Chess Advice most chess players don't like to hear

Well said. I envy those that have the time to get to your level!! Not that the time is a guarantee, but, it sure helps.

Enjoy your endgame. Have fun!

 Yeah ? This is a process not a result. Ratings reflect your on-going process and nothing in themselves/ 2400, 1800, so ?

 if i just can learn the math, then i'll be a great chess player... i can't wait to beat those high rated chess players !

Certainly some wise advice; I know you followed it yourself because you're an IM! Indeed, the hard part is not finding advice, it's actually listening to it. For the first time in years, I have actually started to do just that and now I'm improving rapidly. I think the specifics are debatable; for example, I prefer to solve ~25+ puzzles most days to speed up the process; I'm sure there are many good methods similar to each other in nature.

 I think people have trouble improving because they want to study and learn "in their comfort zone": they want to still feel competent; they may not realize that it's only doing the stuff that you're bad at that makes you better, the exact opposite approach.

Does anyone know the reason that it's recommended not to use a chess engine until rated 2400? Isn't it useful to double check for tactical errors and so learn patterns that were missed?

looks like Some grand old dove in here.

I am a lowly rated player, but I have Shredder engine, and also Houdini. Depite this, I can give one example why their analysis is of limited use for me:

Just yesterday I let Houdini and Shredder analyse a recent Live 10-10 game of mine (against chess.com EASY) which after some 12 moves was pretty equal. But I thought I made a serious blunder AGAIN, threw up my hands, cursed loudly, and resigned the game.

First, I found out that my apparent mistake was not very serious after all. I could have continued, if I had the nerves for it. This was useful to know. Out of interest, i then let both engines continue the game, and here it got really interesting. I let Houdini play white, Shredder black.

The game continued equal up until maybe move 28 or so when Houdini suddenly found a bishop-sacrifice variation that gave it a 0.35 advantage that Shredder did also see (at least the first few moves of it) but did not offer as best play. So I played white according to Houdini... and only after 8 or 9 moves the full beauty of this line became apparent. Houdini gained back the piece and got significant positional advantage that even I could recognize. Shredder did not defend adequately, got into more and more disadvantage and eventually totally lost the game after some 46 (?) moves or so, with a forced mate on the last 12 moves or so.

Impressive, is it not?

But how useful is this for a weaker player: First you would have to embrace the idea of a bishop sac. THEN you would have to calculate at least 8 moves ahead, come to the conclusion that indeed you get the piece back and convince yourself that your position is better. Frankly, this is outright impossible for a weaker player to visualize and calculate. While I do not know, I can imagine that even a good player/master will not find this line or maybe sees something, but will not play play this line in the game. It is just too deep down that something good "happens". So yeah, maybe for a GM such analysis makes sense. But it is useless to mere mortals other than give you the general idea to maybe better check if you can sacrifice something somewhere next time.

If anybody of you would like to look at this particular game of mine, I am happy to indicate which one it is. Just post here.

Afternote: In Shredder, you can analyse your game with a variable ELO strength of analysis. This is what I usually do: I analyse myself at ELO 1300, hoping that whatever variation he finds, I *should* find in a game myself. Or at least the first 1 -3 moves of it, then take it from there.

Typically, he points out the obvious mistakes, the blunders that I find myself post-game. Sometimes when he shows something really different, some serious mistake that is not an apparent blunder, I sit down and try to understand what and why I played it wrong in the game. Usually this is during endgames. I have had numerous where I was up +3 or +5 or so, made one bad move and was immediately down to equal or even -3 or -5...

Dont Practice at all

It's ok for double-checking tactics. Other uses may impede the learning process, as it's difficult to adapt your thought process simply by looking at the engine's moves. There's also a need to discriminate between large human mistakes and large mistakes that only the engine can notice...

What does "use a chess engine" mean?

Chess engines are really really bad for going over games, in my experience. They give the impression that you're "doing work" but in reality nothing is going on between the ears. And the feedback from the engine is not very useful.

Much more valuable is after a game for you to analyze the game yourself - even better if you have made notes to yourself during the game. Then, and only then, you can go check the lines you've looked at for tactical and judgemental errors.

"You need to stop focusing on tactics and do nothing but opening theory" - mainly because it's wrong

I can distroy you any time

I think the it is" Study endings and not openings"....well that is true but 1st of all if you play a really bad opening against an opponent of your rating or a bit higher u are possibly gonna lose and alsso i think(I can never be sure about that)that even the strongest players here when they started playing chess they were thinking about good openings and they were talking about them and not about endings ase the do now....let's face it,it is in my opinion in the nature of chess players to be interested at first for openings and not so much about endgames....and also you have to admit that there are just a couple of gms that still play weird openings and that just for a surprise weapon...it is hard to win with a bad or weird opening if your opponent knows what to do,so studying oppenings is in my opinion as important as studying every part of the game....(when i say studyoppenings,i mean really study the m and not just try to learn 100 openings while just memorizing moves but to understand the purpose behind it's move)

I do not say that endgames do not matter cause if you reach endgame with no knowledge over it then you can already say to yourself you have lost ...but better to lose there than to lose from the opening....

"Don't play that opening!"

Love when they tell me that. Usually comes right after I just beat them with that very same opening they're telling me not to play anymore.

If you play the opening badly you at worst get a disadvantageous position that your opponent may or may not be able to play properly. There are very few gambits that must be accepted and you don't have to play loads of theory for a playable game.

At the end of the day games are won and lost by tactics.

This is my favorite example.

People who play "bad" openings can go one of two directions.

Either they embrace the nonlevel playing field and develop their tactics to compensate for the shortcomings of their strategy, later often switching to "better" openings while having an extremely well developed tactical feel

Or they fall in love with the trappy nature of the chosen opening, and get a disproportionate amount of happiness from winning those games they do win and never realize that the opening is actually holding their development back.

Basically - if you're mature about your approach to the game, it really doesn't matter what you do in the opening while you're learning. It is very important that you are excited about it, and that you don't fall into a rut. If you ever get to 2000+, or NM/FM/IM strength, you'll realize the folly of always playing the so-called "bad" openings.

Thank you all for the precious information contained in this thread. By now, I have read it from the beginning. And it is most useful and thought provoking indeed. This thread and many other things I like about chess.com made me now upgrade to Diamond membership. 

With my very limited experience in chess, I still dare say there is not one stage of the game more important to learn than another. All areas are important to develop.

As a weaker player, if you really suck at openings and routinely are forced to play with some material down, you should definitely devote some time to understanding opening principles, recognize what's going on and memorize some moves. Otherwise you will rarely see an endgame.

But if can hold yourself until the endgame and then cannot convert advantages into points, then of course it is very frustating. I find such loss much more frustrating than getting beaten early or by some nice tactics in the middlegame. So I guess it is a matter of where you (currently) stand in your development as a player to determine what area to focus on.

I personally find endgames generally more important. With fewer pieces on the board, the margin for errors gets smaller and the need for precision increases. 

Whereas for openings, I find even just adherring to the very basic and free "openings guide" provided on this website, which you can assimilate in 15 minutes, makes you a much more understanding player. I have seen and played quite a number of games here (the majority actually) where I thought my opponent was completely unaware that there are certain sensible guidelines how to play openings.

Im sure its been said...but "study endgames" (some GM's say first, but thats not the point). I hate endgames....just got to do it though.