I have a must win tournament in 2 months

I have a must win tournament in two months. A MUST WIN. There will be players way higher rated then me. (I was an 1100 in my last tournament but i beat 1 1700 and 2 1500's so im under rated i think) how can i completely prepare for this tournament. 

My openings will be 1.e4 for white

1...e5 for black

and Kid set up for everything else. 

I dont play much on this website but on chesscube im 1900. 

I own 2 tactics books, the kaufman repertorie, play the kings indian, my system, modern chess strategy advances since nimzo witch, mastering chess strategy. 

I consider myself very well rounded tactically, positionally, opening, middlegame, endgame, but i do need work on my calculations. 

If you could train a player and turn him into the ultimate hybrid like an average 1500 with opening and endgame but a 2000 with middlegame tactics and positional chess which attribute would you give him? 

I'll need to know the size of your brain first

I don't know, sorry :/ But I wish you good luck in your tournament!!

You must buy yourself at least twelve large pickles.

Patience? :)

The only single attribute I'd throw out to describe any player I've seen over the years who gets to be that (Expert+ level) good is "mental discipline". 

Btw, I looked you up on the USCF.

Which USCF tournament did you beat the 1700 + 1500s? All I can see on  your latest tournament stats page is : 

http://www.uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.php?201301131902.1-14765231

What the hell....how did you find out which tournament i went to....

Whoa, Shiv you just went crazy on that kid! I looked you up and I call absolute BS on you beating 1700 and 1500 lmao. I literally laughed at you calling him out, I even had to go and look that up. It's true though the kid has not beat anybody over 1300 from what I saw. So on that knowledge kid, you should read Logical Chess Move by Move. It is a book by Irving Chernev and it should help you improve your chess drastically within 2 months. I can't promise you will beat a 1700 but that book is probably what shot me up to 1400-1500. Another good book is The Art of the Checkmate by Renaud and Kahn. Either way, good luck. Why do you have to win so badly anyway?

What the hell guys howd oyu find out who i am? and its a rule here in south florida that whatever rating someone is, its actually plus 200 because florida is supposedly the best chess state and we have really ahrd competition in th ejuniors so its hard t get our ratings up amongst ourselves. 

Its a must win because i want to prove myself. All i do all day for fun is openings and chess videos. I want to show the world i can become a great chess player and represent my school. I want ot blow everyone by suprise and i dont want to be just some guy who lost at that oturnament and didnt get a trophy. I want to show i can be a splendid chess player through hardwork and commitment and discipline 

and if any of you guys are just going to sit here and say im an amateur who cant do anything then challenge me to a turn based match before establishing your hiearchy of bragging rights above me 

On your second advise. "Begin studying complete games of world champions immediantely" which one? 

Remember my openings are 1.e4 and 1...e5 so that leads to the early boys like steinitz and morphy if you count morphy. Or spassky or tal. I dont know if studying Kasparov or Kramnik is a good idea because of how heavy kasparov emphasized opening prep and i just dont understand Kramniks positional skills.

I hate to bust your nut kid, but you're a USCF 1200, I don't see you winning any tourneys in the near future.

Will the sun explode if you don't win?

You'd start with the earliest champions and work your way towards the modern era.  Some champions offer far more instructive games than others ...  Morphy, Steinitz, Lasker, Capa ... all great stuff.

Make sure you are reading "instructional" annotated game collections and not just plain annotated game collections.  General_Lee's recommendation of the Chernev book is solid gold, in my opinion.

The biggest advice however is ... to stay grounded and hang around players who are far stronger than you so that you can constantly sponge from them.  

hmm okay well thank you guys. Regardless if you guys think i can achieve my goal i will try for it. The clear concensus is the study world champion games which will help me improve. thank you!

Like it or not, 2 months isn't enough time to do anything drastic like increase your middlegame to 2000 level :)

It is enough time to go over a book though (if you go pretty fast) so if you want to do that I'd pick one of your strategy books.  I haven't read the ones you mention so I can't say which.

But, to try a metaphor here, I woudln't try changing or adding any machinery, I'd just make it the best oiled, fine tuned, machinery I can, and I think this is a reasonable goal for 2 months.  You have a repertoire from what you say, so that's a good start.  The main training for me would be the primary skills I'm going to use in the tournament which is analysis.  The two ways I'd exercise it are master games in my openings and playing games online and analysing them.

So each day I'd take, say, 3-5 master games and play through the opening until I'm out of my repertoire on a real board.  Then pretend it's a tournament and it's your move.  Work out which side you like better, what's the best plan or move for black, and what's the best plan or move for white.  This is what you'll have to do at the tournament so it's good practice before hand.  Then, after you're satified that you worked it out as well as you can in your head, play through the rest of the game and see what the masters did.  Repeat until 3-5 games are done.

Then I'd get online and play games (3 to 5 again) around 10, or 15, or 20 minutes long.  The point is just a chance to play some of the ideas you're seeing in the master games, (it's not enough time to analyse like a tourney game).  Then comes the 2nd half of the training which is going over these online games of yours.  Again play out the opening and then sit and decide what the best move or plan for you would have been.  Was your game continuation correct or can you find something better?  This is what you'll have to do at the tournament so put a lot of thought into it as if it were a real game.  Then throw it to houdini, and if your idea didn't drop the eval half a pawn then it was decent (centi pawns don't matter unless you want to leave the cpu on all night to be sure it's correct).  If there were some other positions you thought were interesting or critical in the game then do it for them too.

Because at the tourney, this is what you'll primarily be doing... trying to make sense of the position after your opening moves run out.  If you work on storing up GM patterns of these openings in your mind (the long analysis burns them into memory) and then practicing them in your games (repetition for memeory and feedback if the idea was correct in a specific position) then it will help your middlegames a lot.

I'd also throw in some token amount of tactical training.  Maybe just 10 puzzles, or 10 correct puzzles, or if you have time 30 minutes, or 60 minutes etc.  But the main focus will be analysing master games then analysing your attempts at using those ideas in relatively fast games.

That's what I'd do anyway.  I don't know you well enough to target your weaknesses or anything.  Good luck at the tourney :)  Oh, and shivisky's point may have actually been patience as he said.  You can't become amazing in just 2 months.  But work a little every day and after a couple of years you'll wake up a much stronger player.

Ok, but have you bought the pickles yet?

Gee i thought New York had bragging rights as the top chess state i can say it's a rule that  you add 200 pts. to any rating in WV but that doesn't make it so

I heard something about Chess.com blitz rating is estimated to be 150-200 points lower than your USCF rating, or would be USCF rating. Seems your in agreement with that. Maybe I'll try to snag a few tournaments this year and see if my USCF rating goes up abit as this theory suggests it would. :)

As a "chess teenager" myself (if you count university students), I was in a similar position a few years back when I frequented scholastic tournaments with my high school team. First of all, NEVER go in with a "must-win" attitude; it will disrupt your ability to analyze positions objectively. Second of all, if you really want to get stronger, don't go into overdrive for the sake of a specific tournament; improvement is gradual, and an exceptionally strong/weak performance at a certain competition means very little. Play different types of tournaments; scholastic tournaments, with their short time controls and rating inconsistencies, tend to emphasize tactical alertness and time-pressure management at the cost of more subtle considerations.

I began high school a shade under 1800 USCF and with the combined help of local clubs, annual scholastic championships, lessons, and online chess (with a smattering of reading) I gained 350 points, so there's your proof (subjective though it may be.)

I agree 100% with jempty.  Capablanca: Move by Move is what got me back to 1700 after a horrendous slide earlier in the year.  I am playing better than ever because of that book.

You should also play over games of either World Champions or even just strong GM's from the past (ala Bronstein or Gligoric, etc.)

1. e4 e5 can be studied by studying Karpov's games.

Don't waste any time studying openings other than by playing through annotated games.

Lastly, don't BS anyone about your strength.  In addition to the problem that you can easily be called out the fact is that when you downplay the skills of your opponent while overestimating your own skill you dig a giant hole that can sometimes be tough to dig out of.

If you want to beat 1700's then work hard.  Trust me when I say that a 1300 is capable of beat a 1700.  So relax and work hard on every move. 

Calculate.  Focus.  Plan.  Ask yourself what your opponent is trying to do.  Ask yourself what you can do with your own position.  Just force yourself to be more aware of the situation when you play.

And never say that "must win" crap.  Focus on playing as well as you can in every game and the results that are supposed to happen will.