My chess.com friend and fellow blogger, Duckfest, recently has posted a blog in which he discusses the process he has gone through to try to figure out how to improve his chess. 

Duckfest Digest 08 Messy Methodology

For the serious devotee of the Immortal game improvement is the Holy Grail. 

We all want it. We all say this is nirvana, but ...

I too am on the quest, but first off let's put in some disclaimers, some outs. If you have a busy job that is taxing and time consuming, or you are in school, particularly grad school, or you are married and have children, or you are taking care of a family member, or you are devoted to a number of other sports. In other words, if you don't have time to put into serious improvement of chess, then give yourself a break. Play the game. Enjoy it, but don't punish yourself if you are not improving. 

The title of my blog is Patzer to Grandmaster, but I am well aware that I would be more likely to win the Super Lotto than to make Grandmaster, and I don't even buy lotto tickets.  To say I aspire to Grandmaster is really just to say I want to improve and I will probably always want to improve. 

Now let's get to the nuts and bolts. If you really want to improve you have to have a plan. This is what Duckfest's article is all about. And he writes an interesting article in which he lists the many switchbacks the road for improvement went for him. And he finally settled on Opening Theory.  I too am putting an emphasis in that. 

But I think the first thing you have to do is set goals. And then you have to assess your weaknesses. There are a myriad of things you can work at: tactics, endgame theory, middlegame theory, opening theory, game management, calculation skills, visioning, pawn structure. It goes on. 

My suggestion is no matter what your overall plan is, there has to be a base of tactics. Second you have to play games and most people recommend longer live games 30 - 60 minutes, or over the board.  And then whether or not you focus on one particular area, or you make a smorgasbord where you set up a schedule to work on everything every week as long as you are studying you should see improvement. 

Here on chess com they have a study plan which you look up, which is very helpful, especially for beginners. 

Some other ideas: study GM's games, tactics-tactics-tactics, blindfolded chess (you can do this on chess.com playing the computer), analyze and annotate your games ( I keep all my games in the library feature here on chess.com) . Check out the insight feature on chess.com, Let the computer analyze your games. Go back and look at Game Review and try to answer the puzzles it gives you. Do the lessons here on Chess.com , the videos, and if you really want to improve get a coach. 

I'm up 200 points since April. We'll see where I level out.