my goals and how to achieve them

Hello,

I am originally from Cuba, I started playing chess at a very early age, I showed great promise but due to my lack of interest I never really fulfilled my potential.  Lately, I have returned to the game with a fury, since I still think I have a chance.  I am 22 years old.  My USCF rating is 1408 at the moment due to 4 years of inactivity.  A family friend, who is a Cuban master, recently gave me some advice on how to improve and he still thinks I could reach National Master strength (2200+).  This really motivated and a game I played this Sunday raised my hope even higher (included it below).  This is my goal, I would like to reach that plateau within the next 4 years.  Since I come from a chess family, I have everything I need to create a serious training program.  What i've been doing lately is solving tactical problems in CT-Art and going over games.  Now what do you guys think my approach should be?  I have 200 chess books and computer programs like Fritz etc. 

I've tried to analyze my weaknesses and strengths but I can never create a serious breakdown of what I need to work on.  I know that my biggest weakness is the opening, since I lack an opening repertoire which sometimes lead me to play my opponent's way.  Also, the concept of planning and strategizing for the middle game is something that I can't fully grasp.  Finally, I do need to improve my calculation skills since sometimes my tactics go wrong.  I'm not bad in endgames and my biggest strength is the tactics, since I love a pretty combination.

So this leads me to my questions:

1)  What should my opening repertoire be?  I've noticed that I shy away from trying new openings that I've never played before.  Also, I think I prefer closed games where the positions are cramped and a lot of thinking is involved.

2)  How should I train?  Maybe it's a stupid question, but what do I do?  Open to all suggestions.

3)  Is there a serious strong player 2000+ here who would be willing to mentor or play training games with me to analyze my play?

Okay, that's it, sorry for all the rambling and I appreciate the help in advance.  Now here's the game I played.  It was agains a player rated 1957 in the USCF.

Firstly, if you're rated in the 1400s, the opening is _not_ your main problem. Games below 2000 level are not lost because of inferior opening knowledge, they're lost because of tactical blunders, bad strategy and endgame blunders.

Concentrating on openings is the best way to never reach your goal.

To improve, most players need a lot of work on:

- Tactics. Your CT-ART training should be sufficient, just be persistent. Exercises where there sometimes isn't a working tactic are useful as well, so you don't just sacrifice a piece and see if it works.

- Endgames. Just the basic elementary things at first, basic pawn and rook endgames.

- Analyze! Just get a lot of chess positions and try to work out what's really going on. Try to find the truth. There are many ways to go about this: analyzing your own serious games (especially, try to remember why you rejected some moves during the game and try to figure out whether that was correct), analyzing commented master games from books (skip the first ten moves, cover the rest, analyze the position in your head or with pen and paper, then reveal the master's next move. Continue over the whole game), or endgame studies. Let other people look over your work, or check them with a computer. But basically, the more time you put in trying to get to the truth in actual chess positions, the more you improve.

- Play serious, slow games against the toughest opposition you can find.

To improve your openings, after each serious game, look up what the theory in that line was, what was the point where one of you diverged. Try to figure out why. Don't bother with a repertoire, try to mix it up or play openings you saw GMs play.

Note that "read a lot of books" isn't in the list, unfortunately. Nor is playing blitz or letting a computer do the hard work for you...

But, luckily, the last and most important rule is: have fun! If that means doing the exact opposite of the above, then so be it :-)

I've lost count of the number of times I've heard that sort of story, reminds me of one of the lines from an old british comedy series: Bottom...

"I should have been a chess champion you know... If I'd spent my entire life learning how to play chess better than anyone else I would have been the chess champion."

Aside from that, the advice above is very good. The advice I would give (bearing in mind my rating is not very high at all) is to analyse your games, especially the ones you've lost. People have a tendancy to want to analyse the games they've won, because they find them more fulfilling, but you will probably learn more from losses. In addition I would advise you not to obsess over your rating so much to begin with at least, focus on improving your actual chess rather than becoming "a success" or reaching a target rating. Then again I suppose its not bad to have goals, just not how I'd go about it.

Thank you guys for your advice, I will follow your advice as I create my own training regime.  I would like to hear from more of you guys so please give me more suggestions.  Thanks again.

I was just browsing through Profile of a Prodigy, about Bobby Fischer and was impressed with the huge number of games he had played by the time he was 12 years old.  He was playing constantly, probably from about 7 years old - I'm guessing maybe 20 games a week or more.  If that's at all accurate that would be around 1000 games a year or at least 5000 games by age 12 - maybe a lot more.

I think we underestimate how much there is to learn and how incremental the process is.  If you play a lot you'll get good, but a lot is a lot.

10,000 hours practice.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/nov/15/malcolm-gladwell-outliers-extract

Don't think about four years from now. Think about your current game.

Some books I do recommend reading are

- endgame books: one beginner book, one reference book, and one advanced topics book in that order. I read How to Win in the Chess Openings by I.A. Horowitz cover to cover two or three times, much of Basic Chess Endings by Reuben Fine, and Endgame Preparation by Jon Speelman. I need to do them again :(
- The Art of Attack by Vukovic
- The Art of the Middle Game by Kotov and Keres
- A pawn book like Pawn Power In Chess by Hans Kmoch 

You can pick up all this stuff by going over GM games, but for middlegame ideas, I prefer books. I think it's more efficient. For endgame knowledge, you need them.

A must games books includes The Chess Struggle in Practice by David Bronstein. A great supply of high level annoted games at a time when much theory was being worked out.