How Did You Improve at Chess?

I am a 1200 elo player ready to begin pursuing my chess goal of eventually reaching 1800 elo rapid. I recognize this will not be a quick or easy journey, and will involve smaller steps.

I am asking players at or above 1800 rapid, or even between 1200-1800, to describe your own chess improvement journey. What helped you improve? Was it an opening, a book, a coach, an online resource, a study method?

Hopefully this discussion will be a valuable insight for myself and others in a similar position. Improving at chess can be a bit overwhelming, especially if you're alone.

To give an idea of where I am currently, I have selected the French Defense and Vienna as my main openings. To learn these openings, I have a book on the French and have also located a few amazing lectures of these openings on YouTube. For developing skills in tactics and strategy, I plan on analyzing master games or watching masters play in videos. I also have Silman's Endgame book. I have not begun a structured study method with what I have mentioned yet. Feel free to critique this learning approach or opening selection.

Are you more a tactical or strategical player? It is importatnt for choice of your openings.

Slightly above the rating you're aiming for, but haven't been for long. 1200 is a trap for a lot of players - it can be very challenging to break out of that zone - but it's already a very good achievement in chess.

Everyone's chess journey and our strengths and weaknesses are different, so it may be simply easier to try to explain what I think I do differently from when I was your rating a few years ago.

* Openings - I love opening theory, I'm a proper nerd for it. If you enjoy memorizing them and finding hidden traps, go for it. However, at some point, I knew I needed to start understanding the ideas associated with the early middle games in the openings I regularly play, as this makes decision-making a lot easier.

* Calculation - Calculation is a very important skill in chess, and while you can go very far on intuition alone, certainly when playing longer time formats (rapid and classical) you need to focus on calculation. I started training this by beginning with getting much more proficient at calculating forced or semi-forced sequences, and then by doing chess puzzles from old chess books (i.e. without the engine and without knowing if my lines were correct until I'd seen them through to the end, unlike on chess.com where you get instant feedback). Maxime Blokh's puzzle book is excellent for this.

* Endgames - I'm guilty of still not having studied these enough, but it's hard to understate how important these become. When hanging a piece in one move stops being the most common way of deciding the fate of a game, a lot of your games enter endgames. Knowing the fundamentals helps a lot to convert these positions (particularly in low-time situations where calculation isn't an option). King and pawn endgames are a MUST.

* Time management - If you ever watch top players play, you'll note the games almost always end in time scrambles. This is because they focus most of their time into the early middlegame - because this is where games are won or lost. Use your time wisely in the first 10 or so moves once you're out of theory especially.

I'm sure there's plenty else I've learnt, but these are the ones that spring to mind at 11pm on a random wednesday. Good luck with your journey, and please reach out if you have more questions.

I have not found my chess style yet. I expect to find it when I have progressed to perhaps the 1400 range and have learned about some chess masters' styles. 
I have the feeling that the French Defense is a great opening for me. I don't really have that feeling for the Vienna, especially with the Bishop's Opening Vienna Hybrid lines, but I have much to learn in that variation. I have considered playing 1.d4 with the Queen's Gambit before, but was intimidated by the many variations as well as the KID and Nimzo-Indian.

I still need an opening against the Sicilian and something for black against 1.d4. I was thinking about the QGD because of its similarities to the French. I have explored Benonis in the past as well.

I played a lot of games, did puzzles and improved my repertoire

I ate some cheese and then ate a Big Mac

To get better at chess just eat 10 Big Mac a day /j

For me it was a combination of experience, leveled expectations, good state of mind followed by taking a break when not doing well emotionally, analyzing every game, play slower time controls almost exclusively, play a little bit of puzzles daily, study all stages of chess to understand the ideas, and lastly I always try to prove myself wrong on every plan i may have and think of ways my opponent could counter it and if i genuinely can't think of any then i go ahead and play the moves. all the things i listed are how i got to 1700 rating

Never improved

I have been playing chess for 20+ years and never tried to improve

I got to 1200 myself and I am not really sure about how I improved. Like I just learned stuff started implementing and voila there you go. I will try to explain the way I think I improved. I just looked at the puzzle looked at what caused me to have such a great advantage which means a greater pattern recognition in weaknesses, looked at why the sequence was the best and why not the others, and after the puzzle I would try to understand how to prevent it from happening to me. I will give you a tip that has carried me to 1200. Look at the opponent’s side of the board and see if you can attack something . The things you can attack are small so you don’t have to calculate much. Weaknesses are king safety, pieces with loose defense/s, and pawns/squares If you are going to attack the king then king safety, pawns/squares and loose defense of pieces are things you should look for and if you attack anything, but the king then everything except king safety. If I find atleast one of these weaknesses I will do cca(checks, captures, and attacks) and consider the most insane ones if they bring the king out or if it looks like I can get a defensively loose piece. If I want to get a pawn that looks weak I either

I was worried it would get too long for the application. I either open files , lines, diagonals and if I successfully attack it and they successfully defend then I try to make another weakness to make the overextended defense on one side weak on the other. We talk about these in my club. The International Club Of The Chess School. And yes the “the” is part of the name and it is not international, yet and also I know it is a very bad time to advertise it, but if you want to learn more and ask more questions I would like to answer in the club. Or if you don’t like joining here in forums.

And if you ask me why I know all of thess and I am still am a 1200 I am too lazy to play any games. Actually maybe I should play some.

Join the club “The International Club Of The Chess World”. You get to learn things that are like what I said there, but I probably won’t come up with it so just ask me in the club. Or just ask in forums if you don’t like joining want to join.

I made most of my progress as a teenager , then took a 20 year break.
There is one moment of my teenage years that I remember very well. I spent a whole week reading the book "Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy, Advances since Nimzowitz" by John Watson.
It gave me a completely different view of chess. I could feel I was stronger after that week.
I then went back to my club and improved from 1600 to 1800 national rating in a couple months. I have a physical copy of this book but I also bought a digital copy on Chessable , because I believe rereading this book will still teach me a lot.

I'm 1250 right now, up from 950 at the start of the year. I play one game per day (more on weekends), review all of my games, and do about 30-60 minutes of puzzles each day. I mostly play Jobava and Caro Kann positions, so I watch a lot of Alex Banzea on youtube since he favors those openings. But I'd say the vast majority of my improvement comes from my just playing and analyzing and having a positive mindset.

Learn exactly how to think in the opening, middlegame and endgame — this is what I teach.
Always blunder-check your moves.
Solve tactics in the right way.
Analyze your games.
Study games of strong players.
Learn how to be more psychologically resilient.
Work on your time management skills.
Get a coach if you can.

I think the best way is to use chessmood website-

It has courses on openings, tactics, positional chess, endgames

It actually helped me improve my rating a lot

plus a friend showed me a link to get 20 percent off- ?r=ChessParent

And I also used to have problem with time management so I started writing my time on my scoresheets or online I used to look at the time management after the game .

Yep