Study chess all waking hours, pee in bottles.
How to become an expert in Chess?
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Reaching Expert (an expert is a class less than a master) is a reasonable 10 year goal. it won't happen overnight. It doesn't require an encyclopedic knowledge of openings. It does require a basic knowledge of endgames. Mostly it requires a good tactical eye, which can be developed. As to how much you should study endgames I would recommend Silman's Book Complete Endgame Course which will show you how much endgame knowledge you should have at each stage of your development.
I do agree that you should get a life and not let chess become an addiction.
philidor_position wrote:
From my experience, the most rewarding type of study is
studying GM games with a certain repertoire (pick a side & play guess-the-move),
trying to solve problems (either tactics problems, or strategical problems like the ones at Chess Mentor, or How to Reassess your Chess Workbook),
playing slow games with detailed post-mortem analysis (including psychological analysis, like, where you drifted off, where you lost your focus after a slight inaccuracy etc.).
This is not the way to study games. Follow this and you won't see the forrest for the trees. You should take about 15 minutes to play through a game. Most instructive games are Master vs. Amature type, Euwe wrote a book with that name which I highly recommend. Also the games of Paul Morphy are great to study because his opponents weren't that strong.
I think it's always helpful to consider the titles and ratings on the percentile chart rather than
http://www.sizes.com/sports/chess_ratings.htm
These are USCF, but I'm assuming FIDE and others are pretty similar.
To reach expert class, you need to get to be better than 89% of all players who take chess seriously enough to enter rated tournaments. That's a very tall order.
Take the remaining 11%. In order to reach the lowest level of master, you have to be better than about 75% of *those* players. You have to be able to beat an expert about 75% of the time. Have fun chasing that, anyone who wants to :)
sekhar1,
When playing chess, you should definately be playing at slow time controls.
Have you played in a tournament before? If you haven't, I would recommend trying one. The tournaments I have been to have slow time controls (3 hrs/game). Making moves at this speed really helps you to develop your chess ability, because you are forced to analyze your game more thouroughly, and excersize your brain more extensively.
It is hard to find anyone on the internet who is willing to even play G/60. You really don't want to play less than that when you are trying to learn, because learning how to play in time trouble is not something you need to spend time your time with at this point in development and impulsive move making reinforces bad habits. This is why I play Turn-Based chess right now. If you take 15 minutes or so to analyze each position, you will be learning alot more than when you play G/30. I like to analyze a position after my opponent makes their move and then revisit the position later that day or the next day. This really helps develop your analysis skills, and helps me make better moves. :) I don't really think of Online Chess as correspondence (although I do use opening databases) but as a way of playing slow time control chess that is more convenient for my opponent and I, as well as less mentally taxing than playing chess for three hours. Also, it is alot of fun.
Good luck!
Depends on a lot on who you are. I've had friends who play a bit, and study a lot. Personally I don't study at all, but played a lot and looked through my games with people. Playing competativly helps, and reviewing how you did!
I teach chess and its a matter of a balance between playing games and studying. It helps to study an opening or a specific tactic and trying it in a game. You have to have a balance between study and live play.
play and enjoy.forget about becoming an expert/world champion for you have neither time nor the steely heart .
Dec 19, 2010
0
#50
I think for a starter that all you need is the basic endings. Lucena positions, Philador positions, how to mate with Queen or Rook or two Bishops. Learn Bishop + Knight mate later. Start with basic openings, like the Scotch game or Modern Italian game or London System. Hyper-Accelerated Dragon and Nimzo-Indian are good for Black. You definitely need to spend a good deal of time with the TACTICS TRAINER as good tactical awareness will take you a long way. You will need to review your games to see what errors that you are consistently making. GOOD LUCK!
Dec 20, 2010
0
#51
PrawnEatsPrawn wrote:
7 hours a week to go from beginner to expert? you'll never get there. I spent almost every spare minute between ages 13-19 to make expert. 7 hours would have been one days play at the weekend. You want results? think more in terms of 30 hours a week.
An hour a day is completely worthless for most people.
It depends on the quality of the training. Some people watch online broadcasts, or mechanically review one game after another, thus wasting hours and hardly learning anything. 2 years of 1h/day training should take an average person to Expert level.
In fact, I know many people who became Experts without any real studies at all, just by playing a few tournaments. My case was similar, as I got a rating of 2159 after participating in my first two rated tournaments.
Natalia_Pogonina wrote:
PrawnEatsPrawn wrote:
7 hours a week to go from beginner to expert? you'll never get there. I spent almost every spare minute between ages 13-19 to make expert. 7 hours would have been one days play at the weekend. You want results? think more in terms of 30 hours a week.
An hour a day is completely worthless for most people.
It depends on the quality of the training. Some people watch online broadcasts, or mechanically review one game after another, thus wasting hours and hardly learning anything. 2 years of 1h/day training should take an average person to Expert level.
In fact, I know many people who became Experts without any real studies at all, just by playing a few tournaments. My case was similar, as I got a rating of 2159 after participating in my first two rated tournaments.
Yes, I'm sure you know plenty of top chess students, you mix in those circles (the cream rises). Mere mortals will find an hour a day wholly insufficient.
Eric_C wrote:
Natalia_Pogonina wrote:
PrawnEatsPrawn wrote:
7 hours a week to go from beginner to expert? you'll never get there. I spent almost every spare minute between ages 13-19 to make expert. 7 hours would have been one days play at the weekend. You want results? think more in terms of 30 hours a week.
An hour a day is completely worthless for most people.
It depends on the quality of the training. Some people watch online broadcasts, or mechanically review one game after another, thus wasting hours and hardly learning anything. 2 years of 1h/day training should take an average person to Expert level.
In fact, I know many people who became Experts without any real studies at all, just by playing a few tournaments. My case was similar, as I got a rating of 2159 after participating in my first two rated tournaments.
How would one spend that hour?
Psssst! that's the bit you have to pay for.
Spend it wisely.
PrawnEatsPrawn wrote:
Eric_C wrote:
Natalia_Pogonina wrote:
PrawnEatsPrawn wrote:
7 hours a week to go from beginner to expert? you'll never get there. I spent almost every spare minute between ages 13-19 to make expert. 7 hours would have been one days play at the weekend. You want results? think more in terms of 30 hours a week.
An hour a day is completely worthless for most people.
It depends on the quality of the training. Some people watch online broadcasts, or mechanically review one game after another, thus wasting hours and hardly learning anything. 2 years of 1h/day training should take an average person to Expert level.
In fact, I know many people who became Experts without any real studies at all, just by playing a few tournaments. My case was similar, as I got a rating of 2159 after participating in my first two rated tournaments.
How would one spend that hour?
Psssst! that's the bit you have to pay for.
Given how much time that would save me in the long run, I would definitely pay for that secret.
Hey look, Ms. Pogonina doesn't even play here.....
.... you figure out the rest that motivates her to say that anyone can make expert from only an hour a day.
Hint: Self-promotion.
fncll wrote:
Everyone has to make a living :)
Sure.
p.s. I have a body-building course available that will turn you into Charles Atlas in only ten minutes a day. Kick sand in those bullies' faces!
fncll wrote:
You should advertise in comic books. Get rich!
You get it. 
beardogjones wrote:
The best way to improve at chess is to play through the games of masters
and grandmasters. Playing a lot against humans and strong computers that
can provide feedback is also an important task. Rigorous physical conditioning
so that you are always a lean mean machine is an important and also overlooked
part of training. Finally tactical exercises and chess problems can
quickly improvr your skill.
p
Hi there! It takes a lot of effort and your time to become world chess champion. If you want to become serious with chess, you must enroll in a chess mentoring program with a master. That way, you will learn the fundamentals of chess because spending your time studying these aspect of the game is time-consuming. If you have a mentor, you will know the techniques directly from those who have done it for a living. Then, play a lot of tournaments in your area. When you find yourself unchallenged in your local tournaments, that's the time to bring your chess outside of your city or country.
Dec 21, 2010
0
#60
PrawnEatsPrawn wrote:
Hey look, Ms. Pogonina doesn't even play here.....
.... you figure out the rest that motivates her to say that anyone can make expert from only an hour a day.
Hint: Self-promotion.
And why should I? I am not a correspondence player, neither do I want to play blitz anywhere online - for now.
Also, I didn't say "anyone". But most people can. And the fact that you have failed miserably doesn't mean that you can bully people at forums and tell them that it's impossible to progress that fast because you couldn't. I know MANY people who went from knowing the rules to 2000+ in two years, so why discourage readers?
As to your pathetic attemps to insult me or bring up analogies of people who boast about something or promise unrealistic things - a) I am talking about regular people, not only those who made it to the world's top b) I don't see anything bad about the fact that I have been playing elite events from my childhood (if that's what you are accusing me of). That's just a fact, a page that can't be ripped out of the book. Nothing to be especially proud of, but definetely nothing to be ashamed of c) I am not a coach, and I have declined a myriad of coaching offers in my life. I dedicate some of my time to promoting the game by answering dozens of people's questions every week for free (via e-mail, DMs, at forums, social networks, weekly FAQs, etc.), thus your claim of self-promotion or trying to "sell someone the secret" shows how superficial and evil your judgements are, nothing else. 
sekhar1,
To become a master at chess is itself a lifelong commitment, with no guarantees of financial success. One would need to become addicted, self-centred, and anti-social. These negative social attributes are necessary, because most of your time will be consumed by chess theory, practice, analysis, tournament play etc...it takes a great many hours to become average at chess, and maybe twice time that to become good at chess. To become a Master will be even much longer. The question is "how good in chess do you really want to become?" It may be a better decision to focuss on your professional training, and study chess as an interest/hobby. We hear about Magnus Carlsen (GM at 13), and wish to follow in his footsteps, but for every one prodigy, there are countless of "failures" who have invested so much time into chess, and cannot show anything for it in return. Only a handful of GMs make a living from chess, the rest have to find "a real job" in order to make end meet...so it is a great risk to invest so much of one's life into something where the end result is very uncertain.