How to Improve Your Chess for 2025

1d ago (edited) in General

Have you been stuck in chess for a while now? Do you know what you should be doing in chess? Do you want to skyrocket your growth in 2025? A couple months ago, I did my own research to try and find the best way to improve my chess. I want to share this with all of you, so we can all reach our goals this year!

ＨｏｗｔｏＰｒｏｐｅｒｌｙＩｍｐｒｏｖｅＹｏｕｒＣｈｅｓｓ

Firstly, you need to know what you should do and how much of it you should do. For the level I believe that most people are at, I think the most important things you should do are study, practice, and fixing. I suggest that you:

Practice for around 65% of the time you're trying to improve
Study for around 25% of the time you're trying to improve
Fix your chess for about 10% of the time you're trying to improve

But what does that entail? Firstly, I am going to cover the part that takes the least amount of time; fixing your chess. Firstly, I want you to write down how well you feel you focused while you were playing your game. Then, analyze your games quickly. Personally, I feel I sometimes need to understand why chess.com says I played an excellent move instead of the best move. But that doesn't matter. Instead, try to focus on the biggest mistakes you made. If you lose, what mistake or set of mistakes caused you to lose? It probably wasn't something like putting your knight on a square that wasn't very active. No, you probably blundered your queen in one move! Even if your opponent doesn't punish your mistake or you win anyway, if you make a big mistake, you need to fix it. Write down why you did it, and then focus on improving it next time you study and practice.

Finding out how to practice is pretty intuitive. However, there is still some advice I can give to you. Firstly, tactics are somewhat a mix of practice and study. As I will explain soon, tactics are one of the most important things you should be studying. However, you also need to do as many chess puzzles as possible! Chess.com doesn't have free puzzles, so I recommend Lichess. Your goal should NOT be to solve the puzzle as quickly as possible. Your ONLY goal will be to get every single problem right!

Playing games is the next part of practicing. This part, of course, you can NOT skip, as (in my opinion) it is the BEST way to improve your chess. Playing games is the reason practice takes most of the time you will use. Firstly, you need to play longer time controls. Play 15|10 minimum. 10 minute rapid is slightly too short. Shorter time controls aren't the best way to improve at this level, but they are fun, so know that you aren't forbidden from playing them. Also, make sure you are locked in during your games. Meditate before your games (just focus on your breathing for 3 minutes) and play music without lyrics if it helps you. Remember that you can only control the amount of effort you put in, not the result of it.

Studying is probably the thing that you will struggle will struggle with most. Studying itself may be easy for you, but getting the best possible outcome from studying is nearly impossible. You have to know what to study and where best to find the material to study it. Here's what you should mainly study, and how much time you should spend studying each of them.

(60% of your time) Tactics: includes typical tactics such as pins and forks, but also includes checkmate patterns. In the future, I will create a post that has all tactics and checkmate patterns and link it here.

(15-20% of your time, depending on your skill) Openings: First, make sure you are 100% comfortable with opening principles, and that you always follow them when you're supposed to. Pick 1-2 (preferably 1) opening as both white and black. When studying openings, your goal shouldn't be to memorize all of the moves in all of the lines in any opening. You should, of course, know a few moves of theory, but your main objective should be to learn the ideas and principles you should use when playing your opening.

(10-20% of your time, depending on your skill) Middlegame: Some people say that you cannot study the middlegame. However, you definitely can. Aside from tactics, there are a few things you need to master to play the middlegame well: Attacking, defending, basic positional principles, saving lost positions, converting winning positions, and gaining advantages when your opponent doesn't blunder. That's a lot, so I am currently trying to make posts about how to play the middlegame. I already have one about defending and saving lost positions you can view. https://www.skool.com/topchessgang/how-to-play-middlegames-defending?p=cd0b16c4

(10-20% of your time) Endgames: Chess.com has a good resource for this that's free. Go to practice, drills, and then endgame fundamentals or endgame practice. If you master all of the things in here (don't let the computer help you, if you don't know how to do something watch a YouTube video!) then you should be set. However, there are some important endgame principles that are even more important to learn. I recommend watching one or two beginner endgame principles videos.

I hope this can help you improve and accomplish all of your goals in the new year! According to some (not that trustworthy) source I found, only 9% of people keep their new year's revolutions! If you are making some, try your best to stick to them! Don't stop trying! Good luck and enjoy 2025!

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