Serious Question

The required combination of passion and time hold most people back I think.  Maybe they can't be GM anyway, but they can "compete with grandmasters in over the board play" with ratings lower than 2500.

If the long term goal is GM, great.  You have a long way to go though.  Set a short term goal a few hundred rating points higher than you are now and get a coach.  Once you reach that level, set another goal.  We certainly don't know your strengths and weaknesses without seeing many games.  And although you've seen all your games, it can be easy to focus on the wrong things.  A coach will review your play and work with you to help you achieve your goals.

Thanks for the response. Short term goals sounds practical. I just hope I don't become complacent.

Why is everyone obsessed with being a GM,  only a small , small percentage will ever obtain that, play for fun and growth.

The way I see it... if you love the game and the competition of it, you wont become complacent.  If you love the title / rank itself, then at some point after you're well above average you wont care about improvement so much anymore.

Good news is, either way you'll have made a decision you're happy with.

There are FIDE rated tournaments in the US.  There is a problem though, and that's a tournament offering GM "norms."

So yes, if a person in the US is serious about the title, at some point they'd almost be forced to move to a country in Europe.

I didn't know this!

Good news for the OP hehe.

Looks like you're stuck in the wrong form of practice. First of all, 8 hours is WAY too much a day. Like you said, you've been ineffecient. Sometimes, 8 hours of bad studying is just as productive as an hour of excellent studying. Your brain will stop comprehending positions correctly if it gets overloaded. Calculation problems due to laziness are a surprise seeing that you said you study 8 hours a day...

Blitz is helpful for those who have trouble with time management, so if you're ok with that, blitz is more of a fun pastime.

If you're having tactical problems, I suggest calculation but that only goes so far if a good tactic is present. At your level I assume (1200 by your chess.com rating) dropping pieces to tactics sounds like an issue I used to have... playing my move 1.5 seconds after my opponent his his clock. Now it's more like 1.5 minutes I spend a move. If you have this problem, the only thing I can recommend is to play in longer time controlled tournaments or to actually practice blitz to improve time management skills (see the irony?)  or to play longer games like 30|15 or something on Live Chess.

This is all I have to say and my OTB is roughly 1700 (and yes I know my chess.com rating is severely below it). I'm not a teacher, and I'm 10 years old, but I've had lots of experience from my 7 different chess coaches and I'm qualified to be one once I'm 14 so I guess it's your call whether to take my advice or not.

I understand I am lazy when it comes to calculation. I wanted to know an organized regimen for incremental success. I told you I don't like blitz, and I think that's evident if you look at my standard rating. No I'm not going to take your advice either@ danny_dan. 

Chess.com gives a study plan:

http://www.chess.com/article/view/study-plan-directory

Hicetnunc had a nice blog post about other resources, maybe some of this will help you:

http://www.chess.com/blog/hicetnunc/resources-for-systematic-training

Thanks for the links, but none of the programs are attractive to me. I might have to figure this out myself. 

I've played in events in the US where each game affects both your USCF and FIDE rating.

Norms are another matter though.  Just because it's a FIDE event doesn't mean you can get a norm.  It might be better to wiki because there are a lot of rules.

Basically you have to score a certain performance rating, which means a certain number of points (1=win, 0.5=draw, 0=loss) against a certain average opponent rating.  Also the players in attendance must represent at least 2 or 3 different countries and the tournament has to be a certain number of rounds (see, I'm forgetting details).

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Similarly it's difficult to get a FIDE rating.  You can get a membership by just buying it like USCF.  But to get a rating you have to score at least blah blah blah, and your opponents must blah blah blah over blah blah rounds (all this crap again).

So you can attend a number of FIDE events, and be a member, but not get a rating yet heh.

Basically, to get a norm for IM (the "lower" norm), you need to get a 2500 level tournament performance against a bunch of international players.

So norms are not really something you need to be concerned about before you're rated at least 2200.

As for FIDE membership, it's automatic as soon as you get a FIDE rating. To get a FIDE rating, you need to play in FIDE events. So basically, ask the organizer if his event is FIDE rated on top of being USCF rated.

FIDE rating is much easier to get since last summer, as you only need to play 5 FIDE-rateds games and score at least 0.5pts.

2450 performance is the requirement for an IM norm. Otherwise +1. 

Hmm, I thought you had to buy it.

I've seen players who didn't qualify for the rating, but they had a FIDE card... maybe all it takes is playing in the event?

Ah, they lowered it then, didn't they ? Anyway, still requires some work

Very small tournaments only have 1 section, the open.  Generally the bigger the tourney, the more sections.  I'd enter the lowest one if I were you e.g. U1200 or U1000. 

How you're paired is they order the players by rating (unrated at bottom), cut the list in half so there are two columns, and now the top player of column 1 is paired with the top of column 2 and so on down the list.  After that winners play winners, people who drew play people who drew, and losers play losers (or more generally, for later rounds you're paired with people who have the same score as you).  At least this is how most tournaments work and is called the swiss system.  You'll see e.g." 4SS" in the tournament listing meaning a 4 round swiss system tournament.

So if you can only enter the open, your first round will usually be the biggest mismatch, and as the tourney goes on you get opponents closer to your ability.

Entering a higher rating section, or "playing up" for experience is fine.  But usually only 1 section higher, and usually not for your first tournament.

I wouldn't worry about your rating.  In the long term it all evens out.  Losing all your games wouldn't be a good learning experience in any case.  Sometimes the opponent is so good, we can't tell what went wrong or when.  It's also important to learn / experience winning a won position, which isn't always easy (opponents dig in, and meanwhile it's easy to relax when you're ahead).

If you do lose all your games, your rating is estimated to be 400 points under the lowest rated player you played.  I'd only worry about it if your first few tournaments were like this... which they shouldn't be unless e.g. you live in a remote area where everyone is really good.

Oh, and for tourney questions (and some practice on a 3d board with a clock) it's nice to visit a local club and get to know some people.  They can also estimate your strength and suggest which section to enter.

<Hicetnunc> lowered it? I don't think so. I think it's been 2450 at least for the last 25 years...

This is one of the best things I've read today, thank you for the laugh. Yes, I think Botvinnik would tell you to quit playing this silly blitz chess and instead brush up on your endgame technique... joy.

He will also probably let you know that you don't have a clue about chess, and that you have no future at all in this profession.

I think you pretty much identified it. There is a point at which you cannot simply play intuitively, but need to calculate. Jerry Silman's technique as outlined in How to Reassess Your Chess works great for me. He explains that there are steps you take before calculating anything at all, such as assessing dynamic imbalances and coming up with a plan. This helps me because I like processing all the strategic ideas, but not calculating. It sort of puts calculating in the backseat.