If your rating is ___ then you should focus on ____

Hi all,

I remember reading an article years ago when I was first taking up golf that was incredibly useful.  It was basically a quick guide on what you should be working on given your current score.  Obviously everyone is different, so it doesn't apply to every single person, but it does give people kind of a general guideline to follow.

So I was hoping we could start something like that for chess in this thread.  So maybe if everyone can think back to when their rating was 100 points lower than it is now, and what were the key factors that you focused on to get to the level you're at now?

I can't contribute myself, because my rating has only gone down since joining, so I'm really hoping some of you are willing to post your experience.  For example:

"When I was rated 100, I finally read the instructions on how to move a pawn, and my score shot up to 200 in no time."

Something along those lines.

When I was 1200 I started to play games - more and more. Now I have 800 points more. Hope that's helpful.

When your rating is *anything* under 1800 (OTB, not chess.com), you should be studying tactics. Then, when you get sick of studying tactics, you should study some more tactics. And then if the tactics trainer breaks or something, you should study endgames for awhile before going back to tactics.

My rating stayed between 1100 and 1250 or so when I didn't study anything, despite playing several games a day.  Studying opening theory and choosing an opening and defense that I wanted to know more about helped a lot.  This improved my rating substantially as I became more familiar with specific positions.  When I was in the 1300 or so range, I spent time on endgames.  This alone probably helped me gain 100 points in my rating.  Studying tactics throughout is always good.  General positional knowledge probably helped my game the most.  By that I mean pawn structure, good vs. bad bishop, use of outposts to name a few.

I kind of think it depends of your style of play.  For example, if you tend to simplify quite a bit, study endgames so you can play a comfortable game and still be successful in the end.

 Studying openings, analyzing games, learning basic rules of endgame that is the foundation you can build on but after you learn something new try to play as often as you can so you can implement whatever you just learned in practice - that way you'll learn faster.

I've gone up about 100 points a month in the past three months, and for me I studied mostly tactics, at least 75% of the time, with endgames study coming in next, followed a bit by two openings for white and black. With the openings I learned the first five moves or so and have left it at that.

Now I'm studying tactics about 50% of the time, as I've got a good handle on basic tactics, and I'm studying end games about 35% of the time, with the rest playing through games of my own and analyzing them.

When I feel I'm very comfortable with endgames I am going to move onto strategy and positional play, with about 50% of my time still on tactics. I play in tournaments and I think studying tactics is the number one thing anyone under 2000 points can do to improve. But that is my own opinion of a lowly 1200 player.

Hope that helps.

Low, Improving.