Steps of improving

Hello.

I love chess and since I discovered chess.com, I improved my rating from about 1000 to 1400-1500. But now I'm stuck. Would you please help me? Here are the steps I've gone through:

-I have an opening repertoire which involves every openings, but lasts only for 3-4 moves by both sides. Exceptions are the popular openings such as the Guiocco piano or some Sicilians, which I know further.

-I have continously using tactics trainer, an other chess tacitcs website and a book for advanced players.

-My weakness is positional play. I don't see the point of it because it requires long foresight. (That's why I don't have long openings either)

-I sometimes analyze my games with a chess engine to see what my mistakes were. I do this only when I don't know where was the mistake in my game.

That's all. I really appreciate any kind of help. Thx in advance.

I'd say give up on positional play and study tactics until you are MUCH higher rated. I win my games mostly due to tactics. Also I think it matters what type of tactics you study. Fast tactics is what really helped me. Check out Chess Tactics Server. It helped me a LOT.

Let's not ignore strategy all together, positionall play will increase your tactical skope aswell, tactical shots arise from a superior position!

And What is the best way of improving my stategic play?

- Annotated master games ... play them over in a "cover the next move and figure out what they played" fashion

- A good book on pawn structures. Strategy/Positional play is dictated by the cartilage on the board ... namely the pawns. I'd say buy Pawn Power by Kmoch and you'll start seeing "ideas" for where to put pieces based on where the pawns are at. Atleast this is what helped me (a tactics-only player at one point) appreciate the need for strategy.

[1] One suggestion for improving positional understanding would be to pick up "positional openings", for example, KID. Expect to lose plenty of games though.

[2] Another suggestion would be to just go through Master games (preferably those that are annotated) ... try to work out why move X was played & prefered  over another.

[3] some tactical positions have very strong positional undertones, study them.

for example (its not a brilliant example, but its the best could find in 30 sec):

try to solve... Click "solution" to seem my annotations...

My System, and whatever decent books you can get on pawn play, and you´ve got yourself a stable base there.

Here is a very simple example of tactics and positional understanding merging into one:     (the variation explains the solution)

Wouldn't it b better totake with the bishop first & lose the bishop & have 2 knights left?

2 knights and a king can't force a checkmate, but a bishop and a knight can, so taking with the bishop first would have cost you the win.

Well, what sort of mistakes do you make in your game?

If they are usually things that you already knew (i.e., you lose a piece to a very simple tactic, etc), then the problem isn't with your knowledge - learning more tactics or reading more books isn't going to help.

The hard part is to get the concentration necessary to keep checking for tactics, both for you and for your opponent, at every single move.

I think practice is most important for that sort of thing. Try to consciously check every check, capture and threat your opponent can make after the move you want to play.

 In short, no.     

I mean no offence with this statement, but, to think that 1.Bxe4 is the correct move shows a major lack of Engame understanding (see the puzzle variation for the explanation, that or Tricklev's post).

...you might find this a useful resource: http://www.shredderchess.com/online-chess/online-databases/endgame-database.html

In fact I both commit mistakes that I should have noticed in the position, and also more advanced tactical mistakes. Chess.com analysis often puts a ?! after my moves, which I consider positional errors.

Has anyone ever thought of trying to annotate unannotated master games in as much detail as you can? I think it's a pretty good exercise as long as you're at least 1500 or so and read silman's books so you know a bit about planning, but from there it's a big help to improving your strength further. I have had some detailed analysis trying to figure out why a master played a less natural move, and there always is a reason which helps you learn. Annotated games are usually not that detailed anyway.

Well.. I do face same problems. With practicve, and learniong little opening raportoire, my rating has gone up;

but it it just dyanmically rotate there ~ 1400.

My mistakes in game are usually missing simple tactics.. but when playing aginst stronger players, I can actually foressee dozen moves ahead, even unforced, btu cant seem to find a better variation.

I totally agree with the guy who said the best way to get better is to play lots of games and gain experience.  You'll catch on sooner or later.  Studying is a waste of time once you are out of the rank beginner phase.

Playing and playing and playing without studying will just cause you to ingrain bad habits even more deeply.

One thing that helps tremendously is annotating your own games, preferably all of them.  Go over them yourself, and with a computer, and check the opening lines. Until you get to the expert level, at least, the issue isn't what you don't know, it's the mistakes that you make.

One thing that almost every sub-1600 player will find when annotating their own games: They (we) make a lot more simple mistakes than they (we) think they (we) do.  It's easy to memorize a simple guideline such as "don't hang pieces" or "make sure you aren't losing material on the exchange."  But can you really go 10, 20, 100 games without making that mistake? Most of us at this level can't.

My rating is 2000-2100, I stoped here, and I know how you feel. Nothing helps. All of us have the same problem. My advice is, go trough Capablanka's, Adolf Andersen's, Lasker's ...games, and most of everything solve chess problems, endgames, midlegames at least 5-10 problems every day. And you can advance soon to 1800- 2000.Good luck!

right..!!

Lol, there are TONS of things that you need to know after beginner that are hard to just automatically learn. You need to have the knowledge of planning to move on. You first need the knowledge, but you also have to learn how to apply it by playing and anlyzing your games to know the reason you tend to lose and try to fix those weaknesses. I used to think master chess was easy after reading some books, of course that was completely naive but eventually you find out how to use the knowledge in your own games. But study a waste of time? Wow. Maybe you could try to figure these things out, it'd just be very hard. There is no way you're going to know new GM concepts by just blindly playing. before I studied, I only played, for fun. I never really got better. When I learned about the strategy of the game, I eventually got better after playing so that I could see how it translates into play. But you had to learn first.