Improving in chess

What would you recommend me to do on a daily/weekly basis to improve my chess? I have lots of time but I don't know if I should focus more on tactics, endgames,openings, going over master games etc. All feedback and help would be extremely helpful and I would be very grateful.
Nico

The most important thing is obviously keeping it systematic and regular. Depending on how much time you have I suggest you to split it this way:

- 15% solving patternal tactics. Online or even better - get a puzzle book featuring easy puzzles grouped by topic to improve your patern recokgnition. There is also blitztactics.com which is great

-5% hard attack puzzles. Get a book of puzzles which do not have a straightforward, forced solution, but rather requires great attacking capabilities. It improves your practical attack understanding (how to get all your pieces to attack, which files to try to open, what defending pieces you should exchange in what situation).

- 15% work on opening theory. Keep it regular! Repeat your repertoire lines daily! I do not think there is a better way for this, then just getting chessbase and browsing through opening book, choosing what variations you like, saving them and repeating them later on. Also make sure to watch some superGM games to learn plans of those openings.

- 10% work on endgames. Get silmann's complete endgame course and download some puzzles (I got some pgn myself). From time to time read a page or two and solve a few puzzles.

- 20% work on general chess principles, strategy, pattern recokgnition and so on. You could try reading the reasses your chess, logical chess move by move, my system, chess for tigers, improve your chess pattern recokgnition and so on. I also like the reasses your chess workbook. I have great times in he evenings "solving" puzzles in it.

35 to 50% playing. Aha. Not bullet, but at least 10+0! And do not forget to analyse your mistakes afterwards.

This is system my students and I myself had a lot of success with. Obviously depending on how much you play chess for fun rather than being good you can tweak this as much as you want.

Thanks a lot for quick answer I will try out this system and see if I improve.

Hi Nico,
you have basically mentioned everything you need to do in order to improve. Studying the openings, endgames, going over the master games, tactics... What you chose first just up to you.

If you are looking for a routine which can help you with your improvement and dont want to create it for yourself I d recommend you to start with going over the master's game first just to inspire yourself, then play a few of long rated games per day ( 5plus 5 is not long even though they call it here, I d recommend min. 25 plus 25) where you feel mentally involved, this is very important for your improvement. After the game analyse.

When you feel tired of playing, take a book and read the openings, so that you can later arrange a game against a slightly stronger player than yourself where you both will know the opening what you will be playing. Play as many games in the same opening as you can, find out what middle games and endgames it leads to. For instance I know that Marshall of the Ruy Lopez can lead to the opposite colour bishops ending and then study exactly this endgames. I study them from the Dvoretsky's book.
PS: Not every opening is leading to whatever endgame. Study only the endgames where the probability of reaching it is high. This will save you much time and many games.

Important: Do some physical activities too, go running, swimming or whatever you like. This will improve your chess too and not only your chess. With better stamina you can play longer games and your concentration level will get better.

About the tactics. You will have many of them in your own games and then will solve them during your analyses. So you dont need to invest so much time in it. However you can buy a book and solve the puzzles in the train, bus...Always solve it in your mind first. Do not move with the pieces manually before you have the solution. Once I was sitting 2 hours over 1 puzzle and solved it. So I dont do it anymore :)

I hope this will help you.
Jan

Thanks Jan for your help I will try it out too.

Just do anything you enjoy. Chess immersion will bring progress.

At some stage, if you really love the game, it would be a good idea to go and play OTB chess, which will provide extra learning and motivation.

Thanks guys for all the tips now does anybody recommend any good chess books to help me improve? I know @sakram07 gave some good books, but are there any others?

Hi all :)

I saw several times on forum when player's asked for advice's about opening's. I saw the problem was, a lack of free video lesson. So I made a website!
Free for all, free from add, built only for the love of chess!
It will be launched in two week's, because I negotiate with people's from my country which is selling host servers.

Website will look like this --------> www.zeta-uploader.com/en/openfile?hash=1502279576&rel=1502279576.jpg
Head of the site - Slider with pictures of all world champions
Body of the site - Small chess tables to chose first move, and after that first move for black, and you will get more then a thousand video lessons for every known opening, and every level of play (from beginner to GM!)

Get ready!!!
Spread the word! Revolution is coming!

About the book recommendations:

endgames: Mark Dvoretskys book The Endgame Manual is tough to read, but rewarding
About the openings
I tell the authors I like, not the books, so that you can chose according to what you play.
Victor Bologan - mathematical approach, Glenn Flear - gives a lot of possible variants, James Rizzitano and Peter Wells - pleasure to read, are great. Again not easy but their books are rewarding.

The authors I wouldnt recommend and are widely spread: Matthew Sadler - not really uptodated, Joe Gallagher - I always miss some important line when I read his book, Richard Palliser.

I hope this help you.
Jan

@MrGM #1

Hi Nico,

Since your ratings, including tactical rating here on Lichess are pretty good already, I would recommend that you ask a chess coach, or a few stronger players to go over your slow time control chess games, and then get them to make a suggestion to you.

If you don't want or cannot hire a chess coach, then you still can go over your own chess games yourself, and get an idea where you can improve.

In general, without looking at your chess games, the endgame is often an area where players neglect studying and training.

A good book is "100 endgames you must know" by GM de la Villa, as well as "Winning chess endings" by GM Seirawan.

Apart from that you can probably boost your tactics rating to go over 2000 in the near future.

Tactical skills will be handy in all kind of positions, including positional and endgame positions.

Chesstempo.com is imho the nr.1 tactics website. I recommend you spend some time there every day.

See here for some of my articles on tactics :
www.chess.com/blog/achja/getting-better-at-tactics
www.chess.com/blog/achja/more-tactics-training
www.chess.com/blog/achja/improving-tactical-skills-ndash-my-approach