Stuck at a plateau, how to continue improving?

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richardep

Don't worry wafflemaster, much too lazy for that, I get a few tips from youTube and away I go..

Fromper

You want to improve? Your rating is below 1800? Go do a few thousand tactics puzzles. No, I'm not exaggerating. Doing the same thousand over and over is better than doing several thousand different puzzles. Also, go with sets of puzzles chosen by professional coaches for their instructional value, rather than just random puzzles on an internet site (like this one).

Unlike some people, I'm not going to say that you should only do tactics, but it should be at least 40% of your study time until you hit 1800 rating OTB (at least 2000 on any internet site). Below 1500, make that 75%.

kgst000

Thanks guys, lots of good advice here.

And by plateu I don't mean "hard plateu" where improving is impossible, but my improvement has defenitely leveled out. I was consistently improving by about 50 points per week until I hit 1100-1200 and then I just stopped consistently improving so I came here looking for advice, and I got some good tips!

ThrillerFan

FirebrandX, what you said is, and I quote: "One good way is to force yourself to completely change your repertoire."

I would not recommend at any point completely changing.  Expanding, small pieces at a time, is a better approach.  Also, "completely change" would imply something along of the lines of "Hey, you used to play the Morra Gambit, why don't you try the London System?" and "Say, you used to play the Caro-Kann, how about we teach you the Latvian Gambit?"

TetsuoShima
kgst000 wrote:

Thanks guys, lots of good advice here.

And by plateu I don't mean "hard plateu" where improving is impossible, but my improvement has defenitely leveled out. I was consistently improving by about 50 points per week until I hit 1100-1200 and then I just stopped consistently improving so I came here looking for advice, and I got some good tips!

thats normal you should focus on your weakpoints not on your rating. Always think about if you understand the opponents move. Did you really have a plan, did you sometimes not know what to do. Did you sometimes not win even though you felt you had a winning position, you should focus on building up your knowledge not on points.

Chess its so vaste i think unless your name is Fischer or Kasparov its hard not to improve, Rating is very generic you can also drop even though you improved.