I am stuck around 1200, how can I improve?

Hello everyone,

I have been playing for some time, used to play when I was a kid, returned back during pandemic and had an on and off relationship since. I mostly play 10 min rapid games, anything longer is kind of hard for me to focus fully since I have ADHD. Anything shorter feels like I am rushing thinking sometimes, so after some trial and error I found out 10 mins was ideal for me.

Recently I returned to playing again, and it went so good for a while, I reached +1250 with ease. However, I got  stuck afterwards between 1100-1200.

Apart from playing, I sometimes casually do some puzzles, and rarely go and look up openings if I feel like I am struggling against a certain opening a lot. Also, I try to analyze every game I played to see my mistakes with the engine, where I look at key moments. 

My question is, how can I get better and reach around 1500? 

Thank you in advance!

You have to do puzzles every day, make sure that you are taking your time to calculate everything before making the move. Even if it seems obvious, calculate  all the checks captures and attacks in that order. It may seem boring but is crucial for improvement. It will help you :

- stop making one move blunders and start seeing your opponent's threats

- get better at seeing opportunities and blunders that your opponent made

- start finishing off winning positions

- get better at calculation

- feel more confident

This is the process I used to lift me from mid 1200's to 1500 without any extra studying! Just 2 hours of puzzles per week, spread out into 20 minute sessions every day and a few rapid games.

It may feel like you are stuck, but trust me, you will be able to get way ahead of the crowd doing this in no time if you do it right!

Another tip is to ignore every opponent's rating. have a healthy disrespect. I assume that right now, If you see a 1400 you think it's already over, but you should be thinking: "He's only 1400, I can take him down" and bring your best game.

Just remember, 1200 is a common plateau and from here improving will take effort and actual training! But don't worry, you got this.

Good luck on your improvement journey, and if this process works after a few weeks mae sure to let me know! I would love to see you breaking 1300 and beyond.

#2 all that information is good, https://www.chess.com/blog/KingsideCastleNotation/how-i-got-2000-a-guide-for-you here is a blog I made with my general advice.

#2 Thank you the advice, I'll make sure to work on puzzles more and spend more time on that. I'll let you know how it worked out for me!

#3, loved reading it, inspired me to push more. Thank you!

Wow, @Melvolyn, your story sound almost exactly like mine! I started off playing chess online a year ago, and increased in rating slowly but surely until I hit 1250 a few months ago. I have a lot of other hobbies, so I don't focus on chess that much, and I found that was my peak, until I started to work on a few of the habits the other commenters mentioned. I haven't played rapid in a good bit, but I've been training for it (I hit a new high in puzzles earlier today!) several ways, including practicing my 3-0 blitz just to get better at handling low time situations as I generally like to think the entire ten minutes lol

Dear Melvolyn,

I'm a certified, full-time chess coach, so I hope I can help you. Everybody is different, so that's why there isn't only one given way to learn and improve.

First of all, you have to discover your biggest weaknesses in the game and start working on them. The most effective way for that is analyzing your own games. There is a built-in engine on chess.com which can show you if a move is good or bad but the only problem is that it can't explain to you the plans, ideas behind the moves, so you won't know why it is so good or bad.

In my opinion, chess has 4 main territories (openings, strategies, tactics/combinations and endgames) and if you want to improve efficiently, you should improve all of these skills almost at the same time. That's what my training program is based on. My students really like it because the lessons are not boring (because we talk about more than one areas within one lesson) and they feel the improvement on the longer run. Of course, there are always ups and downs but this is completely normal in everyone's career.

If you would like to learn more about chess, you can take private lessons from me (you find the details on my profile) or you can visit my Patreon channel (www.patreon.com/Bgabor91), where you can learn about every kind of topics (openings, strategies, tactics, endgames, game analysis). There are more than 15 hours of educational videos uploaded already and I'm planning to upload at least 4 new videos per week, so you can get 4-8 hours of educational contents every month. I also upload daily puzzles in 4 levels every day which are available with a FREE subscription.

I hope this is helpful for you. Good luck with your games!

Heyy, it really does sound similar. I am adding you as a friend, let's keep an eye out on each other and see where we go, like a friendly rivalry!

Learn and apply the most important principles of chess. - (core of my teaching)
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.

just start wining and yea idk