Need help breaking 2200 USCF

I am rated 1957 Elo. I've gained 131 rating points in 2 months (3 tourneys). However, I feel like I am going to plateau soon. I have never opened a chess book in my life. I usually just watch chess lectures on Youtube (mainly by Akobian). I only play bullet and blitz chess and somehow manage to do well in these OTB tourneys.  

For the 2000+ Elo players, what helped you improve the most?

Can you recommend some good books for me? I struggle in the late middlegame/early endgame transition.

"From the MiddleGame into the Endgame", Edmar Mednis.

Liquidation on the Chessboard by Joel Benjamin

And I hate to break it to you, but you are going to have to start learning opening theory in depth at the 2000 level to get over 2200.  I'm going thru the same struggle of getting to 2200.  Continue to yo-yo between 2050 and 2150 with an occasional spike to 2180 or drop to 2020.

Some middlegame books you might want to consider are (and trust me, it's a LONG ROAD to get to 2200):

($) = I have read

(*) = I am currently reading

(#) = On my "to be read" list

(*)Techniques of Positional Play (Bronznik/Terekhin)

(#)Improve Your Chess Pattern Recognition

(#)Train Your Chess Pattern Recognition (the sequel to the previous one)

($)Chess Lessons (Popov)

($)Forcing Chess Moves (Hertan)

($)Winning Chess Middlegames (Sokolov)

(#)Sacrifice and Initiative in Chess (Sokolov)

(#)Risk and Bluff in Chess

($)Grandmaster Preparation: Calculation (Aagaard)

($)Grandmaster Preparation: Positional Play (Aagaard - this is the most important one!)

($)Grandmaster Preparation: Strategic Play (Aagaard)

(*)Grandmaster Preparation: Endgame Play (Aagaard)

(#)Grandmaster Preparation: Attack and Defense (Aagaard)

(#)Grandmaster Preparation: Thinking Inside the Box (Aagaard - not published yet)

(*)Mating the Castled King (Danny Gormally)

(#)Advanced Chess Tactics (Lev Psakhis)

And read many game collections by players in the Post-Alekhine era:

(*) Chess on the Edge (Book 1)

(#) Chess on the Edge (Book 2)

(#) Chess on the Edge (Book 3)

(NOTE:  Chess on the Edge is the games of Canadian GM Duncan Suttles)

(*) Stein: Move by Move

(#) My 100 Best Games (Dreev)

($) My Great Predecessors I

(*) My Great Predecessors II

(#) My Great Predecessors III

(#) Fighing Chess with Magnus Carlsen

And there are a number of other GMs that I intend to go thru the games of, like Karpov, Spassky, Kasparov, etc.

Grandmaster Secrets by GM newengland7 will help you.

You are too weak to even judge.  The Grandmaster Preparation series is for people over 2000.  You should be reading Yusupov's series.

teichmann has typical runner comments on his page, so he has no right to judge what books are and are not a waste of money.

I read the first book in the excelling at chess series which seems to be a primer for the gm preparation series. it was pretty good. I also recently started the yusupov series, the stuff so far is fairly basic but itll be a decent refresher,plus I can use it to coach some students of mine. Are books 7-9 in the series still pretty basic thrillerfan?

When you say "books 7 - 9", do you mean the Green ones?  They are by no means basic.

The Orange books are at about a 1500 level, though not a bad idea for an 1800 player to get a refresher on the stuff.  It's not like it's so basic that it's intended for someone who never even heard of a Fork except for the thing you use to eat with, but it won't be extremely hard either.

The Blue books are at about an 1800 level.  They are more complicated than the Orange, and you will probably be seeing yourself going thru them a lot slower than you do the red ones.

The Green books are at about a 2100 level, and should even be a challenge for people like myself (i.e. A 2100 player - OTB).

I consider myself at the fringe between the Yusupov Series and the Aagaard series, if that gives you an idea of the difference in difficulty of the two series.  In other words, people above me would find the Yusupov series too easy for probably the entire duration of the series, and people below me, or at least those far below me, are not ready for the Aagaard Series.  I can tell you what I've gotten out of that series so far:

Calculation:  This combined with "Forcing Chess Moves" has completely changed my approach to attacking and in particular, finding candidate moves.

Positional Play:  This is the most important book in the series, and by the way, Calculation should be read first, then this book.  After that, the rest of them order is not important.  This book goes thru 3 very important positional concepts and pounds these three things into you via a ton of problems.

Strategic Play:  This book is very complicated, and probably the hardest book in the series all told.  There are large study sections, and this one reads more like an actual book rather than a problems book.  There are about 100 to 150 problems unlike the 400+ in Calculation.  The solutions are often the study of an actual game, not just a 10 move sequence with a bunch of sidelines like the others.

Endgame Play:  I'm about 60 to 65% of the way thru this book with probably about a 75% success rate with the problem.  The fact that I'm a stronger endgame player than middlegame player probably explains why I am getting far more of these right than I did in Strategic Play.  I may even re-read Strategic Play after I finish the rest.

Attack and Defense:  From what I've heard from others, this is more in line with the one on Calculation, though a lot more difficult.

The last isn't published yet, so can't comment.

Ah, so you feel you're a bit below the level of the aagaard series but you've read most of those? I haven't begun the gm preparation yet, I read excelling at chess and will likely work my way through all of those before moving to the gm preparation which seems to just be a more advanced version of the Excell series. Aagaard noted that excelling at chess was likely one of his weaker books of the series, but I feel like I got something out of it. Calculation is next on the list and it seems pretty variation heavy, so it'll be a slower read. So the strategic play book is the hardest read but has far less puzzles? Is it just that the puzzles themselves are more advanced or is the concepts he explains difficult to grasp?

Get a coach.  Akobian will do nicely.

http://akobian.com/lessons/

And yes, by books 7-9 I mean the last in the series. I've just read the first 6 or 7 chapters of book 1 and there was some decent refresher material. I could pretty much skip the chapters and get most of the exercises correct, but the mating patterns was still a good tactical refresher. I like the setup of the books so far, and am glad to hear I will find the later books challenging and instructive. 

With ones like Calculation, it's "here's a couple of examples to grasp the concept" and then 50 or so problems.  4 to 6 problems to a page witht he solutions on the back of that page.  Each solution is maybe a paragraph long.

With Strategic Play, it's more like "heres 40 pages of analysis to explain what we are trying to say" and then maybe 20 problems.  The 20 problems are in succession, and the answers are after the problems of that chapter.  Each solution may be anywhere from half a page to as many as 2 pages or even longer in length.

I think the best way to describe it is it's very conceptual and extremely in-depth.  It's not "concrete" like most tactics books here.  Here's 4 moves and you win a Knight.  Nothing like that!

If the book on Calculation was compared to discrete mathematics (i.e. Truth Tables, Proof by Induction, etc), then Strategic Play would be your graduate level class on Number Thoery!

I should also say that the one on Calculation has 10 tests of 6 problems each in the second-to-last chapter.  There's a brief guide of score to rating level translation.  My calculation was at about a 2300 level if I recall correctly (could be off, read the book back in 2014, and that book alone took me about 6 to 8 months), scoring 58 out of a possible 150.

Ah I see. I'll be curious to see if the excelling at calculation is similar to the preparation series. I haven't read many books so figure I should work my way through his less advanced version first and then move up when I have the more basic concepts down.

Two books on becoming a master:

What It Takes to Become a Chess Master by Andrew Soltis

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708093409/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review857.pdf

"... When two 1700 players meet over the board, one will typically self-dstruct. Not in the opening, as an 1100 player would, but by move 40, if not 30. As a result, many players can reach 1900 strength simply by not blundering.

Mastering chess takes more. It requires a new set of skills and traits. ..." - GM Andrew Soltis (2012)

Reaching the Top?! by Peter Kurzdorfer

http://www.thechessmind.net/blog/2015/11/16/book-notice-kurzdorfers-reaching-the-top.html

http://www.jeremysilman.com/shop/pc/Reaching-the-Top-77p3905.htm

"... On the one hand, your play needs to be purposeful much of the time; the ability to navigate through many different types of positions needs to be yours; your ability to calculate variations and find candidate moves needs to be present in at least an embryonic stage. On the other hand, it will be heart-warming and perhaps inspiring to realize that you do not need to give up blunders or misconceptions or a poor memory or sloppy calculating habits; that you do not need to know all the latest opening variations, or even know what they are called. You do not have to memorize hundreds of endgame positions or instantly recognize the proper procedure in a variety of pawn structures.

[To play at a master level consistently] is not an easy task, to be sure ..., but it is a possible one. ..." - NM Peter Kurzdorfer (2015)

• Thriller, I recently attempted to read the excelling at chess calculation and found it extremely variation heavy, which I suppose is the point. Maybe it was because I wasn't taking enough time to really consider and appreciate what the variations were covering. But nevertheless I've opted to read excelling at positional chess and excelling at technical chess first and will work my way back to the calculation and combinational play later, as I feel my positional understanding is the bigger flaw in my play and am also working on endgames which in itself should help with pure calculation ability. If that was the excel version of calculation I can only imagine what the GM prep version looks like . 

I disagree with this. If you play simple systems, you can still reach 2200, as long as you're good enough with positional/tactical play. Also, I know from experience that most 2200s aren't very good at anything outside of their little opening theory bubble. Take 'em out of it, and you'll be there in no time.