Well, it looks like your problem is described by the latest Novice Nook article by Dan Heisman http://www.chesscafe.com/heisman/heisman.htm He says that to achieve higher level you have to improve your analytical ability, especially some parts of it. For me his article is very revealing, it simply says that to have chess knowledge is not enough to play well, some specific skills are necessary. I suspect you lack some of them (me too).
ivan,
With the far superior chess training infrastructure that you have in your part of the world, I am very surprised that you would choose to ask advice from a slightly less sophisticated chess knowledge base, like the one we have here in America. But, to be sure you must have your reasons.
To begin with some help. There is this chessplayer from your neck of the woods who wrote a classic little book. I think he was a pretty good player at one time. The name of the book is PAWN POWER IN CHESS. The name of the player/author is Hans Kmoch.
As you probably have heard just from being in chess circles in Croatia, pawn structure and pawn play are everything in chess. The pawn game holds everything on the chess board under its remote control. This book Pawn Power is crystal clear. Mr. Kmoch has condensed everything down and simultaneously shined a sun on the secrets of pawn play from the opening thru to the endgame.
GM Kmoch enlightens the reader about an element of pawn play that I don't believe I have seen explained as well in any other publication, other than Yuri Averbak's (5 volume) Endgame Series. Once again Mr. Averbak is from your neck of the woods. But to continue the element of pawn play mentioned above, the strategic and tactical advancement of all pawns. Mr. Kmoch's book in this particular aspect rivals another classic book that I also highly recommend you read, MY SYSTEM, by Aaron Nimzowitsch.
I hope this helps.
ivan2908> The reason is that I have overwhelming will to learn and it can be contraproductive so I start and leave unfinished all sorts of chess aspects ;
I have the same problem. I am fascinated by endgames. In fact, I have a book on my shelf I am dying to finish called "Secrets of Rook Endings" by Nunn. It's 400 pages on K+R+P vs K+R. It's easy for me to binge on endgames, totally neglect other aspects of the game, and see my strength drop because I haven't been doing my daily tactics.
I've found a couple tricks help me focus:
1. Set S.M.A.R.T. goals--those are specific, measurable, attainable, results-oriented, and time-bound. Shorter-term goals are more motivating than longer-term ones.
Instead of, "I need to reach 2000 in a year." I go for, "I signed up for the 1st chess.com tournament in two weeks... my goal is to finish 1st or 2nd in my group." or "I signed up for the World Open in six weeks... my goal is to score one of the trophies."
The first goal tends to focus me on all the areas of chess that need improvement, which for most players is every area. The second and third goals tend to focus me on the practical things I need to do now to move up, eg maybe my challenge now is occasional lapses in tactics, often due to time trouble because I don't have a solid opening repertoire for White and I play the opening very slowly.
If you have a hard time being objective about what you need to work on, meeting with a coach after your major milestones makes sense. After all, we're only talking maybe 6-12 of those/year and even if you are objective the keen insight of a player 400 points above you may shed more light on why you lose games.
2. Whenever I feel like changing my study plan, I go hiking or swimming while I bat around the thought. Fitness is useful for strong tournament play, and us amateurs spend way too much time debating which book is 'perfect' for us rather than reading the 'very good' books we already have. By the time I'm done exercising usually I've convinced myself to just finish the darn book I was already reading. ;)
I have gotten to where I am (although not that great I probably play about 1800 strength otb) through studying master games, looking at tactics and studying openings that WERE NOT the style of play that I excelled at. When I first started getting more serious I actually was better at the closed positions(likely cause I played the queens gambit as white). After a while I started playing more open games and became a little more proficient tactically. I became to realize that my understanding of closed positions was weak compared to my other skills. So I started playing the closed sicilian as white and started improving there. Then I realized that I wasn't recognizing a lot of positions where sacking/very complicated tactical possibilities came about. So what did I do? I looked at tactics and all that. But, also every time I even thought there MIGHT be a sac in a game I played it no matter if I thought it worked or not. I started to see which ones worked and which ones did not. Now, my endgame is my biggest weakness and I have been going over silmans endgame book.
After saying all that. Work on everything, only have your focus be in one specific area for a certain period of time. An example would be on monday work tactical problems, tuesday look over gm games and try and recognize tactics(or just see them as they play out) wednesday work on some endgame study, Thursday play some on the board games, Friday look back over your games and see if you (and or) your opponent missed some tactical shots. The emphasis that week would obviously be tactics .
I started to play chess now more then three years ago, because all my friends did so. I knew only chess rules then (en passant exluded
) and they were slaughtering me and making jokes. I then got Chessmaster 10th and started to learn from academy out of revenge. After year and a half, there was no point to play with them anymore because I could win 10 games in a row or more against each of them. So my goal was completed but while trying to achieve it I've fallen in love with the game. So I wished to improve more and know more.
I started to learn more with puzzles, tactics servers and two books, Logical chess (Chernev) and Amateurs mind (Silman) and eventually went to some 1700 or a bit more OTB strength (do not have my own rating but I score 50% against players of that range)
But in the last half year I didn't improve at all (except 3 and 5 blitz games). The reason is that I have overwhelming will to learn and it can be contraproductive so I start and leave unfinished all sorts of chess aspects ;
one week I "realize" that endgame is the key for me at this level. I will master each piece in isolation, so I will understand their full potential in other parts of the game, I will learn to use my rooks in most effective way, I will master opposition, outflanking, triangulation, Philidor and Lucena positions, I will get better in deep calculations...
but then the next week... "maybe I neglected my tactical training" so I log on to CTS and do tons of fast tactics, the other day I go for slow puzzles, then I read chapter from the book and mr. Silman convinces me that I took the wrong road; I must to master strategical ideas in order to let the tactics arise. Then I log on to FICS only to lose from cheap opening trap and start to memorize openings.
Then, I totally stop to learn, log in to some correspodence chess site, start 50 games and blitz them. So after I lose 5 games by silly blunder, I resign all games in frustration and I am at beginning again.
So, my problem is not laziness, but total lack of methodological plan of improvement. I have start a lot of euphorical threads here on how do I plan to improve but now, I just do not know how.
I would like for strong players (if they have time to bother) to post their ideas and plans, how would they study, how DID they study to reach these nice chess heights.
So some of us maybe can use whole your plan and post our improvement on, say monthly basis. If it is a bad plan, we can just take another. I would be happy to reach 2000 within 3 years.
Advices can start to flow...
Thx