All you need to know to improve your chess up to master level

This post is gonna be a complete guide on how to improve your chess to higher levels. Beginners don´t know how to improve because noone ever told them, intermediates managed to have some progress but often need years to finally improve.  It doesnt matter who I am, only what knowledge I can bring to you. I am nowhere close to being a perfect player but I learned quite a bit of things that are worth knowing if you are serious about bettering your chess skills. 

The following list includes everything you need to become a strong chess player:

1. build your opening repertoire

2. get tactically sound and blunderfree

3. learn the middlegame, that includes typical plans, how to attack and defend, pawn structures and strategical chess (playing against weaknesses)

4. learn the really important pawn and rook endgames

5. play long time control games

6. analyse them to learn from old mistakes

7. Repeat steps 5 + 6 as often as you can

8. Evolve by updating your knowledge. Update your opening lines when you get to play them in some games to find improvements and new ways of getting the most out of the opening phase. Get more advanced endgame knowledge. Continue (!) studying tactics. To reach 2000 they are one of the main factors. 

If you do all this and actually invest the time and effort you will improve rapidly. The way is right in front of your eyes, just take it. It can already be enough to study 30 minutes per day if you dont have more time, because over a long period of days it will add up and you will see the results. The more time you invest the faster you will improve.

Let me get into detail about the single points on our list.

1.build your opening repertoire

How? There are different tools but some opening books are enough for the beginning. Very helpful is also chessbase, a program with a live opening book and a database which includes most tournament games ever played. With its help you can take the lines from the book and look at strong players games in the database that play your opening lines. A coach can also help you with your opening repertoire of course. Important is to stick to certain opening lines, you need to continuously get better at them by getting more and more experience vs other players. Its not wise to play 1.e4 in one game and 1.d4 in the next game if you are serious about improving. Also, dont misunderstand me, you dont have to learn 100000 theory lines, it can be enough to know few solid lines which trust and have good understanding in. Good example here is the Veresov for White. 

If you collect experience with it it can be a super strong weapon in your very own hands. White has many different ways of playing it, mostly they will castle long and then start attacking black on the kingside. This is just one example, you can put together your own openings to your repertoire, just stick to them and dont change them all the time.  

My repertoire can theoretically be learned in less than 1 hour, but you will only know the moves and not have the understanding I have in these openings because I play them since years. Which is what you have to do too.  

My suggestion btw: play 1... e5 against 1.e4, I can help you with your repertoire there. If you play 1.d4 I can give you great insights too.  

2. get tactically sound and blunderfree

As long as you still miss a lot of basic tactics and blunder a lot you do not need to study anything else than tactics. Why? Because tactics are the foundation of everything. Tactics are everywhere in your games, they define whether a middlegame plan works and even which opening lines are playable. Once you are tactically sound your intuition will see tactics automatically when you look at a certain position. You have to reach that point. Buy a tactics book and try to learn as many tactical patterns as you can. 

3. learn the middlegame, that includes typical plans, how to attack and defend, pawn structures and strategical chess (playing against weaknesses)

Best way to do this is again with a good book or also with video lessons by strong players. I will give you some basic example of what you NEED to know. 

Attack and defence:

Basically there are 2 ways of attacking. Either you attack with your pieces, or coordinate a pawn storm. Often the pawn storm leads to open files which can then be used by your pieces to infultrate the enemies position. Notice that attacking does not always mean checkmating. In the kingsindian defence for example white attacks the black queenside to open it up and decide the game there before black can get a decisive attack on whites kingside. This is why time is so important in chess. The one who is faster with his attack will win the game. This leads us to the defence. One way of defending can actually be the counterattack because again if you are faster you wont need to worry about your own king anymore as the game is over by then. The usual defence though aims to shut down the opponents attack or slow it down in a way that you win time to get through with your own attack. There are many many defending and attacking patterns you need to learn. Some examples: (i didnt put up pieces, just imagine there were rooks and other pieces still on the board...)

that is just to illustrate how to use the enemy pawns as a help for you to open files for your pieces. Here some example for defensive patterns:

Strategical chess is all about playing against weaknesses. A pawn on g6 can also be seen as a weakness as it offers white a target to open the h file via h4-h5. Common weaknesses are isolated pawns, hanging pawns, backward pawns or simply places on the board where the enemy has fewer pieces than you which means you can infultrate with your pieces there. 



4. learn the really important pawn and rook endgames

for now just learn the endgames you get in many games, pawn endgames and simple rook endgames. How to win or defend rook + pawn + king vs rook+ king for example. 

5. play long time control games

important. you need theory but also praxis to use your knowledge in games vs other players. 

6. analyse them to learn from old mistakes

when you play a game and dont analyse it you might never know what you could have done better which means you will never do it better which means you will be stuck.

Thats it for now, message me if you want to know more about openings, chess improvement or chess in general or just comment under this post.

p.s have you checked my blindfold exercises? they are a secret way of improving your tactical vision and helped me a lot. 

ok

I will try, but I suck in #1-5

and how about the part where u had mentioned visualization!

where u said that playing blindfold + memorizing the lines?

would that be part of #1

and yes sir, u are right 👉 on #6 brah... .......

I blogged on it a couple of times but was too ****'*** lazy to follow up on it😔

and I am working on #4 (Karsten Mueller, Chess Base?)

it's hard though😩

thanks, while reading diz my rating went up. Where do I claim my NM title?

Brah, very comprehensive guide brah. Thanks! 

I stope reading after sayin veresov attack. If You want to improve as a begginer or intermediate player to expert or can dodate Master rank play main openings. Why? First of all You mentioned  study structures and typical middlegame plans. Ok  with 1.e4 or 1.d4  openings You will Get isolated, double pawns, hanging pawns, passed pawns,... And why should You than study all of this when You play only veresov? Play main openings as a beginner So You Get feel or touch with middlegame and endings from various scope. For total beginner I suggest Italian game, Spanish is too comolicated and positional, main ideas of center, pin, are already main thing in Italian game. As Black try first solid e5 before going to Sharp sicilian or french and Caro kann which are very comolicated and positionally hard to understand for beginners. Study 8ld masters. Morphy, Andersson, Steinitz in You g Day to Learn the importance of development. Dont play openings like London or veresov, because Ypu will stay limited with such positions. Its solid, but every prwpaired player will easlily make a joke from Your 

Veresov’s fine, London is fine. I never really played the former but I played the latter for like two years when I was ~2000. Just make sure not to play too systematically and to analyze each position separately. Most club players play the system moves unthinkingly and therefore harm their development.