How to improve chess skills

Hi all, I know this question has been asked many times but still I am confused about it. I am a beginner (Blitz Rating - 750 , Tactics - 1000, Online Chess - 1250) and I have been playing chess for around 6 months. I want to know about some discreet ways to improve my game.Everybody advises different things like tactics, end game, reading books, memorizing openings & analyzing masters game.  I have also read a book "Bobby Fischer teaches chess" and liked it. But my game is not improving significantly since last 2-3 months. Can some expert please guide me in right direction. Thanks for your help!

Follow a few simple rules like:

Opening Principles:

1. Control the center squares – d4-e4-d5-e5

2. Develop your minor pieces toward the center – piece activity is the key

3. Castle

4. Connect your rooks

 

Pre Move Checklist

1. Make sure all your pieces are safe.

2. Look for forcing move: Checks, captures, threats. You want to look at ALL forcing moves (even the bad ones) this will force you look at, and see the entire board.

3. If there are no forcing moves, you then want to remove any of your opponent’s pieces from your side of the board.

4. If your opponent doesn’t have any of his pieces on your side of the board, then you want to improve the position of your least active piece. 

A life saving beginners tips- Castle and don't recklessly advance the pawns in front of your king. Those 3 pawns can act as a shield for your king and if they're advanced too far and/ or destroyed your king can be extremely vulnerable to attack. It's okay to advance one or two of them a square forward, but always think before you advance any of those guys!

just read chess books and practice

Set a balanced routine study plan. Determine how much time you have in a day or week then divide it up into tactical exercises, openings/opening principles, endgame, reviewing master games. Use websites, books, however you wish. Set aside playing time too. Let's say you have two hours a day. Do tactics for 20 minutes, then look over a master game, maybe one that uses an opening you play or want to learn. After that read or work in endgames with an engine, then sit down and play a game. Then afterwards analyze it by yourself, look for your mistakes. Then run it through an engine or even better ask others to look it over for their input.

Constant study and playing is ideal, even if in small amounts. Enjoy!

Once you are good at tactics you will be good at chess. Just practise.

Thats is all relative.  And it depends on what your defintion of "good" is.  

Tactics are simply 1 part of the game.  

Noone really knows how the human brain works and how it learns certain things. I think the brain connects basic knowledge and draws conclusions itself. The same in chess. Once you fully unterstand the rules, learn the mechanics of all pieces and get really good at how they work together, at tactics, then you will over time and study understand how the rest of the game works.

Possibly helpful:

Simple Attacking Plans by Fred Wilson (2012)

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708090402/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review874.pdf

Logical Chess: Move by Move by Irving Chernev (1957)

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708104437/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/logichess.pdf

The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played by Irving Chernev (1965)

https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/tag/most-instructive-games-of-chess-ever-played/

Winning Chess by Irving Chernev and Fred Reinfeld (1949)

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708093415/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review919.pdf

Discovering Chess Openings by GM John Emms (2006)

https://web.archive.org/web/20140627114655/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen91.pdf

Openings for Amateurs by Pete Tamburro (2014)

http://kenilworthian.blogspot.com/2014/05/review-of-pete-tamburros-openings-for.html

Chess Endgames for Kids by Karsten Müller (2015)

https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/tag/chess-endgames-for-kids/

A Guide to Chess Improvement by Dan Heisman (2010)

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708105628/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review781.pdf

All of those are great, but they're too long and not comprehensive enough. For the most concise and comprehensive advice you'll ever find, click here:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/comprehensive-advice-for-improving-your-game

Thanks guys for your response. It seems like balanced study plan is the best thing for me as suggested by 'Candidate35'. Also I am going to order Logical chess by Irving Chernev.

FM Jackmate (Post No. 8) has given the best answer.

If you want to study then forget checklists of things to look at at every move (too slow and if you don't have the knowledge of chess patterns it won't help anyway).  And forget "General principles" and "Chess proverbs".  There are principles, but they don't enable you to find good moves, they only suggest where to look. 

To get a basic understanding you have two tasks:

1. Get good at tactics.  Use chess.com's on-line trainer or any of dozens of books of tactical puzzles.  Do lots and lots of these, and do not be satisfied with just spotting the idea. That is a start, but to be of practical use you need to be able work out the main line and what happens in attempts to avoid it.

2. Learn basic endings (including basic checkmates with reduced material)

 

And when you are on your way to being comfortable with those basics then, as GM Nigel Davies advises: "Immerse yourself in chess culture":

 

p.s. I happen to think that "Logical chess move by move" is a seriously misguided book, and if you are not careful it will saddle you with gross misconceptions about how to choose a move or plan.  The book's big USP Is that every move is "explained" ... but they are not.  For one thing you cannot "understand" why certain opening lines are played without knowing the history of the opening, and that is not something that can be "explained" in a paragraph or two.  In the effort to say something about every move what is said is often trite, obvious, misleading or plain wrong. This is not the way that an efficient and effective chess mind actually works.  

In reality most chess thought happens subconsciously.  To become strong at chess the real challenge is to train the subconscious mind.

One can see some discussion of the pros and cons of Chernev's Logical Chess at:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140627132019/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman118.pdf

http://exeterchessclub.org.uk/content/logical-chernev

http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2013/01/logical-chess-book-review.html

http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2013/02/chernevs-errors.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708104437/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/logichess.pdf

http://theweekinchess.com/john-watson-reviews/assorted-recent-books

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708091057/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review465.pdf

"If you find an opening here that appeals to you and you wish to find out more about it, the next step would be to obtain an introductory text devoted entirely to that subject." - GM John Emms in his 2006 introduction to basic opening principles, Discovering Chess Openings

"Throughout the book Emms uses excellently chosen examples to expand the readers understanding of both openings and chess in general. Thus equipped the student can carry this knowledge forward to study individual openings and build an opening repertoire. ... For beginning players, this book will offer an opportunity to start out on the right foot and really get a feel for what is happening on the board." - FM Carsten Hansen, reviewing the 2006 Emms book

https://web.archive.org/web/20140627114655/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen91.pdf

tactics are 90% of chess

Definitely not true.

While it IS true, that if you have zero tactical skills, you'll lose 90%+ of your games, it is absolutely not true that having strong tactics alone will let you win most of your games.

 

If you have no positional ability, opening knowledge, or endgame sense, you will not even get a chance to use your tactics when playing against intermediate-level players.

 kindaspongey has done us all a favour with his links to reviews of "Logical Chess Move by Move".  Now any beginner considering buying it can check out a range of opinions and make an informed decision, rather than being swayed by unadulterated praise for it.

 

I admit that I enjoyed reading this book as a beginner and only with hindsight did I see that  might have gone further sooner as a chess player if I had started with something more correct. There is no questioning Chernev's sincerity, enthusiasm and devotion to chess.  And the games themselves are very well chosen as models from which to learn.

 

Nevertheless, looking back, as a moderately good player, I know that it gave me all kinds of wrong  idea,s the worst being that you can find good moves by the application of general principles.

 

Here is what John Watson had to say about it:

 "My only warning would be that the impressionable student should be gently reminded by a friend or mentor that most of the rules and principles Chernev so dogmatically states do not actually have any consistent validity in real-world chess, so that the book should be looked at as a way to get started thinking about positions, not as a reliable guideline to what chess is really about. With that proviso, I would recommend it heartily to anyone just starting to explore the game, and therefore, to scholastic chess teachers as well."  (my emboldening)

 

For me it would have been better to have started with something tougher and as  I was completely enthralled by chess at the time I did not need to be chivvied along by Chernev's enthusiasm.  What actually improved my chess more than anything at the beginning were three books by that other great enthusiast Fred Reinfeld:

 

1001 Winning chess sacrifices and combinations

1001 Brilliant ways to checkmate

Practical Endgame Play

 

As for Chernev, he wrote many other chess books besides "Logical Chess ... " and "The Most Instructive Games ..." and most of them cannot be criticised for what I think is the serious flaw of those two.  Some I greatly enjoyed, learned from, and that did not oversimplify for the sake of commenting every move were:

"Capablanca's Best Chess Endings"

"200 Brilliant endgames"

"Twelve Great Chess Players and their Best Games"

 

Bottom line is that you do not learn to play strong chess chess by consciously memorising and applying principles.  You do it by exposing your mind to many examples of chess, making yourself formulate plans and calculate variations both in study and in play, and letting the subconscious mind work it all out.

What we need to do is to present the subconscious with the right material, in the right quantities, at the right time. Of course we re all different, so the optimum sequence of learning varies from person to person, but I think for most of us, at least until well beyond the beginner stage, we could find a method (quence, content) that is good enough, even if slightly sub-optimal. Whatever the merits or otherwise of Chernev's "Logical Chess Move by Move" it certainly is not that near-optimal instruction method.

 

So I have a question.  Can anyone suggest  a book that is?

Because of those differences from one person to another, it seems to me that there may not be such a thing as a generally optimal book. Many seem to think that, for a particular beginner, there is a good chance that the Logical book is close enough to optimal for that particular beginner. ("I would caution you that this and other maxims are not to be blindly followed. In chess, as in life, rules must often be swept aside." - Chernev (1957)) Perhaps GM John Nunn fixed up the worst of the problems while preparing the algebraic version.

Simple Attacking Plans by Fred Wilson (2012)

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708090402/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review874.pdf

is an alternative that I often mention. For those with a little more experience, I sometimes suggest Simple Chess by GM Michael Stean.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708104258/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review400.pdf

I think reading book about chess is to boring , better learn some basics on middle game and ending. Also tactics help alot  

Thanks guys for your help. Though I am more confused now about my second Chess book (First was 'Bobby fischer teaches Chess') but I think I should focus on tactics and endgames for now.