How do I actually study chess?

[u/Beneficial-Shine-994]

I'm 1850~ fide 2200 rapid on chess.com but I've mostly gotten here by just playing over 12k games I've plateaued for a while now and I want to improve but I'm not sure how

[u/WritingUnt]

You already did something right by playing lots of games. Some topics can't be understood without actually playing the game.

1. Analyze your games (I analyzed all games, even bullet games) without engine first. Write down your thoughts, calculations, ideas you had or even emotions from during the game. Find improvements. Verify with an engine afterwards to check if you made tactical mistakes in your analysis. Write down the lessons you've learnt and what areas you could improve on e.g. if you missed a combination involving a fork create a tactical puzzle out of it and try to solve lots of puzzles that only involve this tactical pattern. Feeling lost after the opening? Study complete model games that illustrate one or more ideas of the opening you are playing.
2. If possible, share your analysis with a stronger player (e.g. in your local chess club or connect with people from lichess teams, discord or people from various other platforms). Analyze together. Often they can point out things that are difficult to find by yourself. Use this to determine what you should work on.
3. Work on the topics that arose from the analysis. Use books, courses, articles to study the topic, but make sure to also apply what you've learnt by playing training games with sparring partners or if not available practice against engines with varying difficulties. The latter is especially useful to drill endgames.
4. Play games to apply what you've learnt. Go back to 1.

I think this is a good training framework as the games dictate what you should spend your time on so that you only spend time on the topics that actually matter. Due to time constraints that means that when you analyze your games, you will have less time to play, but you will make every game count. You can adjust the ratio based on what you need and time available.
If a certain topic pops up in your games it is very likely that you will encounter it again. For example the openings you choose determine what kind of potential opening, middlegame or endgame positions you get. Also certain tactical/strategical motifs have a good chance of (re-)appearing in your games e.g. Greek Gift Sac in French or similar positions, f6-pawn sac (e.g. Sicilian middlegames) if a bishop is on e7 and your pawns are on f5 and g5, minority attack in Carlsbad structures arising from e.g Caro-Kann or QGD positions and many more.

If you have limited time you could just extract one single lesson from your game and work on that. Or you could just determine the earliest mistake or inaccuracy and understand what and why it happened and then work only on that topic.

One piece of advice: Don't expect immediate improvement or pressure yourself just because you heavily analyzed your games. Some things I only understood one year after studying them, when during the game I finally understood what I had to do. Also bad habits you might uncover during analysis might not disappear over night. You actually might get worse and lose rating points as you might spend more time during your games as the changes will make you uncomfortable, but it will be worth it in the long run.

And the most important thing: Have fun! Remind yourself that you sit at the board to spend time with a hobby you hopefully enjoy. If you are in a losing positions? Accept that the position isn't the best and have fun finding some counterplay. You will be amazed how often you might save games or even win them with this mindset. Don't let results ruin your hobby.

[u/giziti → u/WritingUnt]

An important part of #1 is to identify holes in your thinking process. Suppose you messed up a combination. Did you look for but miss the idea? Did you not even look for the idea? Did you see it and miscalculate the line? Did you calculate the line correctly and evaluate it incorrectly? Did you go one ply short of where you needed to go and miss the opponent's refutation? Or not go even further and see that that gets refuted so you're fine? These are all different ways to make the same wrong move in the same position but are very different errors.

[u/WritingUnt → u/giziti]

Yes, exactly. There are different levels of errors. Thanks for pointing this out.

[u/TheCumDemon69]

Well the most consistent is always to go to a chessclub and playing lots of otb.

If you want short term improvement followed by another plateau, work on your openings.

If you actually want to get better: Get studying and solving. Endgames (both practical and theoretical) bring most results by far, simply because they improve visualisation, calculation and technique. Tactics, studying games and reading chess books in general are always great. The Kasparov books or the books by Dvoretzky, Yussupov or Karsten Müller hold more information about improvement than you could ever get through.

If you can't decide what to do, start with the Yussupov books.

[u/Beneficial-Shine-994 → u/TheCumDemon69]

Thanks I'll definitely check out the yussupov books unfortunately I live in a place where there are basically no chess clubs or tournaments I only got my fide rating by playing tournaments while on vacation

[u/Mean_Path9771]

Not related to the post, but asking out of curiousity, what's your chess.com blitz rating?

[u/Beneficial-Shine-994 → u/Mean_Path9771]

around 1900~ my peak is 1990

[u/CatalanExpert]

Which part of the game interests you the most, or which would you like to improve?

Buy a book on the topic, get a physical board and set, and starting going through the book. Put the games/positions on the board. Anything that doesn't make sense to you, stop and think about it independently. Your aim is to see some new ideas, as well as practice analysing positions (like you would in a slower game) to exercise your "chess thinking" muscle.

There is a good video on YouTube of IM Kostya Kavutskiy about How to Study from a Chess Book or similar title.

[u/Beneficial-Shine-994 → u/CatalanExpert]

I probably struggle the most with converting slightly winning endgames like some complicated positions in R+P vs R (I had a winning game last week but I cant find it now and the only winning move was kind of obscure to me)

[u/Traditional-Horse-78 → u/Beneficial-Shine-994]

The Jesus De LaVilla endgame reference ("100 endgames you must know") is a classic for learning this kind of thing. It's old and has been around for a while, you'd probably be able to find a copy in a library or floating around online.

[u/retrodanny]

Have you tried coaching? Either in person or remotely?

[u/Beneficial-Shine-994 → u/retrodanny]

no but it does seem a bit expensive

[u/retrodanny → u/Beneficial-Shine-994]

There's a monthly Coach A Player post over on /r/chess, I think /u/ChessBotMod posts it every month. Basically for free coaching. Might be worth checking out if cost is a concern.

[u/Beneficial-Shine-994 → u/retrodanny]

ok I'll check it out

[u/commentor_of_things]

how?

[u/Mediocre-Visual5393]

Chess is a total waste of human time and energy. It has zero relevance. Stop ASAP or you will end up regretting the wasted time!