How to reach 2000 FIDE rating..

 I think most people have the incorrect approach to improving at chess. The question to be asking is not what you need to learn to become better, but even before that, what exactly does better mean? What’s the difference between a player like you and a player like me and a player like Magnus Carlsen? And only once you understand that can you begin to ask what the steps are for getting there.

I’d propose there are three general areas which define the separation been the levels of chess players: vision, awareness, and planning. I’ll explain what I mean by these and how you can improve them.

Vision- probably the most rudimentary starting point for any chess player below 1600, vision refers mainly to noticing how the pieces on the board interact with each other (although at higher rating levels it starts to include much more). This means whenever you sit down at a board you should instantly be looking at all of the pieces, and understanding where they can go and what they can do. Noticing that your rook is on the same file as your opponent’s king, noticing that your pawn is under pressure from an enemy bishop, noticing your knight could land a fork if it got to the right square, these are the foundations of good chess vision. As you climb the rating pool you will notice after a certain point, around 1600, vision improvement sort of plateaus, with only incremental differences between, for example, a 2200 and a 2300 rated player. Still, if you’re less than 1600 this is definitely an area you’re going to need to work on. You can improve your vision simply by getting into the habit of taking time and looking at the pieces in any given chess position. You can do this during your games (if there’s enough time), during analysis sessions, or by looking through tactics puzzles and just focusing on this before moving onto the puzzle itself. Getting into the habit of looking at all of the pieces on the board will put an end to you hanging your pieces or missing one or two move tactics, both on your side of the board and your opponents’.

Awareness- this is also called intuition, but that implies it’s a natural gift, while the truth is anyone can improve it. Awareness is the ability to quickly identify the important aspects of any given chess position. This ability is an important thing that separates the top super grandmasters from their peers. Being able to synthesize a position into its fundamental points and understanding which are most relevant is a skill you’re going to be working on your entire chess career. You can take the first steps towards improving your awareness by learning how to analyze a position, and then practicing that. (I can recommend books or YouTube videos on the subject at your request.) Once you learn how to analyze positions (the formula only takes a few minutes to learn) you’re going to need to practice in every game you play, analyzing the position and understanding its key elements. When you’re able to break down a position you’ll understand what the focus of your game should be about, what type of moves you should be looking for, and what plans you should be making. Which brings me to the third subject:

Planning- this is by far the single most important improvement you can make to your game, and it’s a wonder to me that they don’t teach it to new students, or don’t spend time focusing on it. The difference between the finding best plan available and finding the second best is the only reason the top 20 chess players don’t draw every single game. People like showing the exciting tactical games, but like 90% of decisive chess games at the very highest level are not decided based on tactics that someone missed. They’re decided based on who chose the better plan. If you can learn to plan, and to plan well, you will see exponential chess development. Studying tactics and all is great, but they’re not making you a better chess player, they’re strengthening your vision, which is very important, but nothing will give you more of an appreciation for the depth and breadth of chess than understanding how to make plans. So what is a plan? Once you know how to analyze a position you will be able to grasp the strengths and weaknesses on both sides of the board. A plan is a long term goal or set of goals that you form based on this analysis. Some examples would be: I want to get my knight to g5, my bishop to e3, my queen to h4, and then start an attack against his king which he weakened by pushing some pawns. Or it could be, I want to get my king to safety on the other side of the board by moving him from g1-f2-e1-d1-c1 because my opponent busted through my king’s defenses on this side of the board. When you can do this you’re going to see chess in s completely different light. Instead of searching for “best moves” which are going to be impossible to guess unless it’s a tactic, you’re going to search for a best plan. Never again will you look at your pieces and wonder what you’re even supposed to be doing with them. You’re going to have an understanding of what you want to do with them, and you’ll always be able to think of moves to play. Nothing will give you such a huge advantage over the opponents you’re playing at your current level such as being able to choose a good plan. There are many excellent resources to teach you how to plan better, let me know if you’d like me to drop a couple.

To conclude, I’m not really sure why chess teachers today will push you to study tactics and analyze your games as much as they do. Those are nice things which may enable you to get better scores against your current level of opponents, but won’t really improve your rating very much. (Tactics aren’t even very useful without vision, you’re not going to notice the tactics exist in your games unless you can use your vision to see where they emerge from.) Teachers will also push you to study openings and endgames. These too will give you better scores against players at your level, but you’ll never be able to compete against a player with a solid plan unless you have one of your own. Never. Also, watching Levy or Hikaru, while it might be entertaining to hear the analysis, is not going to give you any useful skills you’re going to be able to plug into your games. Opening traps aren’t improving your chess skill. So start with getting into the habit of using vision until it’s at a 16-1800 level. Learn how to synthesize positions into their key elements. And then learn how to formulate plans based off of those elements. If you really want to take your chess to the next level, you need to work on the things that actually differentiate you from the players at the top level.