What Is Your Plan To Improve At Chess?

Sacrifice my soul to the squirrel gods of chess and then proceed to beat the crap out of 400s

I assume you'll be analyzing the games but I think you should vary your method for tactics. Maybe try composing problems with your weakest motifs or just training visualization by looking at a position and memorize the pawn structure and attacked/undefended pieces after a minute of looking at the position. I say this because I think training a skill with many facets involved using only one method seems kind of stale. Also, I think the master games you study should be picked based on the 45/45 games you play to use as a comparisonbetween your ideas and the master's.

Use the three free practice tactics everyday, look up openings when playing online chess to gain some familiarity, play a couple games a day. Also, if you're really into tactics or need some serious practice download iChess for your smartphone/tablet. There's thousands of free tactics and a free downloadable chess engine to analyze posistions.

Btw sorry for the writing errors... on my mobile.

The base of my study plan is high tactical volume. The first part is a constant repeated set (pattern recognition) which I use CT Art3.0 levels 10 and 20. The second part is original problems on a real board where I write out each line before checking solutions. 

Besides the tactics, I do 1 strategy book and 1 endgame book at a time. Too many strategy books convolute things, so I try to keep it simple.

I will do a 60min game and analyse it every week- 10 days or so.

I do the corr. games here on an opening I need to work on (doing a sicilian tourney atm) and I play them as one would play an otb game- set up on real board, no opening db, no use of hands.

1.Fix repertoire-In the 2 years ive been playing chess I've chopped and changed openings, I need to lock in on some to gain experience, which will help my playing strength.

2.Read endgame books.

That's about it.

So here's my new and improved plan to improve at chess before the tournament I'm planning to attend.  I really tried to focus on quality before quantity.

Daily:

• Solve 5+ tactics. By solve I mean have analyzed to the end and all important lines before playing the first move.
• Make 2 correspondence moves.  For each of them I'll take as long as I need.  I'm trying to treat these games seriously.  I could easily take 10+ minutes on a move so please don't tell me to start more.  I'll probably use Silman's thinking technique.
• Read a little of the K+P endgame book I have.  This way I get more skilled in endgames (I've not really studied the endgame) and also better at calculation.
• Read a section of a chess book.  The amount I do is partly dependant on how much time I have.  One thing I really want to do is get everything I can from a book before going on to another book.  I'll probably read How To Reassess Your Chess first.
• Spend no more than 20 minutes on other chess activities.  Blitz, forum reading, vote chess, other correspondence games, and other things can easily take too much time.
• Stay healthy.  Exercise, sleep, and eat well so I can play well.

Weekly:

• Play at least one really slow game.  By this I mean something like a 45|45 or 75|30 time control game.
• Play at least one 30|5 game or longer.  I want to keep at least a small increment so I don't play to win because of opponents time pressure.
• Analyze the slow games I play.  This way I learn more from them.  I'll especially look for mistakes I made, better moves that I could have done instead of the mistakes, why I made a mistake, and what I can do to prevent the mistake from happening in the future.

Thanks to everyone who made recommendations!  If you notice something is still lacking in my plan feel free to point it out!

Win the powerball. Hire Jeremy Silman to move in with me, and teach me 24/7.

1. Finish the last 5 pages of Bobby Fischer teaches chess.

 2.Do complete analysis on my games

3. Win my 45-45 minute game tonight.

4. Get a 1200+ rating in bullet as soon as possible

5. Get a chess computer so I can play games with it on my table

SJFG you forgot to mention gifting a portion of your winnings in Chess.com membership subscriptions from this upcoming tournament to us who have posted here!

That was a joke...unless you would!  Really though have a good time preparing for the tournament and let us know the result! I'd have fun going over the games with you.

My plan to hopefully do well when I get to a rated OTB tournoment.

1. Tactics tactics tactics

2. endgame work

3. study games (Morphy, Nezhmetdinov, Fischer, Tal, Kasparov, and possisbly Spassky and Bronstien)

4. Practice at time controls 

5. Remember to have fun (rather important, the more fun I have with a game the better I do)

Plan? We don't need no stinking plan!

So I went to the tournament.  I didn't do very well, but I really learned some stuff.  (Including that I need a new plan to improve )

I wrote about it here: http://www.chess.com/blog/SJFG/my-games-from-the-july-13-2013-tournament

I sleep with chess books under my pillow and hope the information will seep into my head during the night.

So far it hasn't worked, but I'm not giving up just yet.

I might go with Danny on that one. He could recommend some 80s movies and I'm sure his not so good accents come out plenty when he's drinking.

I figure that if I fart around in the forums for long enough I'm bound to pick it up by osmosis.

Well I got the 1200+ rating now on bullet, but no chess computer.........

dude forget bullet chess, you don't gain any critical skill playing bullet chess. It's more of an excercise in muscle memory. I mean in my opinion any skill you display in bullet chess is more of a manifestation of the ability we gain through longer matches that allow the time for analysis.

it totally makes for the most raw fun though

I'm talking about these 1min or 2 min games. Not a longer "bullet" game like 2min with 5sec added. The point being that a key part of being a good player of short (lightning?) bullet games is being able to simply play 60 or more moves per minute regardless of their quality. Anyway, if you want a quick way to improve your lightning rating, memorize the form of the King's Indian Defense and play it as fast as you can at the beginning of any game. Don't go into a defensive shell and push your pieces around until you get attacked, it may work against some but its poor sportsmanship to form your entire game around winning on time. Furthermore, pawn pushing in the long run won't raise anyone above more than something like a 1500 rating depending on what we define as a pawn pusher. Basically, play bullet for fun people not to build skill.