Rating plateau. How do I keep improving?

Well, to all who have taken the time to read this post, I say thank you.  I have a perplexing issue on my hands that I can't figure out how to crack.  I took up chess seriously about 8 months ago and have been following the listed regiment:

-1 hour tactical training

-1 hour opening theory and training

-1 hour positional understanding and assessment

-1 hour of GM game reviews from leading players

I follow this regiment everyday.  Religiously!  I have sky rocketed my rating both online and in real life during over-the-board tournaments.  My current peak level is not known yet in over-the-board play as it is still on the upward slope but I seem to have hit the plateau here online.  My current rating fluctuates between 2100 and 2200.  I see some players who have achieved 2500+ and here comes my dilemma...  What are they doing that I am not?  If anyone on this level has any suggestions for me, I will gladly listen.  Thank you for any assistance provided ahead of time.

Hmn no offence but maybe their brains are more developed and can learn faster or maybe they practice for longer.

Indeed, you have spotted the dilemma as stated above and placed it in crude terms.  This is the question I need answered.  Is it experience?  Is it just plain ability?  Do they have some other topic they study or put more time into another area?  That is what I want an answer to.

Most of them have probably been playing for decades, so have developed a more nuanced understanding of position, dynamics, defence and so on.

So you believe it is just an experience thing then.  Well, I was hoping for that since I don't really want to admit to myself that I can't achieve something.  Thanks for your opinion.  We'll see what others think. 

Having said that, I've never met you, and am only rated around 1700 myself, so...

Yes.  I love it Tony.  The "Royal Game" kind of swept me off my feet and I fell into a blissful relationship with it.  I take a week off before an OTB tournament just to give my mind a break.  Maybe I will try that more often with the online chess.  My mind could be fatigued.  Thanks for your opinion.

Doug:

I'd LOVE to know what chess books have taken you to 2200 in only 8 months. I've been playing for years and am around 1750.

Btw, my advice to you is to NOT PLAY chess for several days, but go ahead and keep studying.

Chess books that have helped me tremendously...  Well I can think of three right off the top of my head.  I started with IM Jeremy Silman's book "Reassess your Chess" which is a great book to begin with and then I think the next two books that helped me by any large amount was Alexander Kotov's "Think like a Grandmaster" and "Play like a Grandmaster".  The latter of those two is somewhat advanced and could be tough to grasp if you haven't looked at a lot of chess literature.  I have read and studied over 300 books though.  Those are just the three that seemed to have helped the most.

Thank you Doug

I've read Silman: I'll check out the other two!

Rating in this site does not really matter....you play for fun and you play for practice if you are serious....for the amount of games that one plays here rating keeps adding....my current rating here 2299 and have achieved a high of 2380 or so...but look at my avg opp rating its 1708 after about 100 odd games...i take my time off to make my move in tough situations...you can't do that in OTB (the kind of time allowed here...i accept only a 7 day challange, one reason is that i may not be able to make a move everyday, my net connection breaks off, etc but i also use this to ponder over a move sometimes).  Clearly from the rating here, OTB rating will be down atleast 100 to 300 points, depending on how much time the member takes to make the move.  I too started with reading a lot of books, material over the net, go over games at chessgames.com, etc but my mind is fatigued...these days if i go over one game in 3 days, its an acheivement and i take it not more than 3 games simultaneously...this too is a factor in determining the rating here....someone playing 50 odd games, i can't even imagine how they manage that...i am struggling to manage even 30.  If i am not playing that board for sometime, i take my time and even replay the moves to get my thoughts together...so chill and relax....do what best you can take, don't bother about rating on this site.  There are sites where members have rating of over 3000+ they should be better than Anand then or even the SGM Kasporov...can they maintain that rating in OTB, if yes, they would be making loads of money by now...don't bother about ratings here.

Hey Doug... impressive regime, and impressive, nearly incredible results! You've inspired me to break down my training in a disciplined way instead of just working at whatever pleases me at the moment. ...

8 months is awesome and it's just inevitable you hit a plateau right about where you've hit it.  You didn't think you were going to keeping skyrocketting all the way to Super GM did you? Everyone plateaus... you've managed to compress a journey that usually take years, many years, into a few months... maybe you've got another hundred or so points, but the plateau is inevitable. Probably the biggest obstacle to your progress is going to be accepting a slower rate of growth... it's easy to maintain your enthusiasm when you're growing by leaps and bounds, much harder to accept the incremental progress that comes later... it a viscious circle -- slowing progress leads to less disciplined work leads to less progress etc etc.  All I can say is, use your will power and discipline and intellect to find a way forward.

Also -- Analyze the hell out of your own games, and maybe you should work on your endgame technique a little WINK* NUDGE* WINK* that is: what the hell happened in your game with me. You had an easily won game, and right at the moment where it was obviously a win, and my finger was hovering near the "resign" button... you seemed to slacken, you took your foot off my throat, and I ended up swindling the draw.  So, there's an easy improvement you can make: work on your killer instinct. Don't relax on a won game, don't try to coast to victory -- not against me, anyway

Hmmmm. I play chess for FUN.

You seem to be putting in a lot of WORK into it - i mean serious work : good for u, keep it up.

Maybe - Thats why ur rating is so high and mine so low and also why im not bothered about my rating and u are. :-)

I am not rated 2100 yet but I suggest this: 

Do something new.

If you have not done this already, try just sitting down with a chessboard and answering all the vague questions you have about chess with it. 

Or take a game you lost and analyze it very deeply interactively with a chess engine. 

Or play a chess engine and allow yourself to take back as many moves as you want until you get a draw. (highly recommended).

Try experimenting with new openings, learn new abstract high level theories, read some theoretical strategical stuff that gives u 'whole picture' theory, etc.

Make sure you are making your study time very intense.  Imagine you had a drill instructor that was pushing you the whole time.  Are you putting in 100% effort into what you are learning?  Are you pushing yourself hard enough?  Are you taking your games very seriously?  Is your heart pumping during a game? =)

In my opinion new paradigms, new ideas can lead to huge breakthroughs.  For isntance, when I was watching the josh waitzkin lectures about 'maintaining the tension' and increasing pressure, when it really hit me, I morphed as a stronger player almost overnight!  It was a whole new way of looking at the game.  If you stay stuck in old ruts and old biases you may have great difficulty moving past what your 'rules' will allow you to do in chess.

Are you 100% psychology ?  Read Waitzkin's new book the art of learning, and or his chessmaster lectures.  Listen to Dan Heisman's lectures available on the internet about psychology and learning, etc.  Did you read purdy's 'search for chess perfection'?  Did you read nimzo's "my system" and "chess praxis"?  Did you read 'think like a grandmaster'? 

Have you ever analyzed your own thinking process while playing chess?  Maybe you're thinknig 'boom boom boom boom' at a very slow tempo.  Could solving very basic tactics allow you to speed it up to 'boom boom boom boom' at twice the speed?  Are you good at blitz chess?  Perhaps being skilled at it can speed up your analyzation speed.  If you have 5 seconds to analyze a forced sacrifice, and you can do it in a blitz game, you can do it quickly in a slow game, too. 

Do you think on your opponent's time?  Do you manage your time correctly?  Do you get enough rest during a tournament game, and perhaps drink a little sugar or something?

Have you ever meditated on what chess is about?  Have you ever sat under a waterfall while listening to Om padme hum chants on your waterproofed ipod, pieces flying around madly in your head blindfold?

How sure are you about what you know?  Each of the principles that you follow, and rules that you believe in, did you actually research it yourself?  Do you have any holes in your understanding?  Does anything make you uncomfortable?  Do you challenge yourself to play into uncomfortable situations?  Can you invent new opening moves?  

If you anlayze your thought process during a game, or during analysis, and then you try something different, this could have a huge impact on your playing.  Imagine, here are a few different scenarios that could happen:

#1 You feel there is a tactic in the air and you randomly calculate variations.

#2 You feel a tactic is in the air and you search for a hole or weakness in the opponent's position, and once it is found you start calculating relevant positions.

#3 You stare at a board blankly, not calculating anything, suddenly your subconscious screams out to you Bd3! And you see it is right.

#4 You slowly consider knight tours around the board.  Boom....booom...boooom....hop....

#5 Your mind explodes with pieces hopping everywhere, flying around the board in a mad frenzy and suddenly you realize that a few hops and a bishop sacrifice and you win the game.

 Good luck, those are my ideas

Wait one more:  Can you play blindfold?  Get really good at it.  That's all =)

There right about you plateau. I experienced the same thing when i was playing OTB tournaments. I grew like wild fire for about 10 mths and then stopped going up so fast. The best news is; if u keep up with what ur doing u will go up again even in big burst's on occasions so keep it up.

Pls note that eventually u will reach a point in your chess where u may not be able to improve further, what the reasons are i don't know but we do seem to get to that point well most of us anyway.

Oh yes go over ur games and check where ur play is weak. Like the endgame in my case, thats y im studying it to improve. You might find your endgame needs alot more work too and this part of the game is very important also.

" The more experience you have in the ending, the better your own middlegame play becomes. Then, as you get better in the middlegame, you choose openings that suit your middlegame tastes. In short, improving your endgame improves your whole game!"  Words From :- Winning chess endings, by:- Yasser Seirawan.

I'm just wondering what you do for tactical training. Also does positional understanding training include maybe looking at unannotated games and trying to understand the positions or is it just reading about it?

you are doing very well indeed, i,m amazed you are complaining, i wish i had you,re rating after such a short time.

but keep to your diverse schedule, i can,t see you going wrong, i,m afraid its beyond me, all the best.    4 hours a day is a lot.

Elubas,

My tactical training includes looking at a multitude of examples and themes from various sources including books, online references and some of my older games where I have found to have missed some tactics.  I review some older games a few months later just to refresh my weak points in a previous encounter.  As far as positional study, I take a game played by GM's and annotated by a GM but don't read through it.  I then try at each move (following the opening of course) to discern the appropriate plan or tactic to be used.  Some games are more complex leading you into multiple baby step plans to put together the larger picture (like a puzzle being put together).  Other games have a more straightforward approach and the clear plan can be seen all the way into the end game.  A lot of the differences you can pick up in positional play is based on the different positions and plans that arise out of the opening choice.  I have certain openings I play as black for e4, d4 and c4 and as white I am primarily an e4 player.  Using those choices I have made, I obviously center my study around games with the same openings.  There are a ton of good examples to look at in chess magazines as well.