Need tips in order to reach 1500-1700 ratings

Hi! Here are a few things I would consider:

1) Continue doing tactics, those are a must for any level

2) When it comes to improving positional chess, there are a number of methods:

 a ) You can look at a variety of top grandmaster games. As you look through a given game, try to guess what the next move will be. If you are correct, try to understand why. If you are incorrect, try to understand why the grandmaster move was better. Sometimes, the reason for the latter my not be extremely obvious; you may need to turn on an engine. When it comes to choosing these games, try looking at grandmasters that you like, or those who have a similar play style. You may also want to look at the games of grandmasters who play the same opening as you. 

b) If you do the above, you will understand positional ideas a bit better. This will allow you to save more time during games because the patterns are developed in your head. This means that your tendency to mess up due to time issues will be lessened

3) In terms of books, I would recommend How to Reassess Your Chess by Jeremy Silman. The book covers imbalances, which are a key part of chess. Silman makes it so that players of all levels, though I would recommend being about 1300+. Another book that comes to mind is Amateur's Mind, also by Silman. It talks a lot about positional play.

4) In terms of youtube videos, I would recommend those by youtuber Hanging Pawns. He makes ~half an hour videos ranging from openings to positional play and common attacking motifs. 

Hope this helps

First of all, I want to say that I am passionate about Chess. After discovering it 8 months ago, and after playing many games (over 4,5 k) and practicing a lot of puzzles, I went from an initial 800 to a current 1300-1400 rating (biltz and rapid). 

I don't care too much about bullet games (which I am awful at, by the way) because I am not (and never was) a fast thinker, and daily games aren't so appealing since people have all sorts of time to move and is not so realistic for me. 

I think I am like a semi beginner at some point. I have a fairly decent understanding of tactics and end games.

My main weak spot, and what I think is keeping me from reaching a higher ceiling, is lack of strategy and positional understanding.

I can clearly see the issues when facing an opponent around my rating, with all of our pieces developed and similar pawn structures, then I dont know what road to take. Should I try some bold attacking move? Should I wait and see what he has to offer? Usually I opt for the latter, only to find out after a few moves that he had already thought a plan and had already seen a weakness (or more) in my system.

Another big problem is that I take much longer to think the moves in the middle game, so usually when we are in the crucial parts on the middle game, I either blunder because of having less time remaining (I am talking about 20 or 30 minutes rapid games, and this happens with 5 minutes remaining approximately) or fail to see a winning move.

I have learned a lot from Silman and several Youtube or site videos, exercises and deep analysis of past games, But when I tried to read Positional Thinking by Gelfand, I just cant understand 95% of its content. 

So, in the end, my question is. Can someone point me to the right videos, podcasts or books that could help addressing the weak parts of my game and that could be understood by a 1300-1400 guy?

Regards

Hello, 

I am not 1500; I am 1200, so my advice may not be correct. From what I have heard, daily games help introduce you to complex calculating, ect, which will help with OTB play if you are interested in that. Furthermore, I heard somewhere that positional play only fully develops past the 2000 rating and before 2000 ratings, almost all games are won on some sort of tactical play. However, positional play may help and learning about chess is fun in general, which is justification enough to learn about it. Thanks for making this thread. It is interesting to see what someone my approximate level does in order to improve. 

What kind of openings you play determines what middlegame positions you reach, and that determines your plan. If your opponent has a plan and he/she used is successfully against you, take note of the middlegame position. What are the pawn structures?

a very simple example: the direction your pawn structure points to is the area where you want to play.

Lots of this just comes from experience (knowing the plans, I mean). And the more experience you have, the more consistent you'll be playing, which results in higher rating

As for positional play... it's really hard to improve on it if you don't give some examples. Even for me, it's still hard to maintain the grind all game long. 

For me, I learned positional ideas by reading annotations in games, like "now white puts all his firepower towards black's backwards pawn" and stuff like that. How to find a weakness is probably the hardest. Once you're able to identify the correct weakness to attack you're games are going to get much better.

Thank you !

I dont know how to post a game, but I will paste the position we were. This one (I lost), I was black pieces, I would like to point out at move 8, I proceeded with bishop to e6. I know this is still early in the game, but to be honest, I didnt have any idea on what to do better than to free up the rook line, and I dont even think it is a good move, but I was not able to find anything good in such a similar opening pattern.

The example you provide is solid, this is the type of info I am looking for more as well.

There are 2 questions that arise for me from your points:

1- I am not big on studying openings, mainly because I am not so good at learning all those amounts of possibilities from every possible move. Do you recommend analyzing a specific one or many of them? I don't think I can handle memorizing so much of many openings at the same time.

2- Those annotations you are referring to, who writes them? I mean, I mostly analyze games by using chess.com report for the match and seeing in which moves I was wrong and what was the best possible move for that scenario.

I know that @SNUDOO will respond whenever they see this, but I can offer a quick explanation.

1) On openings. At your level I would recommend two options:

a) Play the most straightforward openings, which focus on piece development, and where there are few subtleties. I would recommend something like the Italian game. Openings like these will allow you to make the "theoretical" moves, without needing to know the theory, because the moves are so straightforward (basic development etc.). Although these openings may be considered as simple, the middle games that arise from them will have a lot of good learning opportunities.

b) Do a), and then focus on learning one opening. Nothing major, maybe learn the lines of a Sicilian variation, or the Queen's Gambit Declined. Play through some master games from various openings and see which ones you like/feel most comfortable in.

2) The annotations that were being referred too are written by grandmasters on other grandmaster games. Think of it as somebody commenting on every move, except they are a top player. For example, you will find annotations for the World Championship matches if you look them up.  https://www.chess.com/article/view/world-chess-championship-2018-carlsen-caruana  If you scroll down to the first game, you will see annotations written in italics. These are by top GM Sam Shankland.

Hope this helps!

Definitely check out ChessNetwork's "Beginner to Chess Master" playlist on youtube. He articulates strategical ideas in a way that anyone can easily understand.

Try Pachman's book "Modern Chess Strategy"

Improving your endgame play also helps your strategic thinking... although a lot of introductory books cover technical positions, which are important, but... I guess it's a bit of a grind. Shereshevesky's book "Endgame Strategy" comes to mind (which is not technical positions), but I don't know what the appropriate rating level is for it.

But yeah, start with Pachman, and keep in mind that endgames are important. You can also get a book like Soltis' "Pawn Structure Chess"

I hate recommending so much because sometimes it overwhelms players... but books like this will vastly improve your understanding of non-tactical aspects.

Thank you !

I dont know how to post a game, but I will paste the position we were. This one (I lost), I was black pieces, I would like to point out at move 8, I proceeded with bishop to e6. I know this is still early in the game, but to be honest, I didnt have any idea on what to do better than to free up the rook line, and I dont even think it is a good move, but I was not able to find anything good in such a similar opening pattern.

The example you provide is solid, this is the type of info I am looking for more as well.

There are 2 questions that arise for me from your points:

1- I am not big on studying openings, mainly because I am not so good at learning all those amounts of possibilities from every possible move. Do you recommend analyzing a specific one or many of them? I don't think I can handle memorizing so much of many openings at the same time.

2- Those annotations you are referring to, who writes them? I mean, I mostly analyze games by using chess.com report for the match and seeing in which moves I was wrong and what was the best possible move for that scenario.

for the diagram you mentioned, common plans for white/black are to re-route the knight from c6-e7-g6-f4 (for black) black might want to drop the bishop back to b6

After moving the c6 knight, black can play c6 and go for a d5 push