I seem stuck at 1400. Here are my study methods:

My rating has been as low as 1250 and high as 1550, but lately is glued to 1400 +/- 10.

 

I've read Bruce Pandolphini's Weapons of Chess positional book front to back, and his endgame book, and worked my way through at least 2-3 tactics books. I think that took me from 1250 to 1400.

 

Lately I just do 25 chess.com tactics problems per day (my inflated rating there is 1950!), do a chess.com lesson every other day, and examine computer analysis of my games, testing different variations to see why the computer did not do a different move.

 

It is all very entertaining, but I keep blundering pawns and pieces and not grabbing squares at the right time. Recently, an opponent hung his queen, and I failed to catch it.

 

I wish chess.com would take my blunders from my own games and turn them into my own personal collection of tactics problems I could do many times, rather than the maybe rarer combos in the public tactical trainer. Maybe that would make me stronger. Or maybe I need to work through another book.

 

I'm starting to wonder if chess is just not my forte. I am rated higher than 88% of people on chess.com, but maybe most of those are kids or beginners who don't play often. I was also rated around 1200 years ago. Going from likely 800 to 1200 was pretty fast and easy. 1200 to 1400 took some work but was not that hard. 

 

Maybe I need to play long games. All I play is 5 minute and 10 minute. Could that be the reason I'm not progressing? My career is probably more important anyway. I just wanted to hit 1700, so I can impress the club players more.

The fact that all youre playing is blitz isnt heping.  

I see a lot of "computer" analysis, but nothing of your own analysis?

I still play some blitz, but not with the idea of improving my game. To get better I play one or two daily chess games and spend rather a lot of time to find the best moves, something like 30 minutes to 2 hours per move. Doing so I get used to search for candidate moves both for me and for my opponent. Today I spend at least one hour on a position, trying to calculate all relevant moves until I had a clear evaluation to my favour, but I was surprised to see that I missed my opponent's answer. This didn't ruin my game but showed me again that I have to spend more time to really check all relevant moves in a given position. You should try this.

I played one daily game. My opponent took a while to reply, so I don't know how much time he spent. I made my first 6 moves fast. Then he locked in my position with his knight. That was when I knew I had to put in some thought.

 

I learned that most positions have 20-50 possible moves per side, and that 6-12 immediately address the one move threat or material change. Often the best move does not immediately address any one move threat.

 

I considered 12 moves that looked at first like they would help, and saw refutations for 10. 2 looked safe, but 1 was safer, so I played it. I won the game soon after, with a few more carefully played moves, getting a resignation after 12 moves. I guess my opponent was no longer putting in time.

 

I later ran computer analysis of that tough position and the one before it. The computer disagreed with me in many ways. It found a 13th move I had missed and would not have played even if I had seen it, since it did not chase the knight away fast. Of the top 2 I considered, it said the one I chose was the 3rd best move. It also said that chasing the knight away was not important, that I would drop a pawn if I did, and that accurate play would prevent me from being checkmated by the knight. It also showed that my combo I had planned to win back a pawn if the knight took mine would have worked but left the other side with a better position. 

 

So, even though the computer finds better moves, they sometimes much more require accurate play in order to work. Even my 3rd best moves are often rated by the computer as excellent moves, even if 2 pawns worse than the best move.

 

Also in my defense, I've only been doing the 25 problems per day for at most a month now. I feel I should be focusing on my career instead. Perhaps the reason not many people are great at chess is not because they are not capable, but because they have other priorities that take up their time. Still, I'd like to find an efficient way to become noticeably stronger than the average adult tournament player.

Since you don't have a lot of time, 25 problems a day is way too much. Tactics is important, but strategy is MUCH MORE important.

It is not uncommon to solve many harder puzzles, but miss simple tactical threats of pin or fork. One of the culprit of this is your thinking process. Discipline yourself at following these. These things help me get better result.

 

Always study your opponent's last move

Don't relax and lose focus. Remember to always study your opponent's last move from the start to the end.

 

Before you make a move, check if there is a tactical drawback

Let say there is a pawn  that you can capture with your queen, but doing so will pin your queen against your king. If you don't check for tactical drawback before making a move, you will lose your queen from a pin!

 

Look the whole board to see piece positioning.

Let say you have a rook at the far corner and your opponent's queen attack your bishop and rook with a double attack. Your bishop is sitting near at your viewing visibility. There is a tendency that you will only look at the side where your opponent place his piece. As a result you will miss that your rook is also attacked by his queen and will blunder it. The important lesson here is always look at the whole board after your opponent makes a move and before you make a move.

 

If your opponent has threat, check first if you have a stronger counter threat or plan before defending.

Let say your opponent is threatening to capture your queen. But in the given position you can ignore it with a stronger back rank mate. Since you have a better threat, it is obvious you will go for the mate for the win.

 

Follow these thinking process and you will see better result. Also just continue solving tactics problems. Solve easy problems for patten recognition and harder problems for calculation improvement. 

 

 

I disagree, blitz is good to practice opening (although not much more)

I think Damon and Jamby made some good points that I'll try to employ. Where I'm at right now, a 1400 would be nice. My favourite author is GM Yasser Seirawan. Very easy to read with what seem to be great insights, and it seems to be helping me.

These articles would be SUPER helpful:

1. http://chesswinning.com/how-to-analyze-chess-games/
2. http://chesswinning.com/7-best-chess-books/

Also, here's a nice study plan for players rated a bit lower than you, but you can apply the same ideas to create a nice plan: http://chesswinning.com/chess-study-plan-for-beginners/

One problem may be in your mindset when you approach chess. You can win and improve! It is just how you look at when you lose/stay near the 1400 mark. Hope this helps!

Play G30.  You'll be closer to 1700.

Oh, and 500 games in six and a half years is not stuck.  After 5,000 games, maybe. but not in blitz.

"Maybe I need to play long games. All I play is 5 minute and 10 minute. Could that be the reason I'm not progressing?"

 

It's definitely a possibility.  Take a break from blitz and see what happens.  

Play some tournaments in real life. The tournament experience is really fun and you'll get to play against people of different skill levels and learn from them. Also most tournaments have decent time controls, which fits well with _Number_6's and SeniorPatzer's suggestions

Maybe you play too much. Have you thought of watching better players play? View the games of 1800-2000 players. 

Yes, that's a great idea. I'd like to respectfully remark that if you're going to view games of better players, just look at some grandmaster games. Try to guess their moves and then think about why they made them.

Ahaha I'll have to ask where did you get that notion from?

 

tl;dr play long games where you consider more than one candidate move and practice falsification by doing Stokyo exercises with difficult tactic puzzles.

 

Sounds like you have enough knowledge to be rated higher but your performance is holding you back.

So I'd say it's not so much about solving puzzles or playing games as it is forming proper habits.

 

First of all, during a game, analysis doesn't exist unless you're considering more than 1 candidate move. Analysis means you've calculated two different candidate moves, rendered evaluations for them, and finally you compare those evaluations to decide which candidate move is better.

If you're blundering basic stuff, then I'd guess you're not considering multiple moves, you're just working hard to make sure your 1 candidate move has something you like about it, and as soon as you find something you like, you play it.

To practice this I suggest long games. To force yourself, maybe keep a piece of paper and pencil nearby. For every move write down at least two candidates. At the end of the game, if you'd played 40 moves, then you should have 40 lines of moves written.

 

The second habit is falsification. It's NOT good calculate and evaluate in terms of what you like about a move. You should be knowledgeable and experienced enough to find candidate moves with something to like about them easily. For players at that level, most of your energy during a game should be spent trying to find out why a move is bad, not why it's good. Both for your intended move and your opponent's last move.

To practice this I suggest getting a collection of tactic puzzles, ideally ones that are a little too hard (but not massively too hard) to solve. Then spend as long as 20-30 minutes on a problem. Mostly you'll be calculating everything you can to try to stumble upon the solution. When you think you  have a solution, write it down. You should write down more than 1 line per problem. For example if you think the solution begins with Ne4, you must show at least two different defensive ideas in your written solution. Only write down moves once you're fully done calculating a line. Don't use the notes to aid you in solving it. If you can't solve it, then after 20-30 minutes, give up and write down what you'd play if it were a real game, then work through the solution.

The idea is because they're a little to hard for you to normally solve, a lot of energy will be spent on finding why your candidate moves don't work.

When you talk about being stuck around 1400, are you talking about blitz rating here on chess.com? Because that's pretty low. I peaked around 1770 USCF, with a much higher rating in slow internet games at the time. My ratings here are kinda low right now, because I'm returning after a couple of years and VERY rusty. But here's how I got from 1250ish to 1770 USCF in about 2-3 years:

1. Play lots of slow games. I was playing in USCF tournaments whenever I could, and it was around 60-80 games per year at G/60 or slower. And I tried to review my games afterwards, first with my opponent or by myself, and running some of them through a computer later.

2. Tactics puzzles, but not just any tactics puzzles. Get a book of around 400 puzzles chosen for their instructional value, and do them over and over until you can spot them instantly. That way, simple tactics will jump out at you in your games. Then, move on to a book of tougher puzzles and do the same thing.

And... that's it. You should also study some endgame basics (Pandolfini's book is good, but make sure to go through it several times to really learn it), mix in a few blitz games here and there, and study some grandmaster games. For master games, pick a book with lots of wordy explanations, not just variations, like Chernev's "Logical Chess: Move by Move".

But mostly, you should be able to hit the 1700s in slow OTB rating just by playing a lot of slow games and focused tactics study.

[quote="MinesotaChessCoach]

1. c4 e5 2. Nc3 c6 (dubious?)

3. Nf3 Bc5?Nxe5 is a free pawn.  (4. Nxe5 Bxf2+ 5. Kxf2 Qh4+ 6. Kg1 Qd4+ and Qxe5)

4. Ne44... Bb6? (keeping aim on f2 to rewin the e pawn if captured)

5. Nd6+ Kf8 6. b3!?The obvious continuation is...6. Nxc8 Qxc8 7. Nxe5

(The knight on d6 is very annoying for 1400 players, though I see Qxc8 takes the queen off the d8-h4 diagonal)

6... Bc5 7. Ne4?A move without a reason. 7... d6  (This was the move I considered from 12 possibilities. The computer says Bf8 was best, followed by Qe7.)

8. Nxc5 dxc59. Nxe5?? Qd4 10. Ba3 Qxe5

11. d4 Qf6Qe4 is instinctively better  (Qf6 aims at a1 and avoids d3 with tempo, and guards c6 in case I need Nc6 later to block the a8-h1 diagonal)

12. Bxc5+ Ne7 13. g3b6Na6 is the natural move(13... Na6)(leaving open a later Nc6 which can block the a8-h1 diagonal)

14. Ba3 c5? (baiting dxc5 or d5. If neiither was not played, I would have further baited d5 with Nc6)

15. dxc5??(15. Bg2!)(Bg2 would be met with Nc6, why played b6)15... Qc3+ (and the trap snaps shut)

[\quote]

I hope everyone can distinguish my explanations from the coaches comments. This way, you can get inside the head of a 1400 player.

I chose your most recent win and loss (from games that were at least over 30 moves).

Two main issues IMO:

1) You're not committed enough to following the opening principals. I'm sure you know them, but you need to make a bigger effort to follow them.

2) Sometimes you'll see a beginner who plays with only 1 or 2 pieces, then when they're traded off they use another 1 or 2, etc.

Then when they get a little better it's 2 or 3, then 3 or 4.

I get the feeling you're at the tail end of it... you're nearly using all your pieces, but you seem to want to start the fist fighting when just 1 or 2 guys still aren't included in the action.

Sort of the middlegame equivalent of the opening principal of development.