Stuck at a plateau, how to continue improving?

I started playing chess maybe 6 months ago. When I first started I was absolutely horrible but I was constantly improving. Now I have reached a place where I have a solid opening repetoire, and fairly solid play, but I have found myself plateuing where I seem to not be improving much. I play, always analyze my games afterwards, and do the tactics trainer when I'm bored but I don't seem to be winning any more often or improving my rating.

So I am wondering if anyone has some good advice on how to start back up improving my game again, perhaps books to read or exercises to do?

Thanks!

doing so could take a lot of time though. perhaps time is better spent on tactics and endgame?

I think that's a good idea, I recently switched from mostly e4 to d4 as white and I think just playing lots of different positions has really helped my play overall.

Your online rating like mine, suggests that most of the times, your opponent is not winning - it is you who is losing through serious mistakes and blunders. I have an acronym BRAVEB to remind myself as soon as it is my turn to move:

B: Did opponent just commit a Blunder? Don't let the opponent off the hook!
R: What was the Reason (motive) behind his last move?
A: How many squares are you Attacking. More the merrier.
V: What will happen due to Vaccum created by moving your piece away?
E: Effect of your piece in new position
B: Am I commiting a Blunder with my new move?

Be Brave. Timid play does not win the game.

Your ratings on chess.com looks quite low to stop improving fast. You just need some guidance.

Most important advice:

For starters if you want to learn, stop playing 5 min blitz for some time. Play longer games - 10+ minutes. Also play online chess which is great - start 10+ parallel games if you can't wait for moves. And take time and think about your moves, dont be lazy and just play them instantly and hope they are good -  like we all do in blitz :). If you avoid repeating simple blunders (like forgetting to move attacked piece) you should get to 1400 rating.

Then do this:

Read some books with annotated games, don't go too much into details and lines. The goal is to learn to easily recognize most common good and bad moves and positions. To find the weaknesses in positions. Then try to create simple plans to exploit those weaknesses.

Try maybe this book: Chernev Irving - Logical chess move by move.

you only played 6 month, how could you reach a plateau??

know thats not what i ment. I mean he can´t be solid, second he can´t even know he reached a plateau(i mean he has absolutly no idea how learning works) and also if you play so short you must just see there are a trillion things you dont know.

problem identified (emphasis on the word "bored")

Yeah, <1200 on TT means you are failing pretty basic tactics.

Maybe try this website:

http://www.chesstactics.org/

good idea!  tactics "trainer" here is instruction-free.

Well it looks as if these comments have not only helped the writer of this topic,but me and many others.LOL!!

You say you analyse your own games.  What have you picked up on from that?  What causes you to lose games? 

Once you identify it you work on it.

And yes, tactics work will help.  Keep in mind that there are two reasons that you study tactics.  The first is that you want to win material when your opponent makes a tactical oversight.  But the second, and more important reason, is so that you don't blunder away your own pieces.

Yeah I think you're definitely right paul, I can solve tactics pretty well, but always blunder in quick games, simply because I don't do that, and don't have the process automatic yet.

I agree. Why are you losing your games at the moment ? This is where you need to improve...

press the "learn" button at the top of the page, then go to study plans : ah-ha - you have arrived.

maybe quick games, but it seems to me that i blunder way way less since doing tactics training.

Exactly!  You want to know what a plateau is?  Check this out:

1983 - The year I learned how to play the game.
1995 - The year I picked up my first chess book.
1996 - The year of my first tournament (1177 rating)
1997 - The year I broke 1400
1998 - The year I broke 1700
1999 - The year I broke 1900
2001 - The year I broke 2000
Highest ever rating:  2090

Let's think about this.  I first hit 2000 in the August 2001 Rating Supplement.  I started sustaining a 2000 rating around 2004.  I have occasionally dipped below 2000 since then for brief periods of time, but have never been below 2000 since August 2010.

And yet, I STILL have never hit 2100, and it's almost 12 YEARS since I hit 2000.  THAT'S hitting a plateau.

So what did I do?  Well, for starters, don't just change your repertoire over and over again.  I've done that myself.  Here's what happens.  You dip a good 50 to 100 points because even though you may have studied the whole book on the Najdorf (or whatever opening you are studying at the time), you still don't have the experience.  You will hit a high losing ratio at first.  Then you'll start winning, and plateau right back where you started.  I kept on Plateauing around a "sustainable" rating of 2030, with occasional spikes as high as 2090 and dips as low as 1980.

That's until I changed my approach in 2012.  I quit trying to read 200 opening books at once.  I now study opening theory about 40% of the time, and spend the rest of the time on high level middlegame books.  Not pee-wee level tactics problems.  Talking more upper level books.  For instance, I have read, cover to cover, both "Forcing Chess Moves" (New In Chess publishes that book) and "Chess Lessons" (Quality Chess publishes that one), and am in the middle of studying "The Grandmaster's Battle Manual", which I'm on Chapter 2, and "Grandmaster Preparation: Calculation", which I'm almost thru Chapter 4.  These are not fast reads.  You might have to spend an hour and a half to get thru 2 pages.  But you know what?  This is what it takes, and while my "sustainable" rating was 2030 in mid-2012, it's more like 2070 now.  40 rating points in 9 months at that level is a lot, and I figure to finally hit 2100 sometime this year.

The other thing you will need to do, if you don't do so already, is play Over The Board tournaments with a LONG time control.  Game in 60 minutes is NOT long.  Long is more like 40 Moves in 2 Hours followed by Sudden Death in 1 Hour.  Tournaments that feature this would include the World Open, US Open, Chicago Open, Philadelphia Open, National Chess Congress, National Open, etc.  Outside the US, 40 moves in 90 Minutes followed by Sudden Death in 30 Minutes with a 30 Second Increment I hear is common.  Look for tournaments with this time control or slower.

As for openings, do try a few others, but don't just rapidly change it.  Easy your way into something else.  I finally found what is comfortable for me (1.d4 as White, 1...d6 and 1...g6 as Black, both of them being Universal systems).

Personally I've started playing 960 which relieves you of endless and tiresome opening theory. It has also been scientifically shown with new research in the neurological study of insight that breaking routines (in any part of daily life) measurably improves insight and creativity. Hopefully my standard game might improve.

It is quite tricky to get into the 960 chess mindset, but i think Fisher was on to something!

If you're studying "endless opening theory" at your level you're doing it all wrong.  No offense of course, the same goes for me too.