Improvement for a 1550 Fics

Note: Ignore my chess.com rating since it is innacurate due to an internet problem that caused many timeouts. A more accurate rating is my 1550 standard on fics (not much better anyways :)).

     Getting to where I am today has been quite easy so far. I have looked into many openings, and decided that the best way for me to play is to answer play 2...Nc6 after e4 e5 nf6. I understand that playing this classical style will help myself improve my understanding for chess because this has been recommended the most. I have done some tactics training, mostly from chesstempo, and reading bobby fischer teaches chess a long time ago. My endgame knowledge is absolutely nothing. I have never studied the endgame, since I have put most of my focus on the middlegame. I just try to fight my way through the endgame on my own. I try to play at least one standard game (30 5 time controls) a day, and am thinking about commiting myself to 30 mins of chesstempo a day.

Sorry about the biography, but I thought that I should introduce myself before asking questions.

1. Okay, so my first question is about tactics training. Everyone says the key to winning under 1800 (some say 2000) is tactics tactics tactics. My question is, how should I be training tactics? Is 30-60 mins of chesstempo enough? Or should I be buying chess tactics books aswell/instead?

2. Do you think that your recommended method of training tactics, combined with many long time controls games will get me to 1800? or do you think that other methods of training are required as well to get your rating to around 1800? if so, what other methods of training would you recommend?

3. I have the opportunity to read the following books: Art of Attack in Chess (Vukovic), The Amateurs Mind (Silman), How to Become a Deadly Chess Tactician (LeMoir), and Practical Chess Analysis (Buckley). My question is, how should I approach studying these books? Should I put all of my focus on your recommended tactic training method? or should I split my study between these books and tactics? Also, should I wait until my rating is a certain level to read any of these books, or should I just read them now?

I am very sorry about the length of this post, but I really want to understand how to study properly, to achieve my maximum improvement potential.

Thanks a ton for all of your help, Leafs171

30-60 mins of tactics is more than enough imo. putting more effort into your endgame will help you significantly i think. you start to make better decisions in the middlegame based on your knowledge of achieving better endgames. about the books...i have some but have never read them :/ i hope thats ok for you

If you are serious about studying chess but have never really studied endgame I recommend you start now. After all biggest improvements are probably possible by working on the weakest areas. Besides I believe studying endgames actually can teach whole lot more than just endgame skill. It can for example teach better apreciation of pawn structures, relative stregnths and weaknesses of different pieces and calculation of variations. Note that last point. Many endgames are infact very tactical and when there are few pieces on the board some tactics can be presented very elegantly and also some tactis are typical just for the endgame.

First of all, thanks for all the help. I really appreciate your advice, and I will do my best to follow it.

ChessTempo, for people who don't know, does not (to my knowledge) organize tactics into categories. They are presented to you at random, which I think is helpful in the sense that you will not know what kind of tactic to look for in a game. The problem is, without the tactics categorized you might not understand what type of tactic it is.

Now onto the question: Is ChessTempo enough to train my tactics, or are books required as well? Since you guys say that 30-60 mins a day is plenty, I will do my best to follow this, but I want to know if stricly using ChessTempo will give me the maximum benefit.

Also, I will read up until the under 1600 section in silman's endgame course. Your advice about endgames is interesting, and I will definately start taking endgame study seriously.

Thanks again, Leafs171