Had a higher rating 1 1/2 yrs ago when I "knew" less

After not playing serious chess for about 40 yrs, I decided to start playing again.  I re-read the 13 chess books I had, and started playing, primarily on this site.  In a short time, I had a rating which ranged from about 1275-1325.  This was at a time I was under severe stress and didn't have a lot of time--I had to squeeze in time to study and play.  I did STUDY -- not just read-- about a dozen new chess books,  I stayed at this rating range for about 2 yrs (under a different user name than I have now). 

Then the cause of my outside stress went away and I found myself with an almost unlimited amount of time to play and study.   I STUDIED (not just read) about 20 more chess books,  I read magazines and watched countless videos.   I played about 2-4 G60 games a day.  Now I find myself with a rating that hovers around 1125-1150, even though I now "KNOW" and play more.  I don't understand it!  Any thoughts or suggestions? 

Hi MAR, I went over some of your games and I noticed a couple of things:

1. I like that you play long time controls. But at some critical moments where there are a lot of possible tactics, you could still invest some more time.

2. You miss "easy" tactics. This isabsolutely crucial. Do you do enough easy puzzles on this site? Maybe some puzzle rush or puzzle streak to get these things just burned into your brain.

3. I noticed you don't like to play "classical" openings that fight for the center with pawns, but rather take the hypermodern approach. These openings are harder to play. In your 1.g3 opening with White, you often transpose into a kind of "Botvinnik-English" system with the pawns on c4, d3, e4. Then you play Nf3. It's possible, of course. But maybe try to develop the knight to e2 and prepare the break f4. There are surely good videos on the Botvinnik-English on YouTube and how to play the structure in the middle game.

4. Have you done some work on your endgame? In one of your recent games (draw) you played well, managed to get into a winning king and pawn endgame where you were a pawn up. It's important to have some endgame knowledge and how to convert them into a win. Silman calls it "fox in the chicken coop". You use one outside passed pawn to district the enemy king and then march your own king to the enemy pawns and gobble them. The second concept that would have worked in that particular game is "pawn breakthroughs" in the 3 vs 3 on one side. You started correctly with the middle pawn, then you got it wrong. You should have sacrificed one more pawn by pushing it into the "pocket", which clears the path for your third pawn. Take a look at IM Andras Toth's videos on YouTube.

5. Analyze your own games afterwards. Without the engine first. Try to figure out where you went wrong.

Hope this helps a little. Keep having fun with chess. That's the most important thing!

Man, or girl, with that rating you should be blundering a lot. Don’t read any book, just play a lot of short time control games, and maybe one longer time control per day, and train tactics. Without reading anything and just doing what I’ve said you should be able to reach 1400.

The point is that, either you should have a coach and go to a club and have interactive lessons and play with your peers and learn your mistakes by discussing them, or if you don’t have such opportunity (which is most likely the case for a current chaotic political virus), then you should learn from your mistakes. To learn from your own mistakes you should just play. But why shorter time controls?

You make many easy mistakes: miss easy tactics of yourself or your opponent, so you don’t arrive to a position that needs deep calculation or deep strategical planning. What you have to do, is to play too many games (and analyze them quickly, without deep branching), to see what are obvious mistakes of you. I promise you that this way you will improve much quicker.

I believe reading books, specially on opening, is very dangerous for your stage. You first should learn the principles of openings, like how to grab the center, how to press f7 pawn and such things, what to do if your opponent is pressing you, what are easy tactical patterns and so on. You shouldn’t go deep in any specific opening at this stage.