1600-2000: What does it take?

I just hit Rapid 1600. This is the last year I can play chess. I have 3 months on my hands, with nothing to do and 3 hours of screen time everyday.

I am willing to practise hard and do anything to get to 2000 rapid on chess.com. Could a higher rated player please suggest how I could drastically improve my play?

Study the advantages you get from the current opening you are playing. That way you will know how to attack in each opening. If I had studied that when I was 1150, I would not have struggled so much.

Me chilling here at 600 trying to understamd how someone reaches 1600

I am only a 1550 so I cannot give you advice, but I am also trying to get to 2000 so here is advice from the higher rated. 

- Get down your opening preparation. 

- Study tactics and endgames everyday on a daily basis. Set yourself a chess study schedule, and plan out how long you will spend studying chess everyday.

For me, it took a lot of discipline and effort. You have to review your games and some of them deeply until you understand the positions better. You have to be patient also, it doesn't happen overnight.

But you were 1800+ on both blitz and rapid in late January?

Makes sense, but I still think you are being a bit generous .

Doubt it, maybe the rating pool strength changed o.O

At this level what mainly determines who wins is who makes fewer mistakes. Look for what is being attacked. Look for who is guarded. Also, go over checks, captures, attacks in your head. This principle helped me a lot ... also, watching gothamchess on YT is great.

Please post links to useful material- It would be greatly appreciated!

Yes

I took a look at your rating history, you were really close to 1800 for a while and it could be that you hit a barrier and then started slipping down to 1600. Sometimes you just need a longer break, get fresh eyes and new motivation and learn things again.

I took a months break from playing and when I restarted I found it a lot more fun and started looking at my openings with fresh eyes and improve obvious flaws.

Yeah I also want to do the same.. My 1600 FIDE rated friend thinks that I'm almost as strong as him if not stronger. I got to 1700(chess.com) without studying any openings/theory or calculations. My play is mostly intuitive. So, he thinks I have potential and I believe so too. Let's see what happens

Eliminating one-move blunders will add hundreds of points to your rating.

I'm just like you, No opening, no theory only occupy center and boom boom!

I just reached 1600 myself so I can't give you any advice from experience but from what I've heard, after a point in rating ladder you need to apply everything you've learnt in your games not one or two of them and you constantly need to think and study openings, when we were 800s everyone we played against were 800s as well so we used to get by by making stupid blunders but now that we're 1600 there are less and less people that make stupid blunders, they study openings and variations, so if we want to keep up we need to do that as well.

Well, I haven't quite made it up to 2000 yet but from 1600+ I think the "difference" is mostly about positional understanding. Things like pawn structures, square weaknesses and perhaps a little deeper opening theory. 

Obviously everyone is different, but from my observations, I'd say that generally 1600 rating is where the player is well advanced past the "beginner" ideas of opening principles, hanging pieces and falling for one or two move basic tactics (usually). It is this level that now you are playing "real chess" and thinking for yourself with creating your own plans and converting small advantages. 

Around 1600, I think is mostly beginning to be introduced to some of these deeper positional nuances. By 1800, they basically have these positional 101 stuff (like square weaknesses) down pretty well and by 2000 probably have the deeper pawn structure concepts pretty well understood. 

This isn't to say a 2000 has mastered every position because even GMs don't have that understood fully sometimes, but 2000+ is a completely different level of understanding from what I've seen

IIRC, you've been reading Kmoch's "Pawn Power in Chess", yes? That should get you up over 2000. You might need to read it a few times. I did.

Thank you and yes I think it should help too. Before that book, I took a long time going through My 60 Memorable Games by Fischer and now I've been reading Pawn Power in Chess by Kmoch, but I was on a bit of a reading hiatus because I've been working a lot on puzzle rush survival lately. Actually still working on my goal of 50+ for that, but coincidentally I began reading Pawn Power again earlier today

Maybe reaching 50+ survival will give me more free time to read that book or even play some chess games on chess.com; I've been having less time to play rated games on here compared to what I usually play, so I'm eager to get back into it again

I want to paly against famous streamer. It is one of my dreams. Please help me. How can I do it? My ELO is 900+ the strongest player in Chess.com. Nakamurasan please play with me. xCq play with me.