With serious chess playing I mean: 1-2 hours a day. Some days not even 1 hour. I don't really check the clock how long I play. Sometimes I play 10 rapid games a day, sometimes more, sometimes less.
Most of the time I spend with my chess playing is playing the game. I will use youtube to study openings, but also consult my teacher. Also my teacher gives me chess lessons so I can play games daily and learn from my teacher how to play better chess.
One thing I must admit: chess books. I'm not sure about this anymore. I have a teacher now, so I think I will use chess books later on. Right now I feel that I'm improving enough without chess books. But of course chess books are good I think, because they can improve your game. But I think it depends on the book and what your current chess knowledge/rating is on how much you will benefit from the book.
1300 in OTB chess: good
1300 in online chess: nice achievement but overall irrelevant.
Good for you.
But you are talking as if you reached 2000 or something like that. If you keep studying and improving soon you will realize that 1300 at rapid is nothing.
Improving 100 ratings points is a good amount 😀 Doesn't really matter if it is from 1200 to 1300 rapid rating as long as you are improving by playing slower games. Would be great if you could keep us updated on your progress. Best of luck improving to high levels and thanks for sharing good tips to improve your rapid rating!
So after some time being stuck at the lower 1200 rating, and even actually around 1200, I finally reached 1300 rating just today. Here are some of my tips , that may help you, based on my experience, on how to get past 1200 and get to the upper 1200 ratings and even 1300 like I'm now:
- Get a teacher if you can afford to. If you want a great teacher, you can send me a message and I can send you the information of my teacher. He takes time with you so you can learn the game and improve.
- Study some of the most common openings through youtube or chess.com or other sources that you think are reliable. Examples that I think you should know knowledge about/basics about: Sicilian, Carro Khan, French and Queen's gambit. I think the best way to familiarize in openings is to either go through them with your teacher and then play them, or just try them out, or learn how to defend against them. I was bad with the Sicilian, but then my teacher taught me how to play better and now I play the Sicilian much better than before. I must admit, I havn't played the Carro Khan or the Queen's gambit, but that's because I have no interest right now of playing them.
- Tactics: I used to do tactics every day, now not anymore. I think tactics are important, but perhaps the question 'how do you get to this position' is better to learn than the tactics itself. But doing tactics does help of course. I do a few tactics every 2 days I think.
- Know how the exchange works! I win many games by winning the exchange and being up a piece. When your opponent makes this kind of blunders, for example maybe your opponent thinks he's winning the exchange, you play the moves out in your head and try to see if you can win the exchange.
That's about all I can think about right now as for tips. Maybe later I will post more tips if they pop up and I think they are important to share.
By no means am I a chess expert. I just wanted to share the news that I got to 1300 on rapid with the forum and also give tips that worked for me and may work for others who are struggling to get into the upper 1200 rating right now.