OpenChess

How would you rank the best resources for improving one's game, and why? I have read a bit about about chess.com, chesstempo.com, ideachess.com, other sites, books, software, DVD's, etc. I am considering all of these, and more.

Please disregard price. For a website, please assume that one is willing to pay for the highest level of membership of a given website, or spend whatever to purchase a course.

I have been experimenting a bit with the free version of chess.com, and may pay for a membership there or somewhere else. They let you try out ten "Chess Mentor" lessons for free. However, I notice that they often suggest alternate lines of play in text format. I don't see a way to play through these various lines of play online (maybe one can do so with a paid membership?) and then go back to where they line of play bifurcated. It seems one must attempt to go through the alternate lines of play mentally (I'm not exactly George Koltanowski), or use a real chess board with real pieces and continuously play the variations out and set the board up all over again. Painstaking process. I'm not sure if the other sites are like this. Perhaps there is an online site that can be used in another window and enables one to set up and make moves, then hit the back button several times to return to the possible point of deviation conveyed by something like "Chess Mentor" on chess.com

It should be borne in mind that the answer to my initial question may depend one's rating. Right now I am relatively weak. Perhaps a 1200-1300. This rating will surely improve though, and perhaps at some point it is advisable to use a different resource(s)? Which specific resources should be used at which levels, in your opinion? I realize this is highly subjective.

The fastest way to improve is to hire a coach. Some say coaches are expensive. I say spending 5 years studying the wrong thing and making only small improvements is at best an unfortunate use of your valuable time. A coach will identify your weaknesses and consistently help you correct them. A coach still requires hard work. When you try to improve on your own, the problem is, you don't know what your weaknesses are, and therefore you do not know how to correct the weaknesses. Further, since you don't know what your weaknesses are, you cannot even do the research to correct a weakness, because you don't know what to research. For the most part you are left to study randomly, and if you fix a weakness by accident then you improve. This will work until 1600 or so. It might take you years to improve that much on your own, whereas it might take a good coach only a couple of months.

At your level, tactics are most likely the biggest weakness. At 1200, every single game is decided by who makes the last blunder. chesstempo.com is the best I have seen for this. It gives you the ability to be very specific about what kinds of problems you do. You can choose to only do knight forks rated 1200-1400, and so on. It is better to master a small set of skills before adding in more. So, it would be better to master knight forks first, then add in pins, and continue adding one tactical theme at a time, compared to what chess.com does where their tactics trainer gives you every tactical theme at random. Eventually, doing random problems is good, but when you are 1200 and learning, it will take you longer than you will stay interested to try and do random problems.

There is a lot written about the concept of deliberate practice and chess. You can google "deliberate practice chess" and find plenty written. Malcolm Gladwell writes about it, plenty of other authors and researchers as well. Here is a good overview:

http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/01/06/t ... able-life/

Here is the key quote from that link:

“serious study” — the arduous task of reviewing past games of better players, trying to predict each move in advance — was the strongest predictor of chess skill.

The research says that this key task, trying to guess the moves of master games, then reviewing the game and studying why the master made a different move than you chose, is the best predictor of chess skill. I will say that this is a very time consuming task when done correctly. It would probably take a 40 hour work week to properly go through a full game. At your level you don't even have the skills to know what to spend 40 hours thinking about. To help with this, you could copy a thinking process from a stronger player. The book, The Process of Decision Making in Chess by Ochman gives such a thinking process. He gives a very rigid process, but you can change it or add things to it. The point is, it gives you something to think about when you reach a position you don't understand.

There is also the idea from the old Soviet school of chess that says there are 300 key positions and games that make up the fundamental chess knowledge. GM Rashid Ziatdinov has a book called GM-RAM where he gives about 250 of the positions he considers key. Another is GM Lev Alburt's Pocket Training book that has 300 positions. The point is, you are supposed to know each key position so well you can do it in your sleep without thinking, with instinct. The same way you walk and talk, you don't think about it, you just do it. You have to know the key positions fully, all plans for both sides. You have to know it as well as anyone in the world. I have seen strong players say it takes 4000-6000 hours to know 300 key positions and games this well, so a lot of study is required for each position.

There are other philosophies of chess improvement. There is a guy on chess.com named Yaroslavl who says chess is modified siege warfare, and that the correct strategies are from Nimzowitsch, which are 1) restrain 2) blockade 3) execute the enemy. He goes on to say there are 5 visualization memory banks you must study, which are 1) mating patterns 2) tactics 3) endgame 4) middle game 5) opening. He said it will take you 3 years if you study 6 hours per day to train all 5 memory banks. He also says it's vital to know that almost every game, usually early, reaches one of the 6 pawn formations given by Hans Kmoch in his book Pawn Power in Chess. You can google "site:chess.com yaroslavl" and read his posts. It's an interesting philosophy of chess improvement and one I had not heard before.

It is also recommended you play games with long time controls. I think the best option is playing correspondence games online. You can play games at 3 days per move at chess.com (they call it "Online Chess"), or the same with Chess With Friends. When you have 3 days per move, it gives you time to think through every move. If you can't think it through and arrive at the best move when you have 3 days, how do you expect to find good moves when you play a shorter game?

There is more than one way to skin a cat.

rtr list a lot of good resources for improving, but...

If you are rated 1200-1300
you don't need to pay a coach to tell you what your weaknesses are, because I will tell it to you for free
At 1300 your greates weaknes is tactics, your games contain a lot of tactical mistakes, both small and big ones.
Improving your tactical abilities and your rating will quickly raise.

How do one improve his/her tactical abilities?
I will recomend something which help me a lot when I was only 1250.
It is a book called: Rapid chess improvement by Michael de la Maza.
Do the chess vision drills he describes, and the "seven circles" using "CT-Art chess tactics", and your rating will surely improve.
The hardest problems on CT-Art was too hard for me back then, so I just did the 7 circles using only the first 650 problems in CT-Art.
This worked great for me and is what I would recommend any 1200-1300 person willing to work hard for a fast improvement.

When you have gone through ALL the chess vision drills and ALL the 7-circles as described by Michael de la Maza,
then add some endgame study, as this both help further develope your newly developed calculation skill, and add a lot of basic chess understanding to your game.
Again remember that a good book to help a grand masters endgame is not necessarily a good book for helping a 1300 person.
I will recommend first get a grib on pawn endgames, then rook endgames, then minor pieces endgames.
Where you keep in mind that your goal is not perfection, but to gain basic understanding of the fundamentals of chess.
I would recommend the books
Starting out: Pawn endgames by Glenn Flear
Starting out: Rook endgames by Chris Ward
Starting out: Minor piece endgame by John Emms
Books that contains nothing new for a grandmaster but a lot of value for a 1300 person.
Don't just read through the books, but really work through the problems, try find the answer yourself before reading the solution, sit down and practice your thinking and concentration abilities.

When playing games (after all that is why we pratcie, is it not?). Play games a long time controls (2 hour/40 move) or the correspondence games as rtr says.

This is how I improved about 350 rating point in about 14 months time.
I think most people would call that rapid improvements.
I belive any average intelligent person rated 1200 can do the same, when putting in the effort described.

Happy improvement and hard thinking to you

I think there's no substitute for long time control over the board tournament games. Play as often as you can. I find that I put vastly more into these games and get vastly more out. OTB tournament games also highlight what I need to practice in order to improve.

It's difficult to discuss about improvement.Improvement will come whatever you do but how small and how big , noone can really say that for sure.
Even if you do the best study with the best books. things like how concentrated you are your ability to fully focus on what you read and fully understand,will also will play a role.
In chess major part for improvement plays understanding.Understanding literally begins from endgame.Chess begins from endgame and not from opening as many ignorants think.
Some say "why study endgame if I am going to lose from the opening?"
You don't study endgame to be able to win endgames , you study endgame to understand chess.
Endgame will help you understand the strengths and the weaknesses of each piece(no real imporvement is possible without it), will teach you to look at all board(a serious weakness of all begginers), will make you realise and understand the necessity of having a plan , it will even help you increase your tactical ability.There is no best way to train yourself , for example , in forks , than playing knight endgames again and again.
Many many years ago , before Internet , before engines , before tactics trainer , players were training in tactics with endgame studies,and trust me , NOTHING can replace the instructive value of endgame studies , no tactics trainer , no engine , nothing.
Can one improve without studying endgames?Yes he can , but he will eventually hit an unsurpassed "wall" which he wouldn't if he studied endgames.
Where that "wall" will be?Impossible to say.It depends on so many things.
Endgames don't offer the fastest improvement but they offer the fastest "real" improvement.With openings your rating will increase but you will be the same player.For be gginers basic opening principles are enough.If you are geting massacred in the opening it's not because you need to study openings , it's because you need to increase your understanding.