Getting over 1400

don't play the stafford it's a one trick pony gambit. It's fun, but won't actually help u improve

Stafford isn’t a one trick pony. It’s an initiative gambit.

The Stafford is a great gambit but i only play it in bullet

Dear TheChezzBozz,

I am a certified, full-time chess coach, so I hope I can help you.  Everybody is different, so that's why there isn't only one general way to learn and improve. First of all, you have to discover your biggest weaknesses in the game and start working on them. The most effective way for that is analysing your own games. Of course, if you are a beginner, you can't do it efficiently because you don't know too much about the game yet. There is a built-in engine on chess.com which can show you if a move is good or bad but the only problem that it can't explain you the plans, ideas behind the moves, so you won't know why is it so good or bad.

You can learn from books or Youtube channels as well, and maybe you can find a lot of useful information there but these sources are mostly general things and not personalized at all. That's why you need a good coach sooner or later if you really want to be better at chess. A good coach can help you with identifying your biggest weaknesses and explain everything, so you can leave your mistakes behind you. Of course, you won't apply everything immediately, this is a learning process (like learning languages), but if you are persistent and enthusiastic, you will achieve your goals. 

In my opinion, chess has 4 main territories (openings, strategies, tactics/combinations and endgames). If you want to improve efficiently, you should improve all of these skills almost at the same time. That's what my training program is based on. My students really like it because the lessons are not boring (because we talk about more than one areas within one lesson) and they feel the improvement on the longer run. Of course, there are always ups and downs but this is completely normal in everyone's career. 

I hope this is helpful for you.  Good luck for your chess games! 

Thanks for YouTube channels I usually watch gothamchess 10 min openings so that’s how I know about the Vienna London danish Dutch etc.

Just as a question what were the openings that you studied when you were 1500ish? 

Actually, I haven't really learnt openings at that level.  I played 1.e4 e5 and played it normally, according to the main opening principles. My coach showed me some plans and that's all.

Ah ok so I’ll just do a crapload of puzzle solving and hope for the best

no money for a coach

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just join and if you don't like it, leave in a few days.

Bruh im 14 and 1400 im not gonna win money in these tournaments

I'd recommend buying some opening books that give complete games. Your tactical skills are useless if you don't know what kind of tactics you're looking for, and they would also be wasted if you have no plan in the middlegame.

The comments about that talk about learning stuff *other* than openings are spot on.  If you're at 1400 or so, you must clearly know opening theory well enough.  Learning tactics, how to evaluate positions, and etc., would be very useful.  As a very simple example: how often do all of us see a bishop going to the b or g file pinning the knight?  For white, do we know when to play a3 or h3 and when we needn't bother?  For black, do we know when exchanging the bishop for the knight is a good idea and when it isn't? 

More generally, do we understand when a trade that's even in material is a good idea and when it isn't?  Do we know how a pawn structure determines which of our two bishops will be stronger?  Do we understand how important the battle is for e4 in a Nimzo defense (for those who find themselves in such games)? 

Learning those sorts of things will do wonders for a middle game.

Fair point but why is a 1100 helping me get over 1400.

And you make a fair point, too.  I'm 1100 in Rapid, which is too fast for me at this point.  I'm an old-timer who stopped playing chess for decades, just recently returned, and I've never played this fast stuff before last month.  I still have a lot of cobwebs to clean out, and I'm better OTB.  (I know, probably lots of folks say that, but the more important question is whether my words make sense)

In any event, those things I just mentioned are exactly what I'm working on right now.

Ah ok 

Here's an example of a bad move I made in a recent game -- something that I suspect 1100 players don't often think about, but thing's one would need to get higher:

I was black.  I played ...Bc4 -- good move.  White plays Qe3, his best response. 

What does black (me) do here.  I figured: my position is clearly superior, I'm more developed, white isn't, and white's a bit cramped in.  (Can an 1100 do that?  I'm not sure).  But then I made an 1100-level mistake: I figured "well, when you're ahead you trade pieces, right?  So trade white bishops here!"

Wrong.  When black trades bishops he's helping white remedy his deficient position.  White should just leave his bishop there and focus elsewhere (perhaps ...Rc1).  That should have been obvious.  And, for anyone who's decent at openings but who doesn't think this is an obvious mistake, well, then, that's the sort of thing I was talking about a few messages back.

Lol how much

Beware, pba will now use the exponential difficulty card... although he isn’t wrong in that case.

Don't pay him until you see results...

(and be prepared that he has no lessons, he's just going to insult you).