not wrong, it's just if you can't spot tactics it doesn't matter what your plan was, you'll lose pieces then lose the game.  All the greatest positional players were excellent at calculating tactics.