Hovering Around 400. What Should I Learn?

Started playing only a few days ago but I'm addicted. I've been doing some basic/beginner lessons on the site while also trying some drills/solo chess. Curious what I should be learning since I'm hovering between 350-410~

I already learned about the basics of the game, point values of pieces and general tactics like forking and pinning. Is it too early to study openings? Also my endgame is trash ~_~

The main thing to focus on at this stage is simply getting your board vision to a point where you can play games without dropping any pieces for nothing. Just glancing at your last couple of games, you won both but blundered material in both. Your opponents also blundered material and you took advantage - this shows your eye is not too bad, so if you can cut out losing pieces you should be able to climb to the 1000 range. All the other stuff is somewhat secondary until you get to this place as its no use feeling comfortable in a Ruy Lopez but then hanging your rook on move 15. For openings just be sure to do the basics, control the centre, develop your knights and bishops to good squares, castle your king, don't bring your queen out too early on a misadventure, don't be moving the same piece twice for no reason or pushing flank pawns wasting time. If you do want to go into a bit more detail I suggest picking just 1 or 2 to look at for now and taking it slowly - you don't need to know great detail or memorize moves at this point, just try to understand the idea behind it. Lessons here are broad and very good and keep doing the tactics training. Top thing, if you can nail holding on to your stuff game after game you will soon be beating the players who lose material easily 👍

Wow, super insightful, thank you! The lessons are definitely really helpful and I tend to go back to them when I tilt and find myself in a losing streak. I usually run an analysis after each of my games and noticed that I was blundering a lot of pieces, so I'm currently trying to remedy that. Definitely getting some more mileage in the game of chess would help. Hoping to see some improvement in the coming weeks. Thanks again!

No worries. I would add as well that it looks like you are playing exclusively 10 minute games. This is not a lot of time for a beginner player, things are not automatic for you yet and you need time to take in as much as possible. If you can, play longer games eg 30 minutes minimum, really take your time to look at the board, make sure you are not dropping those pieces. The more you take your time, the more you will see and the more you see, the quicker you will see it if that makes sense. The value of 1 or 2 long games in which you have really focused and thought carefully is so much greater than 6 or 7 quick games where everything is a rush. It's also a good idea to look through these games afterwords, try to see where you made mistakes, what you might have done differently now you are looking at it coldly rather than during the heat of battle. 

I was just wondering if my 10 min games were too short! I'll give fewer, longer games a shot and see what happens. That totally makes sense, I definitely have been making more mistakes under such a tight time constraint and have (more than once) made a move and noticed how poor that move was which causes a tilt hah. Thanks again for the help!

Recommend John Bartholomew's Chess Fundamentals series on you tube. There are six videos. The first is on undefended pieces.

Look here: http://gorgonian.weebly.com/uploads/1/7/2/2/17221082/101_essential_chess_tips.pdf

You're a gold member so you can do more puzzles and rushes. Plenty of rushes (done seriously) definitely helped me move up. Also I'm learning the xianqi chess-like game now and it's showing me clearly that playing longer games is paramount to improve.

Welcome to the site. I hope you'll have a great time studying chess. Here are some general advices on how to improve:

https://www.chess.com/blog/nklristic/the-beginners-tale-first-steps-to-chess-improvement

Thanks for the link! Combing through it right now. I've been loving the puzzles so far, I'm already noticing slight patterns and it's helping me slow my thinking down and consider all the options (thanks to the lack of time constraint)

The longer games, as suggested by Strange, are really helpful. Not only does it let me think a bit longer on my move and consider (mostly hah) everything..but it does make my opponent better too (even at such a low rating) Now my games are more about tactics than relying on taking advantage of my opponents' thoughtless mistakes.

Thank you! It's been a great way to pass the time during quarantine that was a great read!

You're welcome. I have a few more articles linked in it, and they might be more or less useful to you.

Anyway, in short, if you make an effort it will show sooner or later.

Was curious about buying a board and if it was necessary since I have no one to play with in person any time soon. Might have to look into something inexpensive.

Great, I'll give them a look! I already tabbed the ones that were linked in your original article.

Yeah, those are the only ones for now. Thanks for taking the time to read.

You should focus on not hanging pieces. For every move, ask yourself whether each of your pieces is defended.

For example, in this example, there are 2 pieces attacking the e5 pawn, while there is one defender. So you would need to defend it again.

Or you could take the pawn which is, I believe, the main move.

Work on your endgame.

Haha I would say thank you but, sadly, it isn't mine I'm a huge Shiba fan though, and there's something about the picture that I just love. Hope to have one (or two) of my own sometime soon!