Confused on what to study@1400 rating

Im a mid 1400 player on chess.com.I have bought an array of chess books;Silmans The Amateurs mind, How to Reassess your chess, Ludek Pachman Modern chess strategy etc.My question is should i concetrate on tactics first or strategy books or i read annotated books like John Nunn Understanding chess move by move&Chernev Logical Chess move by move.

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TACTICS TRAINER!!

Always the best thing to study I reckon.

Also good to analyse some games, look at how you play and pick a book from their, Reassess your chess will help you with that

@Manspider..so you are saying i concentrate on tactics for now....so what level should do i do strategy

1600 I reckon, that's when my elder brother (he is 18, I am 11) started focusing on stratergy. 

so which book is the best for tactics...i check out Polgars 1001 combinations or chess.com is just about enough

I think I got to kick it on tactics trainer for now n see what I got after a few months

@porcupine...which Is more important doing a lot of tactics or analysing your own games coz I have been reading chess books on strategy by Silman n I have a feeling ain't yet there.I should do a little bit more tactics on chess.com, get to probably to 1800 on tactics then see if that improves my standard online play

The tactics trainer here isn't.  It's a tactics tester.  When you can repeatedly 100% all the tactics courses on Chess Mentor, then you're ready to go hard at the TT.  It doesn't do any good to test yourself for knowledge that you don't yet have.  Learn the tactical motifs and checkmate patterns first.  Before I reset the TT I had done over 23,000 problems.  I won't say it was a total mistake, but in retrospect I should have learned the patterns on CM first.

Tactics first.  If you are 1400 you should know the basic tactics patterns, but if not you need that first.  There are some articles, chess mentor lessons, and videos that show them here.  After you understand those basic setups that they give in the beginning courses with just a few pieces on the board, then get into tactics trainer.  You should spend some time in chess mentor too, especially checkmates, tactics, and endgame lessons, but what you do every day for about 20-30 minutes at least is tactics trainer. In your stats there watch the total time you spend because it only counts the time you are working on puzzles.  This will help you avoid wasting time thinking you are working which is easy to do.

I used to play game in 10 and while it was okay, my improvement was very slow.  Game in 30 is much better.  When it is time to apply something new, you need a little more time.  Often players don't use more than about 10-12 minutes anyway, but you have it available when needed.

Chernev (and tactics)

I feel you guys

@Baddogna...that is a very good piece of advice.Thanks

i do something very simple, always study tactic and that i feel is my biggest weakness.

I suggest you concentrate on studying Sicilian mainline and play many more games.

Also study the wizard Tal games. They have inspired me how to checkmate my opponents.

Okay honestly you can take this with a grain of salt if you want but many here that said that the Tatics trainer here will do you no good and those people are right so good job.

Start with the basics first. The best way I found to LEARN tatics was to lay back in the morning when I ended up getting up with this book: Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess

You do not have to go crazy with this book either. Just sit back for even ten minutes work on those puzzles. Do this before you go to bed too honestly I did this when I was around the 1400s some where around there anyways and started climbing up pretty fast.

I did this for about three months straight and got up around 1600 I also ended up getting very fast at finding the moves in the book. I got so I could go through all the puzzles in like less than a nour it just became second nature for me to find the mates ect.

I also back then had Chess Master 9000 it does not have to be that exact one either. One of the newer versions WILL help you. Play through all of the piece movement stuff ect and you will soon find yourself up in the neighbourhood of 1900 after doing only these two things I mentioned. Do exactly this for close to a year and you should be at least 1800 but that will only come if you dedicate a bit of time out of your day each day to do this.

I hope this helps

Me I really do not care about rating here at all.

I know what I acomplished in the past on WCN my highest there was around 2150.

I also ended up getting a openings book that suited my play style another thing that many try to do is to learn too many openings all at once. It was also nice having WGM Martha Fierro there on WCN helping me a bit here and there as I always have liked and played very much like her when it came to opening play so she just helped me a bit here and there to refine my opening play.

Sadly finding work right now is my main priorty so I can sit back and enjoy hopefully soon here myself.

I'm finding all the advice I could dream of.Thanks folks

A recent study suggested that the highest correlation with chess improvement is the number of games seen. This matches my results. Many years ago I played through a collection of Karpov's games just watching them like chess 'movies' - no variations - no guessing the next move - just watching hundreds and hundreds of games, shortly after improved to master.

@FM wschill, I believe you but its hard to get it down lol....just watching like a movie.Are you serious lol

I don't know how serious I am, but it worked for me. And having a real set in front of you and making the moves on the board instead of just clicking next move while looking at a screen makes all the difference. (The first time I did all my prep for our state championship on a screen I had my worst result EVER.)

I went from 1200 to 1400 (live chess) here on chess.com in only a few months using almost nothing but the tactics trainer.  But, now I'm stuck (both in my tactics trainer rating and my live chess rating), so I think I'm going to take some of the advice here and try the tactics on the chess mentor program.

I notice nobody has mentioned studying endgames.  I just bought Silman's Complete Endgame Course.  Hopefully those two things will give me a bump.