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moving up from 1400-1500

I started playing chess 4 months back.I started it as a time pass but now its getting serious. I play at least 4 hours a day and now my rating is fluctuating between 1400 and 1500. I play with those from 1200 to 1550 and the games i lose are the ones where I make silly blunders. I am able to set small traps to those of my range but sometimes it backfires on me. May be because i could predict only up to 2 moves at a time. Discovered attacks seems to help me a lot. Sometimes I dont castle my king and use my kingside rook pawn to launch an attack on the opponent's castle.It works mostly. I have learned some openings like stonewall attack,sicilian,veresov and queen's gambit. I am most successful when I play the sicilian. While playing white i dont face the sicilian from anyone in this rating range.So to move up to 1600+ what suggestions do you have for me? Master the sicilian with the dragon and accelerated dragon? or try any other opening while playing black? and while playing white, what opening do you suggest for me?Nowadays i play the veresov attack or queen's gambit or the stonewall.Any help would be appreciated.I have some stats as well.
playing white, against 1400+ i have 50 wins and 69 lost.
800-1400 84 win, 48 lost.
playing black
1400+ 63 win, 109 lost
800-1400, 94 win, 52 lost.
I am surprised to see the win % playing black against <1400.
Please give me some advices.
If u want to improve stop studying openings, and just do tactics , if u want u could study some positional chess, but a our level openings do not help. Just know the basics ( Development...)
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As suggested above, tactics at our level determine 80% of the outcome of games especially in blitz.
Improvement is going to come from tactics, tactics, tactics.

In coaching some people in the game I think something many people don't understand is why you study tactics. After all the chances of you having any given tactical position in a game you study is close to 0, right? The reason to do them is that is that it helps train your brain and board vision. You mention losing to silly blunders. Well at lower levels it might not be so pleasant to hear but most of your opponents are also losing thanks to silly blunders, even if we might like to instead claim it's our personal brilliance instead. ;-)

And the reason for these blunders is a lack of board vision. If you watch a reasonably strong player play games, even at 3 0, you'll notice they'll extremely rarely just outright hang material or make 'a silly blunder' to put it another way. It's not they're particularly clever and thinking faster or anything, in fact they don't really have to think in order to not hang material. Hundreds and thousands of hours spent training with tactics means in the end your mind itself does all the hard work of making sure you're not giving anything away. It's kind of like how a skilled musician isn't sitting there thinking "Ok.. now I hold this valve to hit this note and..." or how a skilled basketball player isn't sitting there pondering the intricacies of the arc of his shot before sinking it. Train yourself enough and it becomes an entirely subconscious process. And it's at that point in chess you can really start digging into the intricacies of openings (which I'm still atrocious at as well!), strategy, and all those other fun things we'd love to hit from day 1.
Improvement is going to come from tactics, tactics, tactics.

In coaching some people in the game I think something many people don't understand is why you study tactics. After all the chances of you having any given tactical position in a game you study is close to 0, right? The reason to do them is that is that it helps train your brain and board vision. You mention losing to silly blunders. Well at lower levels it might not be so pleasant to hear but most of your opponents are also losing thanks to silly blunders, even if we might like to instead claim it's our personal brilliance instead. ;-)

And the reason for these blunders is a lack of board vision. If you watch a reasonably strong player play games, even at 3 0, you'll notice they'll extremely rarely just outright hang material or make 'a silly blunder' to put it another way. It's not they're particularly clever and thinking faster or anything, in fact they don't really have to think in order to not hang material. Hundreds and thousands of hours spent training with tactics means in the end your mind itself does all the hard work of making sure you're not giving anything away. It's kind of like how a skilled musician isn't sitting there thinking "Ok.. now I hold this valve to hit this note and..." or how a skilled basketball player isn't sitting there pondering the intricacies of the arc of his shot before sinking it. Train yourself enough and it becomes an entirely subconscious process. And it's at that point in chess you can really start digging into the intricacies of openings (which I'm still atrocious at as well!), strategy, and all those other fun things we'd love to hit from day 1.
Improvement is going to come from tactics, tactics, tactics.

In coaching some people in the game I think something many people don't understand is why you study tactics. After all the chances of you having any given tactical position in a game you study is close to 0, right? The reason to do them is that is that it helps train your brain and board vision. You mention losing to silly blunders. Well at lower levels it might not be so pleasant to hear but most of your opponents are also losing thanks to silly blunders, even if we might like to instead claim it's our personal brilliance instead. ;-)

And the reason for these blunders is a lack of board vision. If you watch a reasonably strong player play games, even at 3 0, you'll notice they'll extremely rarely just outright hang material or make 'a silly blunder' to put it another way. It's not they're particularly clever and thinking faster or anything, in fact they don't really have to think in order to not hang material. Hundreds and thousands of hours spent training with tactics means in the end your mind itself does all the hard work of making sure you're not giving anything away. It's kind of like how a skilled musician isn't sitting there thinking "Ok.. now I hold this valve to hit this note and..." or how a skilled basketball player isn't sitting there pondering the intricacies of the arc of his shot before sinking it. Train yourself enough and it becomes an entirely subconscious process. And it's at that point in chess you can really start digging into the intricacies of openings (which I'm still atrocious at as well!), strategy, and all those other fun things we'd love to hit from day 1.
@kingslayer92

If you want to improve your chess, and not just your ratings, then start focusing on the slow time control.

As a chess beginner it is in my opinion a big mistake to play bullet (unless just for fun every now and then).

It is good to focus on the slower time controls first.
(If you reach around 1800, then you can play more bullet)

With correspondence chess you are, normally, allowing to use opening books, and by having much more time to think you can find better moves.

The advise to do tactic puzzles is also a good idea.
Do at least 5 tactic puzzles on various websites every day, and do that at least 3 months in a row.

And study good chess books.
I'm not a very big fan of IM Silman his books, but only the introduction chapter of "How to reassess your chess" could be very useful for you.

You can also join chess study groups, to improve.
For example my study group :
http://www.chess.com/groups/view/achja-chess

Good luck ! :)
thankyou guys. I think I'll stop studying openings and do tactics as you people say. I do tactics puzzles but i just make random moves in that. I will take it serious from now on. Thankyou all for the advices.

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