What Can I Do to Improve?

I'm a fairly average player. I know a weak/moderate amount about openings. I can finish an endgame reasonably well, though maybe not as well as I should like. 

Unfortunately, I am, at times stupendously oblivious to hanging pieces. I am also incompetant at the middlegame.
My obliviousness has cost me the better part of 30 rating points. I was wondering if anyone in this great community here has found ways over these roadblocks. (That is of course, if you feel like sharing.)

Thank you in advance.
~ilc 

Do you perhaps mean 300 points? Not 30? If hanging pieces is only costing you 30 points then I want your secrets! Anyway, it seems that you have identified your own problems. Work on those. Hang less pieces (assuming you meant 300) and study how to better play the middlegame. Learning how to formulate the correct plan is probably your best bet.

I mean't 30... But there are more blunder-riddled games headed for the toilet, and I don't want to see it become 300.

Hang less pieces... If it were that easy, we'd all be GM level, eh?

Middlegame is many strands of differant, refuted plans. I suppose my question should be,

"How can I formulate the best plan?"

At the moment, my go-to plan is "try not to get tactified".

Thank you for the prompt reply!

 

I have a similar problem; only, I have read up on mid game tactics, superior minor pieces and plans revolving around those (for you, ilikecapablanca, I'd strongly recommend reading Silman's Reassess Your Chess--it'll help you over the midgame hump!), and I have a few strong openings and defenses under my belt with reliable results. My endgame is a bit weak, but that's not my main problem. I just seem to have a fixed Chess IQ of 1500. I get up to 1600 and then start playing against players at that rank, and I drop back down to 1500, invariably, and I've been trying to improve by learning from my own mistakes--and the brute force of repetition--for over five years! The only thing I am conscious of having learned in the past two years is using rooks to pin pawns in front of kings. Obviously, my brute force approach isn't working. What should I do to improve my game? Is there a book I can read that's the next logical step after Silman's that's accessible for a midling player? I don't have much time for chess books, but if there's one that can accommodate an hour at a time level of devotion, I'd get it.

I have the PERFECT answer to your question. Here is the GOLDEN LINK

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

Ah, if you want reliable advice on exactly how to improve your middlegame then I'm afraid that I'm not a strong enough player to help you. I do think that you need to rethink about that figure of 30 though. If I didn't hang pieces it would improve my ratings by a lot more than 30.

Reassess Your Chess is buried somewhere around here. 

What do you mean by "Chess IQ"? Is that a kind of rating?

Now you've got my curiosity piqued; what are the strong openings and attack you speak of?

Thank you! 

@thechessplaya5 idk about that; I looked at the link but it seems confusing and I'd have to sort through all kinds of things before I find something that's useful to me.

Fair enough. Thank you anyway!

I have gotten myself buried in that stuff two times... both times I had the zen task of deleting 479 tabs when I was done... Thank you, though.

@ilikecapablanca Chess IQ is a term I made up--a misleading term, at that, since it is based on a false idea in the first place (that we all have a fixed, raw IQ that can't be overcome through learning); but the term still captures my frustrated sense that, perhaps, my problem is one that's beyond learning--that I just will miss easy blunders because I'm incapable of scanning the whole board before moving (impulse is a dispositional trait). I'm not altogether impulsive in everyday life; otherwise, I wouldn't be able to teach and write essays (or get 1500 in chess); but the micro-impulsivity of missing a blunder that I see right after I make it seems such a frequent occurrence that it feels hardwired. I'm still willing to get into another book, though. Silman's was the only one that really helped me; its pacing and style were able to get me into it and through to the end.

Being a basic member, you have no access to good chess.com resources. Therefore, I suggest you go to chesscademy.com, where they will ask you to first play a game with the computer and then, according to your strength, provide FREE video lessons and FREE AND UNLIMITED tactics training. 

Good luck. This should be your road to success.

Fair enough.

My impulses were fried by bullet.

Thank you. I'll have a look.

It's really good, thanks chessplaya!

I am pretty much in the same situation you describe. I've studied many tactics books/puzzle books and felt while certainly not a master at them, they were not my main problem and that I needed to learn other things. I'm now reading Dan Heisman's A Guide to Chess Improvement and it is revolutionizing my game. His main focus is on thought process, though he stresses the supremacy of tactics and has convinced me that I have a long way to go! The book is not for everyone. It is not a quick-fix. It basically drills home the point (which we probably all know deep down) that you have to concentrate, be slow and be careful. And this is not easy. But I'm already reaping rewards from maximizing my chess knowledge by simply playing more carefully and intelligently and seeing that until I am much more higly rated, the name of the game is tactics! You can read the beginning on Amazon for free. Hope this helps.

Here is what I do : http://becomingachessmaster.com/study-plan/

It has helped me gain 225 (proper OTB) Elo points in the past year ( http://becomingachessmaster.com/2015/07/25/season-review-20142015/ )

Play as many REAL (read that as: OTB, not on the Internet) long time control games as you can, and then work on them: Analyse, find blunders, omissions, strategical flaws... anything. You can use anything to assist your analysis- even engines are not forbidden, provided that you have switched your brains on a LONG time before switching on an engine as well... else the only thing you may possibly learn is counting from zero to one.

@thechessplaya5 I tried the academy site. Was winning against the computer and then it took me to attacking the uncastled king, which I compled and got 95 points for, and now it's moving me to attacking the castled king. It was somewhat helpful, if frustrating at times, to complete the first lesson, because I basically had to keep moving until I got the right move a few times. Whether I'll actually LEARN from this exercise is unclear, however. I can remember to try and control the e file for an uncastled king, and I already know the f2 pawn is a point of attack, but will I have come out from this will actionable memory for improving my game? Not sure but I'll keep trying. Thanks for the suggestion, in any case.

@LordCharles86 thanks for the book suggestion! I'll give it a look.

Lol exactly the same here. I actually got all of the moves in the lesson correct first time though, which probably makes it much more fun than just throwing moves at it. Does it explain why the moves you make aren't best? Anyway, it's killing some time and I'm sure it's not doing any harm. Nice link. Thanks.