The Secret to Chess Improvement in Just 6 Steps
Hello everyone, welcome back to another blog post! Today, I will be going over what I believe to be the most straightforward study habits to improve your chess game. As I'm starting my own chess coaching journey, what better way to kick things off than by discussing the core habits I believe a chess player needs to be successful. I understand that for a lot of players, the path to improvement isn't always clear. I had a similar experience myself as a club-level player. During my improvement journey, I found myself searching the internet, looking for ways to improve. There were too many unknowns and vague answers like, "just do tactics." My goal with this blog post is to lay out a clear blueprint you can follow and hopefully benefit from. All of the methods I list are ones I have tested and used myself with success.
1. Tactics
Hear me out. I know I just said there are too many answers out there that say "do tactics," but this is just the start of my blueprint. There's a reason most people recommend tactics—it's just an answer I got tired of hearing when searching for advice. Puzzles train your tactical vision, visualization, calculation, and pattern recognition—four crucial skills you need to use in your own games. Completing puzzles every day is essential to staying in form and improving your in-game performances; even strong players don't skip their puzzle training! Puzzles on Chess.com and Lichess are both great for simple tactics, but I recommend ChessTempo puzzles as your main resource for tactics training. These puzzles are more complex than those on Chess.com and Lichess, and they're definitely worth your time. I'd suggest a 70:30 ChessTempo to Chess.com/Lichess ratio for the puzzles you do. Best part: ChessTempo puzzles are completely free!
For now, there's no need to use any other feature on ChessTempo—the real value is in the Tactics Training section.
2. Serious Games & Analysis
I debated which should be my step 1 between "Games & Analysis" and "Tactics." I thought it would be funny to put tactics as method #1 right after saying I hated that answer, so that's my reasoning. Either way, this could arguably be the most important step in your journey to chess improvement. Playing games where you're 100% focused, and then analyzing those games thoroughly afterward, is key to identifying your areas for improvement. If you play over-the-board serious games regularly, those are your ideal games to analyze deeply. If not, you should aim to play at least a couple of 15+10 games online each week where you're giving it your all.
Once you have your games, go through them without an engine and try to identify where you can improve. Act as if it were a real game—avoid making any extra moves on the board. Preferably, you should calculate variations in your head. Once you've done your own self-analysis, check the game with a computer and annotate it. Hopefully, by now, you've identified areas for improvement. Do this for a number of your games, and you'll likely notice a pattern in your mistakes. Of course, this is where coaches can help, as they can identify your mistakes more efficiently and accurately.
Below, I will link one of my tournament games that I've annotated. If you've never annotated a game before, this is an example of what it can look like. Don't feel pressured to annotate for the sake of annotating—only include what you feel is important.
Keep in mind, I may have more commentary than usual in my annotations since I upload my annotated games to my blogs. I add extra context for readers, which you don't have to do unless you want to. If you read my previous blog, you'll know this game is from my last tournament. Still, it's a good example of what annotations could look like for those who want to try.
3. Openings
Most chess players enjoy studying openings, even though we're all told not to focus on them too much. While I agree it's important not to let opening study take up the majority of your chess study time, I don't think it's a bad idea to expose yourself to them. A key part of my own rapid progression was studying many openings. I was obsessed with them and wanted to study all of them. Even though I didn't study every opening in depth, I learned enough to feel comfortable playing almost any opening today. By doing this, I exposed myself to many different kinds of chess positions and learned a lot about various key plans in different structures. This is why I believe studying openings can be beneficial—it broadens your knowledge of plans across different structures.
While I see the logic in people advising you to play simple openings (like the London System or the Caro-Kann) to avoid getting punished by opening theory, I believe openings should be chosen based on your interests. Even if that means choosing something like the Najdorf over the Caro-Kann, you'll improve faster if you're having fun. Sure, you'll lose more at first, and there will be more theory and ideas to learn, but it's better than playing something you don't enjoy just for the sake of "improving." If you choose a more complex opening, naturally you'll have to spend more time studying it than you would with a simpler one. But either way, don't let it consume the majority of your chess time. One of the best ways to train openings is to play blitz games and briefly analyze just the opening afterward. There's not much point in deeply analyzing blitz games, but the opening is an exception.
4. Move with Purpose
Often, players struggle to come up with plans. We all try to, of course, but sometimes it can be hard, and we end up making aimless moves. What we should strive to do is make every single move with a clear purpose. Every turn is valuable time that shouldn't be wasted. Easier said than done! It takes time and experience to improve at this, but if we're aware of it, we can speed up the process. Here's a famous game from New York 1924 between José Raúl Capablanca and Savielly Tartakower that demonstrates this.
I haven't annotated this game myself, but I highly recommend watching a YouTube video with an analysis of the game—it's worth your time. Even just by viewing the game, you can see the purpose behind each of Capablanca's moves.
Another great example is a game from today’s 2024 Chess Olympiad! This game might actually demonstrate my point even better.
In it, you can see how Caruana consistently advanced his position. Every move he made had a clear purpose, steadily improving his position. Meanwhile, Cheparinov was left with no choice but to sit back and defend, unable to find a meaningful plan. We should all strive to play like Caruana in situations like these.
5. Prioritize What Matters
Chess is an extremely vast game with endless areas to explore. It's important to understand which areas of the game you need to work on and which can wait. If you're under 2200 on Chess.com, I recommend focusing on:
- Tactics
- Enough opening knowledge to not lose in the opening
- Serious games & analysis
- Basic theoretical endgame knowledge (opposition, Q vs. P on the 7th, basic mates like K+R vs. K and K+Q vs. K, Philidor & Lucena positions in R+P vs. R, etc.)
- How to generate basic plans in the middlegame & endgame, and how to coordinate your pieces properly
- Figuring out your opponent's intentions behind their moves and how to react
There's little point in learning things like Knight+Bishop mate, defending R vs. R+B, mastering advanced positional concepts, or anything overly complicated. Focusing on the above is more than enough. Once you approach a 2000+ level, you can start worrying about the more nuanced details of chess. But hey, if the reason you love chess is complex theoretical endgames like the Knight and Bishop mate, then study what you find interesting!
6. Play, Play, Play!
If you read cookbooks and watch videos on how to make the perfect hamburger, but you never actually attempt to make one, what's the point? Without actually trying to make the perfect burger, all the knowledge you have means nothing—you lack practical experience. The same goes for chess: if you only study and don't play regularly, you can't improve to your fullest potential. When I say "play regularly," I mean blitz, bullet, casual tournaments, etc. Serious rapid games and analysis are most important, but playing faster games also trains you a lot. You'll only be able to fit in a few serious 15+10 (or OTB) games a week, and that's not enough. Openings, quick decision-making, intuition, pattern recognition—all of these and more are trained in faster games. You don't have to play time controls as fast as blitz if you're not comfortable; 10+0 is a nice time control to ease into speed chess. We all need to make our fair share of blunders to gain the necessary experience to improve.
Closing Comments:
The steps I listed here are generalized, but effective. It's hard to recommend more specific advice without assessing each player's individual strength and weaknesses. If you're aspiring to be better, I believe these are solid stepping stones. One final piece of advice I can give is that chess is a reaction game. It's good to have a general idea of what you want to execute in a game, but remember to stay flexible and react to your opponent's moves. Often, our opponents will play something that doesn't allow us to execute our plan perfectly, but we have to adapt.
Chess is a lifelong project that most of us will never fully master. There will always be more to learn, more to discover, and more to try. Stay consistent, maintain your passion, and work hard—improvement is bound to come. Best of luck on your journey, and see you in the next blog!
