How do I raise my rating

Study, play, analyze, repeat.

Beat more players and lose to less of them!

First of all, visualization is the most hardest skill in chess. It is the most important skill even to GM's. I am not an expert but I can share you 1 tips I am doing right now. These are the steps on visualization that I am currently doing right now.

Step 1: Imagine that all of pieces in the board have a special power like shadowcat in XMen. They can move wherever they want but they are only limited by their movements.

Step 2: Eliminate all of the possible places they can move because of certain limitations. There are two types of limitations, absolute and temporary.

Absolute limitations are checks, and absolute pin.

Regarding Checks you can do the following: Capture the Attacker, Block the Attacker or Move your King away from the Attacker

Absolute Pin makes the pinned piece can't move as long as the King is on the Attacking Piece View if the pinned piece will move. If the pinned piece becomes important to your play you can either add another blockage, Capture the Attacker or Move your King away from the Attacker's Control Squares if your piece move.

Temporary limitations are limitations other than Absolute Limitations.

Step 3: Make a Plan Based on Step 1 and Step 2. Try to navigate the board by means of eliminating limitations while making opponent's pieces movements limited. The more powerful your pieces than your opponent the better.

Step 4: If Your Opponent's Piece Becomes more powerful than your piece, do not hesitate to trade those pieces. It is better to eliminate threats as soon as possible if you know that your piece will not become more powerful than that piece in the whole game.

Step 5: If Your Piece is more powerful than your opponent, do not trade your piece for their weak piece.

Step 6: If you find a tactics or mating pattern, always make sure that your opponent cannot counter attack after you move. Mating pattern that includes sacrifice are very dangerous if you did not plan it exhaustively.

That's all.

I suggest studying with your own pace.

Try to play a game first.

After that look for the things that you don't understand.

In those scenario, try to play against a computer until you give up.

If you haven't learned anything, try to look lessons on other sources that describes those scenarios.

After that, try to play against the computer again to test if you learned something from those lessons.

If you succeeded, try next problem.

If not, try to seek out help from other players or a coach is better.

If you can't. Try to study GM games with the same opening of your game. (You can imitate their moves, if you want. I know for sure you can learn a lot from them.)

If you ran out of inspiration or feel that your game is going stale, try to Watch Computer Championship and try to predict all of one of the engines moves or watch Chess Recap from World Chess Championship.

You can also try to listen to music while playing if you are bored playing chess.

by winning games bozo