What do you recommend to improve from 900 rating.

Hello!

I've been stuck at 900-930 rating for a while, i'm reading chess books of my country's chess authors, and analyzing my games with decodechess website and here with chess.com, also with chess compass website, but it looks like it is not enough to improve from this level, so i'm asking you, what should i do to improve? I'm also doing puzzles, and trying to figure out the best move, i have 1800+ puzzle rating here and 1700+ on an other site, so it usually gives me hard ones and i have to think on them 15-20 minutes, so i don't do more than 2-3 puzzles plus the daily 5 free on this site, and also watching tons of chess videos from youtube.

I want to improve and i made very good progress, but somehow stuck at 900-930 rating range and i don't know what other i can do, i have almost 1000 games. What do you recommend for me?

@1

"i'm reading chess books" ++ Do not overdo on books: max 1-2 per year. Quality over quantity. Do not read them, but study them with two chess sets: one for the main line, one for variations.

"analyzing my games with decodechess website and here with chess.com"
++ Analyse your lost games only. Do not only look at the engine lines. Identify your mistakes. Identify your decisive mistake. What was the right move? What moves did you consider? Did you consider the right move? If no, why not? If yes, why did you play the mistake? How much time did you spend on your mistake? How much time did you have available? The thorough analysis should take about the same time as the game itself.

"what should i do to improve?" ++ Study annotated grandmaster games.

"I'm also doing puzzles" ++ Good.
"i have 1800+ puzzle rating" ++ Strive for more.

"i have to think on them 15-20 minutes"
++ How much time do you think per move when you play? That explains it.

"watching tons of chess videos from youtube" ++ Useless waste of time. You cannot learn to swim, to ride a bicycle, or drive a car from a video. Chess is the same. You have to do it, not watch it.

"What do you recommend for me?"
++ Most important: always check your intended move is no blunder before you play it.
Think about your move. Decide. Imagine your intended move played on the board. Check it is no blunder. Only then play it.

Thank you very much!

To most of my students, I give this advice (and it's all they need):

The biggest reason people struggle in lower-level chess is because of blunders. They make them in almost every game.

A mistake can instantly put you in a bad position, no matter how well you played earlier: if you had great opening knowledge, great positional skills, great endgame skills, whatever; a single mistake can change everything (you lose a piece or get checkmated).

So, how do you avoid blunders? Follow these two simple steps:

1. After your opponent moves, think if it's dangerous. Ask yourself, “What’s his idea?”
2. Before you make your move, think if it's safe. Ask yourself, “What attacking replies can he play?”

If you feel like getting to levels like 1600, 1800, or 2000 in chess is super hard, let's look at it in a different way. Those players you're facing make blunders in nearly every game they play. Beating them isn't so tough if you stop making big mistakes and start using their slip-ups to your advantage.

Again, it does not require you to become a chess nerd or spend all your time on chess. Just doing this one thing can boost your rating by a few hundred points right away.

Thank you! I'm trying to do this for a while but it somehow not works, opponents of this level usually have 5000 - 10000 games and not tend to make large, game changing blunders at all i was not a chess nerd before, but when i not spent hours daily to chess i was stuck at 500-600 rating, so i had to put all my effort to it to climb to this level.

The 1600, 1800, 2000 rating, you mention is not even in my mind, when i started playing this game i have a dream of 2000 rating, but i see now that i would have start this game at childhood to even reach 1500, but now i'm almost 30 , so my goal is 1100-1200 and i will be very lucky if i ever reach this elo and it will take a tons of learning and practice, but im willing to give all my effort and optimism to get there in the future!

Hello! I'm back. Thank you for your advices I took a one and a half month break just to do what you adviced here and on message, and i came back to "test" what i learned. I studied 4 books and do thousands of puzzles here and on at other site, also took a few lessons on this site and some on youtube. Unfortunately this was not enough for me, i even got lower rating now then i started my break. My dream of reaching 1000 elo in this year is impossible I'm planning to take a longer, 5-6 month break from now and hard study chess, and hoping i can reach the 1000 elo in next autumn. I will update this thread! See you guys next year!

Play longer time controls. Blitz will not make you better early on. Longer time controls force you to analyze the position carefully before making a move, and after a while, you will be able to make calculations fast enough to do the same in blitz games.