I've Peaked...Now What?

This is going to sound contradictory:

Play more.

Take winning, losing and ratings less seriously.

Take planning your next move about as seriously as you took your rating.  Write down the lines you are considering.  Try to consider a half dozen lines to a depth of a couple of moves at least.  Did your opponent make the moves you predicted?

Fewer books.  Books make it sound so simple.  You decide on a move.  You have a cool reason that makes sense to you.  Then your opponent moves.  Unless your move is as good as a book, you will be shocked and dismayed with the fact that you opponent did not do what you predicted.  A few books for a few general ideas is good.

Play computers less.  If you get your ego crushed to dust by them enough, you will stop trying as hard.  For an analog consider the boxer that starts to just hold his gloves up to protect his face.  You need to play players of a variety of strengths and abilities so you actually get to implement plans.  When you do play people who are way stronger, ask for a critique of the game later.

Good luck!

Just go through Seirawan's Tactics book and Pandolfini's Endgame course and leave the other stuff aside for awhile.

Well, I went to the only game you played here and it looks like you ran out of time even before you got started. I would review a game of yours, but there is nothing to look at your online games, sorry.

This may or may not apply to you, but it is good common sense:

Most players have a hard time just holding onto their material. I would suggest that you try to play a game or two and do you best just to avoid hanging material out free for the taking. Try to coordinate your pieces by supporting one piece with another. Think of it like this: Where your hand goes, so must your forearm follow, then your elbow, then your upper arm. So it is with chess pieces, they are all part of the army of your side, like an arm or a foot. Look at your army of pieces in such a way as a living organism, all connected to the body and the head being the king. Your pawns are like your skin. You punch a hole in your skin and it lets the enemy in just like in real life. You have a puncture in your skin, you might bleed to death before you can heal the puncture.

Good luck.

what I encourage people to do is........................................

..............................take 2 weeks off then....................Quit!!

believe me I know what u mean but time off is the key and  like they said all work and no play makes johnny a dull boy..

Thanks.

What is CT - ART 3.0 ?

Frank

 That means you have near 80 books in total! WOW! I dont have as many books as that nor have i read anywhere near that amount of books, yet i have been playing at 1750+ and beating up to 2300 players. Perhaps you need to re-read some books. If you have that many books or read that many books you should be alot better than 1200. 

My suggestion is read some core books that make you a better player rather than  puzzle books etc. Puzzle books will improve your tactics but simply by playing games your tactics will improve. You have many resources by your side (a book collection i would love to have!) so pick the best books and stick to them. I would recommend My System and/or How to reasses your chess. People might tell you to avoid these and say they are for stronger players but i go against that train of thought.

CT-ART stands for Chess Tactics Art, it is a more advanced tactics software program, basicly I would say master Chess Tactics for Beginners, then Personal Chess Trainer then CT-ART would be an ideal progression of tactical practice.  You can find it at http://store.convekta.com/shop_model.asp?gid=123&sView=Catalog.  There are plenty of reviews of the software if you google it, and Chess Tactics for Beginners should give you plenty of challenge at your level. 

A big problem for many beginners is they try to learn too much at once without mastering the basics.  As many good books as you have, most of them are like trying to learn advanced calculus before you have learned basic algebra.  A good set of books to start with are Dan Heisman's Everyone's 2nd Chessbook, and his Back to Basics: Tactics.  Master that material along with daily drilling on Chess Tactics for Beginners and you will improve significantly.  Here is a really good article I found on this subject:

The Path to Improvement
by Kelly Atkins with S. Evan Kreider
 

"What's the best way to improve at chess?"  We've all asked ourselves that question a thousand times.  If it were any other subject besides chess, we'd probably already know the answer: follow the path to wisdom in that field that has been blazed by others.  For some reason though, the vast majority of us approach studying and improving in chess in the most haphazard and inefficient manner possible, trying everything except the tried and true methods that more experienced players advise, and the methods that are applied in almost every other field of knowledge.

With chess, most of us skip around.  For example, we start studying a particular part of the game and then jump to something else.  Or we read the first three chapters of a book, and then start a different book.  We also study material that's far too advanced for us at that time.  For example, we spend months studying an advanced opening monograph when we haven't mastered basic opening theory.  Or we read My System when we haven't studied basic positional play first.  Or we read The Art of the Attack when we haven't studied basic tactics first.

The end result is that our understanding of the game is completely fragmented.  We know a thousand things, but we can't put them all together into a cohesive whole.  Because of this, we never advance very far.  No wonder most of us never rise above the Intermediate classes.  We are a screwed up bunch of people!  :-)

This is NOT how we learn most other things.  In school, we have to read Fun With Dick And Jane before we tackle War And Peace.  Before we learn to build an entire house, we have to learn to saw boards, drive nails, and so on.  Before we get to play Carnegie Hall, we have to learn chords, scales and “Chopsticks” first.  In fact, it's hard to imagine any skill or field of knowledge that we could master without learning the basics first and following some type of structured learning regimen.

If you go to the spring training camp of a Major League baseball team, you can learn a lot about how to master chess.  These guys have been playing baseball almost every single day of their lives for 20 or 30 years.  They're the best in the world, the GMs of their sport!  You don't often see them playing actual baseball games during spring training, though.  Instead, there they are, the masters of their sport, breaking the game down into its individual components and going through the same drills that the little leaguers are doing:  They stand at the plate and face dozens of curve balls until they master hitting them.  They shag fly balls for hours until they can do it perfectly.  They field grounders by the hundreds until they can do so error-free.  They practice base running, throwing, catching, etc., over and over until they can do it in their sleep.  THEN they begin to put all those skills together and actually play entire games.  Why should chess be any different?

Emanuel Lasker, World Champion for 27 years, firmly believed that anyone with normal intelligence and talent could reach master level in only a few years if they studied properly.  If you've been playing and studying for more than 5 years and aren't a Master, then you're not studying properly.  It took me a long time to learn this.  I essentially wasted 15 years studying chess the wrong way, with very little to show for it, other than watching my rating gradually drop from 2000 to under 1600.  I was convinced, for some inexplicable reason, that I knew more about how to improve than all the masters. 

You live and learn, and some lessons you have to learn the hard way, apparently. The bottom line is that after trying it my way for 15 years and not only not improving, but going backwards, I've finally come to believe firmly that most of the advice I'd read from strong players on how to improve was correct all along.  I hope the rest of you can learn from my mistakes!

As we’ve seen, the worst mistake we make in studying chess is that our methods of study are fragmented.  We study a little of this and a little of that, and the end result is that we never master any of it.  How many chess books do you have that you've read a few chapters of, then moved on to another book, without finishing the first?  How many openings have you studied for a month or so, then gotten frustrated with them and moved on to another?  Have you thoroughly learned any opening, or do you know the first few moves of 30 or 40 openings, but aren't really knowledgeable in any of them?  For most of us, the answer is the latter.

The second mistake we make is in studying the wrong things, or at least material that's inappropriate to our level.  You've got to have a good understanding of the basics before you move on to more advanced concepts.  It's a poor use of study time to try to work your way through an advanced monograph on the Najdorf if you haven't learned the basic theory of opening play first, or to try to read the Dvoretsky / Yusupov books if you haven't learned basic tactics, strategy, and endings first.  There's a reason you take General Chemistry 101 before you take Physical Chemistry 417!  The same thing applies in chess.  Learning the basics first gives you a framework around which you can integrate all your future chess knowledge.

The third mistake that most amateur players make is devoting the majority of their study time to openings.  There's a term for players who do this: they're called "Perpetual Novices."  They know tons of opening lines but don't have a clue WHY the lines are considered good, or how to conduct the middlegame or endgame, and they are tactically sloppy. 

The plan which I'm suggesting may not be right for everyone, but it works for the majority of us.  The basic outline of my plan is this:  Master basic tactics, then basic endings, then study basic positional play and strategy, then learn basic opening principles, and finally bring it all together by playing over a collection of games with light notes or study a book like Chernev's Logical Chess Explained Move By Move.  Then you'll be ready to learn a basic opening repertoire.  Learn it and play it for at least a year, until you know it as well as anyone.  Don't jump around and switch from opening to opening.  Next, repeat the process, only with more advanced books, then repeat this process again using even more advanced books, and keep on until you reach the 2000 rating level.  All the while, keep a book of tactical problems at hand and spend some time on them EVERY day.  By the time you get to the 2000 level, you'll know what specific areas you need to work on from there on out.

Now let’s look at the plan in detail from the beginning:

What I'd recommend first is that you get a good book of chess problems and spend some time every single day, no matter what, solving a few of them.  Polgar's 5334 Chess Problems or Combination Challenge by Hays & Hall are both great.  This will build up your tactical skills, teach you how the pieces work together, and keep your vision of the board sharp.  For most players, start with the Polgar book.  Advanced players can skip straight to Combination Challenge, but only if ALL the material in the Polgar book is easy for you and has already been mastered.

In addition to that, study the following books in the order given below.  There are plenty of other books that are good and maybe someone can recommend better ones, but this selection should work just fine for most of us.

Everyone's Second Chess Book (Heisman)

Winning Chess Tactics (Seirawan), Back to Basics: Tactics or Play Chess Combinations & Sacrifices (Levy)

Pandolfini's Endgame Course (Pandolfini) or Silman's Complete Endgame Course (Silman)

Winning Chess Openings (Seirawan)

Best Lessons of a Chess Coach (Weeramantry & Eusebi)

The Game of Chess (Tarrasch) or Lasker's Manual of Chess (Lasker)

New Ideas In Chess (Evans)

Logical Chess Move By Move (Chernev)

Don't worry if a lot of this material is already familiar to you.  The repetition and review will do you good and will make sure you don't have any gaps in your fundamental knowledge.  Now you'll be ready to move on to material that will take you to advanced intermediate.

Comprehensive Chess Course vol. II (Alburt & Pelts)

Chess Tactics For The Tournament Player (Alburt & Palatnik)

The King In Jeopardy (Alburt & Palatnik)

Chess Strategy For The Tournament Player (Alburt & Palatnik)

Just The Facts (Alburt & Krogius)

Chess Training Pocket Book (Alburt)

How To Reassess Your Chess (Silman) 

The Amateur's Mind (Silman)

The World's Great Chess Games (Fine)

Teach Yourself Better Chess (Hartston)

You should have a good over-all understanding of the game by this point and be ready to climb to the Class A / Expert level.  The following books should take you there.

The Chess Of Bobby Fischer (Burger)

The Art of Attack (Vukovic)

The Art of Sacrifice (Spielmann)

Modern Chess Strategy (Pachman)

The Art Of The Middle Game (Keres & Kotov)

The Art of Defense in Chess (Soltis)

Endgame Strategy (Shereshevsky)

The Most Instructive Games Of Chess Ever Played (Chernev)

I'm sure I've left out a lot of good books, but you have limited study time and can't read every good chess book ever written, so I've tried to give you the ones that I know are excellent and will take you to the 2000+ level in a reasonable amount of time. 

After this, you'll be ready for My System, Think Like A Grandmaster, Alekhine's My Greatest Games of Chess, The Dvoretsky / Yusopov series, etc., but you'll know which ones you need by then.  I'd also recommend that you play over as many games as you can of Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tal, Fischer, Karpov, and Kasparov, but I'd particularly recommend that you study Fischer's games, since they'll expose you to all the different styles of play and fill you with ideas.

This is also the time to start playing solitaire chess.  Select a good collection of games, take the side of the winner, and try to determine what the next move is.  Aside from studying tactics, this is the most important thing you can do to improve.  Solitaire chess will do wonders for your play and really teach you how to analyze and how to create and follow a plan.  Don't worry if you're horrible at it at first, you'll get better.  Playing solitaire and studying master level games will "pull it all together" for you and greatly increase your understanding. 

I haven't forgotten openings!  For now, just find a basic opening you like as white and a defense to 1.e4, 1.d4 and a setup against the flank openings.  Play these lines over and over and stick with them for at least a year and don't jump around from one opening to another.  DO NOT spend any more of your study time than absolutely necessary to learn the basics of these lines.  The time you put into studying the books above will pay off a LOT better and faster than opening study will. After you've finished the second series of books above, read Gabor Kallai's Basic Chess Openings & More Basic Chess Openings to learn the fundamentals of all the openings and the typical middlegame plans of each.

The important thing is to choose a repertoire and STICK WITH IT!  Expect to lose a lot at first, but eventually the wins will begin to pile up as you become more experienced with playing your openings.  Later, you can begin to learn new openings and defenses and add them to your repertoire.  The only way to ever become a good opening player is to find an opening and defensive system, learn them thoroughly, and then play them for at least a year.  It doesn't even matter which ones you choose, as long as you're comfortable with them.  William Lombardy once said "All openings are sound below master level."  Very true!

Do you want to get good in a hurry?  Devote at least 50% of your study to tactics!!!  NOTHING will improve your play any faster!  I've played roughly 10,000 games of chess in my life, and I can honestly say that of all those games, in only one of them did my opponent and I not make some type of tactical mistake.  That's probably typical of all amateur games.  If you're a tactical monster, you can rest assured that your opponent will give you an opportunity to take advantage of him tactically in at least 99.9% of your games.  If you're not studying tactics religiously, you're throwing away wins!  If you don't believe this, run any amateur game through your computer and take a look at all the tactical opportunities it finds that were missed in the game.  Teichmann didn't lie when he said that chess was 99% tactics.  Not only is this the most important part of chess, it's also the most fun and the easiest to learn and master.  Keep a book of problems handy and spend some time EVERY day solving them.  Openings, endings, strategy and solitaire chess should each account for about 12 to 15% of your study time.  The rest should be devoted to tactics!  The late Ken Smith of Chess Digest said: "Until you are at least a high class A player, your first name is Tactics, your middle name is Tactics, and your last name is Tactics." 

The overall idea for the best way to improve is simple. First of all, stop bouncing around from one subject to another! This is hard to do (believe me, I know - I've wasted hundreds of hours this way and ended up learning practically nothing), but jumping around from subject to subject & book to book leaves you with a very fragmented understanding of the game. It's like knowing a thousand words but not being able to put them together to form complete sentences! STUDY ONE BASIC BOOK ALL THE WAY THROUGH on tactics, then strategy, then the endgame, then openings, and finally, play through an entire collection of games to bring it all together for you. Then do it again, moving on to more advanced books, and repeat this process until you reach the Expert or Master level. This will give you a solid, thorough understanding of the game and help you avoid having major gaps in your chess knowledge. Once you've mastered the basics and your understanding of the game grows, reinforce your knowledge and expand on it by studying master games and playing solitaire chess. Make sure to focus heavily on tactics and spend some time every day honing your tactical skill. Finally, don't forget to play slow games to gain experience putting your knowledge to work and reinforcing what you know!

Again, the plan which I'm suggesting may not be right for everyone, but it works for the majority of us.  Learn from my mistakes!  Try my plan for at least a year, even when you have your doubts.  Push through the plateaus and the frustration which you are bound to hit, and see if your results don’t improve dramatically by next year.  Best of luck!

Though this article suggests using tactics books, for me the Chess tactics software was much easier to use and achieves the same goal.

take a break, play some study some, ive noticed on here that some people have played hundreds and hundreds of games, but have lost at least half of them or more, so does playing alot really help you improve, NO, if it did these people should be masters by now.

another thing ive noticed is that they play tooooooo many games at once, chess is mental, requires concentration/focus you cant do that as a begginner, just 2 or three at the most, not 50. study your games and see where you made your mistakes, see what your books have to say about correcting them, then dont make them again.

Great write-up there. Sticking to the basics is something we as humans find really hard to do, yet it is the straightest path to improvement. In EVERYTHING we tend to go for the caviar before the meat and potatoes.

Whether it is investment, sports, cooking or anything that requires any degree of skill, we try to mimick what professionals do instead of mimicking what they have done on their path to become professionals.

UniqueUserName gave you good advice. You're making basic mistakes --  Play slow chess as much as possible... 30 minute time controls at a minimum.

*(Blitz chess is useless for improving your game*) -- 

| 

Learn to avoid blunders 

Get in the habit of looking for your opponent's best move before deciding on your move and then looking for your opponent's best move after you've decided on your move and only then do you physically move your piece. No amount of books, software, lessons, etc.  will significantly improve your chess game until you do this. You aren't really even playing chess, until you do this. You must do this every single move. One hasty *ooops* move will destroy the work of hours. (Against the computer, do not allow yourself to take back moves! Taking back moves is very very easy and it is the worst possible habit. Finish the losing game and only then go back and correct the blunder... you must develop a horror and aversion for blunders.)  Playing strictly increases the stress level greatly -- once you adjust to it and stop being slack, you enjoy it.

| 

Chessmaster Tutorials. 

 I also  recommend you study...  put away the books for now and use your software. The Chessmaster 10th edition has a nice set of tutorials. I would work thru all the beginner and intermediate tutorials (skipping the super basic ones that teach you how pieces move, etc.)  I like Josh Waitzkin's tutorials in particular. Don't skip the endgame tutorials! (Be advised that the Chessmaster program is full of bugs and flaws, too many to go into in detail... if something seems screwy, it probably isn't you, it's the software... despite this caveat, chess software is, in general, an awesome learning tool.)

| 

Play games against humans online (it can be hard to find opponents who will play at longer time controls, but this is essential for improving... blitz does not help beginners get better, it encourages them to stagnate at the duelling-for-blunders stage).

| 

Play against the computer.  Chessmaster has zillions of personalities and claims you can find an opponent to suit your level. This is NOT really true, at least, not as nicely as the chessmaster software would have you believe. The personalities, especially the players below 1800, are very flawed. The 1200, 1300, 1400 rated chessmaster personalities simply DO NOT play chess like human 1200, 1300, 1400s.  (As a beginner you lack the experience to see this and you could easily become frustrated... many of the "weak" personalities play superb chess punctuated by bizarre kamikaze sacrifices...pretty much exactly the opposite of human lower-rated players, who make lots of mistakes but never deliberately sacrifice.)

|

Lacey, Max, and Vlad 

         I recommend that you play against the personality Lacey. When you can beat Lacey, play Max.  When you can beat Max, play Vlad.  These players do not play 'human-like' chess exactly... but they play a good sort of chess to practice against.  They play very strong chess within a very limited search depth  -- 1, 2, and 3, move horizons respectively. They will not hang pieces or make random moves, they will instantly punish any blunders and small tactical mistakes you make, and they will be quite beatable by sound strategy and tactics.  (One thing: Lacey, Max, and Vlad play super-fast... don't let that effect you! Think at every move.)  

| 

 Do some tactical puzzles everyday.  I solve the puzzle on chessgames.com everyday. It's a great discipline to solve puzzles and then read how other's tackle them. Doing this has done very good things for my chess. The puzzles progress from easy to hard, from monday (easy) to sunday (hard) ... solve what you can, learn from the notes to the ones you can't. 

| 

 This simple plan will take you quite far IMO. Eliminate blunders (disciplined slow chess), chessmaster tutorials, progressive computer opponents, puzzles for growing your tactical vocabulary.

| 

For books, I like Jeremy Silman's Reassess Your Chess, and The Amateur's Mind very much. They inspire better chess play. They teach a way of thinking about chess that makes for good reading and leads to deeper play.  Most chessplayers, including myself, are addicted to chessbooks... truth is, and I say this sadly, the books are fast becoming unnecessary, the best instructional material is (in software or) freely available online. 

|

Two notes: I haven't tried the Chess Mentor on this site, but it sounds interesting and I've heard a strong player mention it (on another site) as being a very good program. Also, CtArt 3.0 is a superb set of software enhanced chess-position puzzles for tactical training that go from advanced beginner to master level difficulty... you could start on it now, but it'll get dauntingly difficult pretty quick I think.) 

One last piece of advice: I told you to focus on eliminating your blunders by looking at your opponents best moves. There's actually a huge danger in that... you start to get spooked by your opponent's possibilities... you see threats everywhere... and you go from blundering to ultra conservative. Conservative, passive, defensive chess is LOSING chess. Keep in mind that while you absolutely must learn to avoid blunders...  you must not let your opponent dictate the game and have you scurrying from one defensive crouch to another. You must attack. You must force your agenda on your opponent or he will force his on you.

|

Strive to eliminate blunders without becoming conservative or passive -- That is much easier said than done, it's a good challenge: it's actually sort of a subtle way to say: play good chess. 

Yeah Chess Mentor has alot of good material, but I would say Chess Tactics for Beginners is a better investment for some one in the ~1150 rating range to get a good tactical base that will serve up to around the 1600 rating range .  It is made by the same company that makes CT-Art, but starts with more basic patterns which you will build on.    It has the option to reverse the puzzles so that randomly the same puzzle is set up on the opposite side of the board, or you are playing black rather than white, which helps you recognize that tactical pattern any time you see it regardless of where it happens on the board or which color you are playing.  Using the Test option mixes all the themes together so you have to figure out if it is a mate, or win material or draw, ect, which more closely mirrors a real game situation rather than knowing it is a mate in one, or mate with knight like you do in the practice mode.  Master all the basic patterns in there and then move to CT-ART or Personal Chess Trainer once you are around 1500 rating or at the point that you find all the problems simple to solve quickly. 

http://products.convekta.com/198/2/

 One tricky thing about convekta software, if you download it rather than order the CD rom you have to burn the files to a CD and then install the program from the CD or it won't work.  The directions tell you this when you buy it, but it is a step I missed the first time I bought something from them and it won't work if you miss that step.

A lot of advice and comments and I think I'm inching up a little.

Thoughts on my last game? I would really appreciate advice...