Help with study plan

Thanks for the kind words.  For what it's worth, the Diamond membership here is maybe the best $100 investment I've ever made.  I understand people's reluctance to go for it.  We all have chess book collections and we all know that if we could just find some way of getting that knowledge off the pages of the books and into our heads, we would improve immensely.  Unfortunately it takes a commitment that most of us just can't accomplish.  ChessMentor is a much more efficient way of transmitting chess knowledge.  I also realize that because of all the crappy chess videos on youtube, people may be a little leary of the ones on chess.com. Believe me; they are of much higher quality.  I know I sound like I'm shilling for Chess.com, but it really is my sincere opinion.   

Back when it was (briefly) available, I shelled out for Lifetime Diamond membership as an early Christmas gift to myself. At first, it seemed a bit daunting price-wise, but then I reflected on what my friends were shelling out to finance their golf & fishing pastimes in a given year. No brainer! 

Also, in a somewhat related story, our resident Directors of Content are creating a series of "Study Plans" even as we speak, specific to different skill-levels and designed to organize the site's learning tools into a coherent plan to up your game! No ETA yet, but it should be very useful.

If you just read books, it's not going to sink in. Chess theory is like math ; you have to do lots of problems based on those ideas in order to internalize them. I think that's another reason why people always recommend doing tactical problems. It's not that opening and positional understanding isn't important but in most cases you are just reading books on those subjects and not working on any problems. When you work on tactical problems, your mind is more engaged.

With chess mentor, you actually do work on opening and positional problems and I would like to see more puzzle books besides the usual on tactics & mates.

 You mean you paid that $595.00 that eric offered?

There are quite a few decent books in there. I think that for maximum improvement, you should pick one book, put the rest away, and then work with that one book for a few months. Analyze everything out, question everything, dream about the positions in the book.

That works much better than just reading them like you would read a novel and then moving to the next one.

Also, for annotated master games, there are a lot of online sources as well (news reports about tournaments, for instance).

And the most important things for improvement you can't get from a book:

1. Practice, practice, practice

2. (probably the most important) Figure out what you are doing wrong. Analyze your games to death. Find out what it is you need to improve on.

3. Tactics training, can be had online nowadays much better than from a book

Great collection, indeed. I don't know all of them.

1 additionnal comment: not all of those books are good for the level of chess you are playing, so I would start out with the books appropiate for your level (I added approximate elo levels to some books).

I would study 2 books at a time: 1 middle game and 1 ending book, so if you get bored with ending, study the middlegame and vice versa.

Start out with these:

Fundamental Chess Endings- Karsten Mueller

Secrets of Pawn Endings- Also by Meuller

The Middlegame part 1 and 2 by Euwe and Kramer (1500-1800)

Practical Rook Endings-Korchnoi

When you finished those you'll be ready for:

My System-Aron Nimzowitztch (1800+ - more a curiosity than a learning book)

Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual (1900-2300 - great book, but hard to read)

Attacking Manual 1 and 2-Jacob Aagard (1900-2200 - this book won several prizes, for good reason)

I agree with the recommendation to study two books at once an endgame and a middle-game book.  I would use as my endgame book the Silman book and wouldn't go beyond what he recommends for your rating.  I would also study the vol 1 of the Euwe and Kramer Middlegame book at the same time I studied the Soltis book on pawn structure.  I would compare the two and make note of which structures one covers that the other doesn't and compare what the two books say about each of the common structures.

I find it a bit surprising that almost all comments here are about booktitles and training methods , without asking what the actual problem of not improving is.

You can grind book after book and still be stuck.  there is talk about endgames and such , but this person may not even get there.

First try to determine :

- what goes wrong in your games ( analyze with chess peers, tutors , chess software )

- when something goes wrong.  i.e. time control issues , planning time management etc.

- if something goes wrong, agains what type of players.

- color

-  knowledge shortages opening/ middle/endgame  ( results of the above )

- personal life.  maybe it is not your chess technique, but a simple example of sleep deprivation , private/work related stress etc etc.  You may read a thousand chess books, but unless you resolve things such as this , you may never improve, if these examples prove to be the blockades holding you back.

having read through this shopping list , and you have gotten your answers, you may need to review some of the lessons and books mentioned by the commentators here and move onwards from there. 

first find out, then act