How did you conquer your ratings plateau?

While the purists might dimiss "ratings" as a fake carrot when it comes to chess improvement, most of us will always keep chasing after it, especially for serious OTB play in Federation-rated tournaments.

With that being said => How have some of you overcome a plateau-period in your chess development? Was it reading the right books that made the difference? Was it a coach? Or was it a change of behavior or thinking that took you to the next level?

Just saying "practice" is not an acceptable answer here because that certainly did not explain why you plateau-ed in the first place!

Note that this question is aimed at adults who have rent/mortages/bills to deal with, a full-time job and usually "little" time for study/practice.

Curious to know what people have done.

Thanks in advance!

       I wrote an article about this in my blog titled "Don't worry about your rating".
I haven't overcome my plateau, I reached 1994 (I wanted 2000) and then fell back.
I wish I knew the answer.  My rating does seem to stay very close to my Tactics
Trainer rating, while my Chess Mentor rating is a bit inflated.  I am also not very
good at blitz, which I am new to playing.
          Ultimately for you with an 1897 rating I think endgame study would yield
the best results for your time (go to computer workout and click endgames).
       

 Wonder if it is the same for everyone.  Doubt it.

There are three considerations:

First is positional chess understanding.  Know your position's weaknesses.  See and exploit (or defend) weak squares.  Blockade passed pawns with knights.  That is how most players probably improve - plateau or no.  Be a positional player.

Second is tactics.  Unless we play like Frank Marshall, Paul Morphy and Mikhail Tal there is always room for improvements.  Would you sacrifice your queen as Morphy and Tal always did (or Frank Marshall in his immortal game)?  Would you like to play opponents who love making queen sacrifices against you?

Third is playing over the games of a World Champion to develop your own technique.  To play the openings like Marshall and Korchnoi, the middle game like Tal and Fischer and the endings like Karpov and Capablanca you would have to look at their games. 

Shivsky - obviously everyone is different, zankfrappa's advice takes no account of your actual play.

I think the first thing to do with your limited time is make a very critical analysis of your own play. I'd suggest analysing some of your recent games very thoroughly and noting where you got let down most.

Then you'll be better able to target your limited study time on to your main weakness(es).

Good answers ... keep 'em coming. Would be nice to hear some more "personal" experiences as well. 

I'd be more interested hearing about plateaus during one's Federation-based OTB tournament adventures than online servers like Chess.com or ICC where the ratings are quite suspect.

 BE GOOD WITH OPENING THEORY BE GOOD WITH OPENING THEORY BE GOOD WITH OPENING THEORY. Seriously, if you are struggeling from the beginning moves of a game. You will struggle to play the midgame and endgame correctly.

as for my own plateau. i overcame it by changing my approach to chess. a little over a year ago, i would play hundreds of games to thousands at the same time. i thought the more game experience i had, the better i would become, but at that time i was stuck around 1870 and never seemed to go up and down. Were my games a total failuere? of course not, it helped me show what opening i am comfortable playing and showed my things like my preferences. i took a hiatus and i started to play again, only this time my approach was different:

although i still havent plateaud right now, and my rating is still coming, i know it will be beyond what it was the first time i played. I am playing tougher opponents, and that is really a must. Not impossibly hard, but i find i learn the most playing people about 150 point ahead of me.

on chess.com the best things i think to do is to join a vote chess team with stronger players than you are. You will see how it is they think and approach situations, and you will pick up on it fast. Suggest a move each time after you think about it hard! they will tell you what is wrong with your move, and more how your mindset should be, that is the thing that will definitely help you the most.seeing your own problems and what is better. its great.

the next best thing i think you can do it to analyze your own games! I suggest analyzing your best wins against strong opponents (usually you probably did some very strong play to do it, which means you have it in you), more importantly your near loss games. If you can see how you could have improved in a game just slightly and turned the tables, you will be able to help yourself a lot.

i think these things will help you. I feel motivated now, im going to analyze some of my own games now! thanks for the motivation!!!

Very inspiring post, tournamentguy :)

I spent 2 years learning to avoid obvious mistakes. That is if you play me you will have to find a way to beat me without a large material advantage.

Now I almost never give away material. To win you have to beat me positionally. I find people sometimes turn a pawn advantage into a win. Or they win in a close endgame.

Simple as "Avoid obvious mistakes. Took me years of trying to actuallly get there with this simple goal in mind.

Great topic, great question.

For me, overcoming a plateau was a matter of changing the way I think about chess.  I was in a rut, playing the same openings and same opponents game after game.  I figured that if I wanted to change the way I play, I needed to change what and who I played.

So, I picked up a couple of new opening books and learned only the basics of the theory and middle game plans.  Nothing heavy, just a quick read on a couple of new (to me) opening systems.  Then I played through some (quite a few, actually) master quality games to get an idea of how really good players dealt with the types of positions that came up.  Finally, I played these new ideas against my usual opponents at my chess club, and looked for new opponents on-line. 

It was amazing to me how quickly I could dust the cobwebs out of my chess vision by simply forcing myself to play a different style of game.  At first I didn't do as well as I thought I should, but after awhile I noticed that I was thinking about different ideas over the chessboard.  When I finally played OTB in a tournament I was very pleased with my results.  For the longest time it seemed that I was destined to stay at or around the 1600-1650 level.  Now I'm flirting with 1800 and enjoying the variety of games and the confidence of being comfortable with a wider range of game styles.

Thanks for initiating this thread!  I look forward to seeing more ideas! 

A good personal life is something that can help :-)

I would say you have to see what is the weak point in your game. For me I could play very well but would always lose because of some eventual blunder. Once I reduced those, I was getting the same great positions but didn't give my opponent so many chances to get back in the game. What makes a regular master (2200) so good is not necessarily the brilliance of play like kasparov or something, but how solid he is at everything. He has no obvious weaknesses, he's pretty much good at everything, and rarely makes major mistakes. Obviously at GM level tiny mistakes can turn out very bad, but that's a totally different game. He'll either outplay the strong amateur, or if he's unlucky and things happen the other way around the amateur very often cracks big or small which is why the master wins the vast majority of the time. I'd say he doesn't have a weak point, just a less great one. I have studied the positional elements of chess because it is my favorite part, but it's analysis skills and tactics that in most games helps you carry out your plan the best, avoid errors and pounce on tactical mistakes.

This is a great thread. Let's keep it going. Inquiring minds wanna know!

My plateau was a lot lower than most people (around 1100 FICS, which I'd guess is around 900 USCF), but what helped me was two things:

1) Committing to spending equal amounts of time studying and playing. (Studying includes watching videos, reading, and using training software).

2) Coming up with a plan for when I did play. My current plan is to go through cycles of 3 blitz games (which I hate, but some trainers recommend forcing yourself to play anyway), 3 standard games, annotate them all, and then study five master games.  When I get through with the cycle, I can go back to the beginning.

3) Keeping a blog where I post all my annotated games and comments. Nobody else would ever want to read it, but it acts as a diary and keeps me accountable to myself for annotating. When I annotate, I include Crafty computer analysis and I look up the opening in Modern Chess Openings to see where I could have done better. I do this for *every* game (more or less).

Amen to that!  It's amazing how much you can learn from serious study of your own games, especially (in my case) the losses.   

From my (many) blunders I've learned not just tactics but also where some of my personal blind spots and weaknesses are.   That's invaluable.

Most of the best chess teachers I've read insist that for players below 2000, removing weaknesses and mistakes is much, much, much more important than adding new knowledge and strengths.

I'll add to what I think is the most worthwhile theme on this thread (for me, anyway).  Do not blunder.  It sounds obvious, but you can make 50 brilliant moves, and one blunder will lose you the game against a solid opponent.  I've read my share of books on strategy, planning, and positional advantages, but those ideas cannot and will not improve my chess until I stop making blunders.

Look back on your losses and ask yourself what happened more often: were you ground down positionally, or was there a tactical error that immediately put you in a losing position (usually hanging a piece, losing the exchange, or even a pawn), or was it time trouble?  I've only played in a few tournaments so far, but all of my losses so far have come from blunders, time trouble, or the deadly combination of the two. 

So the two most important things for me to do to improve my chess are remarkably simple.  1. Check each move for blunders, including looking at all checks and captures. 2. Don't run out of time by trying to make the best possible move on every turn, but be satisfied with okay moves.

Shivsky, your situation may be entirely different from mine, but these are both imperatives for me to improve my chess.  Hope this helps.

I really think its about will power, thats how I think I got this far anyways lol. of course theres practice, books and w/e else, but those mean nothing unless you are willing to force yourself to learn how to play correctly. Thats how I see it, this is only my second year of playing chess and this is how i feel i've improved.( my rating is around 2000 on chess.com) of course I still have a long way to go..

Don't worry about your rating.

NOT!

I haven't conquer my plateau yet, but for you, have you ever study your own games and of other grandmaster games maybe that might help.