Edit: This article on chess improvement was unexpectedly popular, reaching #2 on Hacker News and being linked to on LifeHacker. Thanks for your patience as I work through all the comments and emails I receive.
Last updated: February 17, 2021
There are many misconceptions about rapid chess improvement. In this post I’m going to lay out a simple but effective way to get good at chess, fast.
This system is based on lessons learned from my own chess improvement and from coaching others. The good news is that you can become better than the vast majority of other players with minimal but targeted effort.
While this system is designed to help you improve without a coach, I’m taking on a few students to coach within this structure to help accelerate their improvement. If that’s something you’re interested in, feel free to reach out to me at gautam[at]gautamnarula.com
What does it mean to be “good” at chess?
Magnus Carlsen’s meteoric rise to the top ranked player in the world (at age 19), the highest chess rating in history (age 22), and as of a few days ago, the title of World Chess Champion (age 22) has brought with it a renewed interest in chess. This is exciting, because Carlsen represents the first real hope of renewing chess’s mass appeal since the days of Bobby Fischer1.
In the context of discussions about Magnus Carlsen, many people mentioned that they enjoyed playing chess but quit because of the sheer time commitment it took to get “good.”
I define “good” as the 90th percentile among the player pool you’re competing against. In competitive chess in the United States, that means a United States Chess Federation (USCF) Elo rating of about 18002. If you’re a casual player playing against your friends, my guess is that 90th percentile is around 900. Even though I was only rated 1100 when I first began playing competitively, I was already able to beat the vast majority of non-competitive players.
The goal here is to help you get good, fast, with minimal effort.
Results with this system
I actively trained for a period of about 3.5 years using a (much, much less disciplined) version of this system, during which my rating increased from 1100 to 1950, a 135 fold increase in strength3. In one 12 month period I improved from 1198 to 1639. I improved even faster with my quick rating (games with less than 30 minutes per side), where I went from 1001 to 1740 in 15 months (75 fold increase in playing strength).
My first experience using these ideas with other players was in high school, when I began coaching the lowest ranked player in our chess club. Within a few months he had improved so rapidly that he represented the school in the state championships and won every single game in the tournament.
Given that I managed to do this despite my own inexperience and mistakes with studying chess and my own laziness, I’m convinced others can improve much more quickly if they follow this system strictly4.
The system
Since this article is meant for both casual and competitive players, I specify minimum rating requirements when appropriate. If you’re a casual player and this is overkill for your goals, skip to the footnotes for a much simpler system5.
Playing
To improve quickly you need to play often. If you are (or aspire to be) a competitive player, play as many over-the-board (OTB) tournaments as possible. In my heyday I played 3-4 tournaments per month. Online is not enough! Use online games (15 minutes per side or slower) to practice openings or for practice if there is no tournament for a while. If you’re a casual player, play OTB chess with your friends as much as you can, and play online if nobody wants to play with you.
Since I first wrote this post, I’ve received a fair number of questions asking why OTB chess is so important and why online-only is insufficient. IM Andras Toth has an excellent discussion of this topic that explains it better than I could (his channel is also chronically underrated–I highly recommend checking his other videos out!).
Tactics
I did two types of tactics training. The first was “Chess Vision” and “Knight Sight” exercises, as described in this article. They may sound stupid, but they work. I did these exercises every day for two weeks initially, and then would do them the day of a tournament and once in a while as a refresher.
My primary method of tactics training was using Chess Tactics for Beginners, which is absolutely fantastic. Since it may have compatibility issues with modern OSes, a good alternative is CT Art 4.0 available for both Android and iOS. 
If you only buy one thing to help your chess game, this should be it. I did 50 puzzles per day, every day, and once I finished the entire CD I repeated the process six more times. Online tactics sites usually don’t cut it, because they aren’t structured so that you learn based off previous ideas and many don’t incorporate the pedagogical features of Chess Tactics for Beginners/CT Art 4.0. Trust me, paying for the software is worth it. If I had to recommend a book to accompany such study (which is helpful, since the above software doesn’t actually have any explanatory text), I’d recommend Chess Tactics for the Tournament Player for intermediate players, and Winning Chess Tactics for less experienced players. 
I’ll admit, there is a bit of a leap between solving tactics puzzles and applying it to real games–obviously nobody’s going to tell you when a tactic is available, and you won’t be “primed” to find tactics the way you would be when solving a bunch of puzzles. To counteract this I created a binder of puzzles taken from tactics I missed in my games, and reviewed them from time to time.
Analysis
Analysis is by far the most undervalued part of chess training. As a kid I barely analyzed my games after tournaments, because I was lazy. This was a huge mistake—your games are worth their weight in gold! Learn algebraic chess notation so you can write down your moves, and analyze your games using the method outlined in this article. Use the analysis phase to brush up on your openings and endgames and practice your strategic play. If possible, have a stronger player go over your games with you after you’ve done your own analysis. One big mistake is to rely heavily on computers for chess analysis. Too often, players use computers as a crutch to replace their own study of the game. Working through games on your own and trying to find the best moves and ideas is highly instructive. Computer analysis should be done only after you analyze the game on your own, so you can compare your analysis to the computer’s and unearth any mistakes you made in assessing critical positions in the game.
Openings
One of the biggest mistakes players make is to devote massive amounts of time to openings. This is because openings tend to be very concrete, and beginners think that simply memorizing an opening will give them an unassailable advantage over their opponents6.
Don’t bother spending any time studying openings outside of analyzing your games. Just make sure you know the basic opening principles. I teach my beginning students simple openings like the London System as white, and simple lines of the Scandinavian and Slav as black7. These openings are simple, solid, can be played against virtually anything.
Once you hit 1600, get a good opening book that gives you both specific moves and the ideas behind the opening. Don’t mindlessly memorize!
I give some specific book recommendations below, but if you want an entire opening repertoire set up for you that focuses on ease of play with minimal effort, check out my article The Best Openings for Rapid Chess Improvement.
Openings for White
If you’re a d4 player, I highly recommend Cox’s Starting Out: 1. d4!8. An offbeat alternative is Summerscale’s A Killer Chess Opening Repertoire.
If you’re an e4 player it gets a bit trickier. The truth is, e4 is simply harder to play than d4 because it’s a lot easier to get in trouble if you don’t play precisely. This makes finding a single volume repertoire book a bit more challening, but here are some options:
- Alburt’s Chess Openings for White, Explained. I haven’t personally used it, and I’ve heard some reasonable criticism around some of the lines chosen, but I think for most players it’ll probably be a good starting point.
- Emms’s Attacking with 1. e4 is a book I have used and enjoyed during my forays as an e4 player.
If you’re a c4 player, you’ll have to do some research on your own to find a good repertoire book. Being a hipster has its downsides. Openings for Black
- Alburt’s Chess Openings for Black, Explained is a great book.
Obviously this depends on your opening preferences. Even here openings should not be your main focus. I only consult these books when analyzing my games to see where I deviated from established opening theory, occasionally supplemented by a chess database if there’s a line not covered in the book or I’d like to go more in-depth.
And if your first thought is, “Gautam, one of those books was published in 2006! I’ll be using outdated opening theory!” then I’m afraid you’re missing the point. If you’re below master or even International Master level, playing what world champions played in 2006 rather than what they played in 2020 will never be the reason you lose a game. Ever. That simply is not your bottleneck, and the time invested to try to constantly keep up with the latest won’t result in any rating gains.
Strategy
Until you hit 1400-1500, you should be picking up strategic play from analyzing your games and going over annotated games. Once you hit that level, I recommend Silman’s The Amateur’s Mind and Seirawan’s Winning Chess Strategies. 
Once you hit 1800, Silman’s Reassess Your Chess, Fourth Edition. 
Endgame
After learning the basic checkmates (King and Queen vs. King, King and Rook vs. King, etc.), Silman’s Complete Endgame Course is the only book you need. Study the appropriate section based on your rating, and only come back to it if it’s clear that you keep messing up endgames. 
Annotated Games
Go over at least one annotated game a week (and more frequently if you’re a serious competitive player). A good annotated game book is Winning Chess Brilliancies by Seirawan. I hear the Mammoth Book of the World’s Greatest Chess Games is pretty good too, but I can’t personally vouch for it. 
Psychology Magnus Carlsen is my favorite chess player. In equal positions where many grandmasters would agree to a draw, Carlsen patiently pushes and probes, waiting until his opponent cracks and then grinding out a win. Magnus Carlsen is the world’s best player because he doesn’t give up. When I was younger, I had an unfortunate habit of withdrawing from tournaments where I was doing badly. I made various excuses, but usually I withdrew because I had mentally given up after a few demoralizing losses. I did the same thing in chess games—after making a major mistake, I mentally gave up. If chess is anything, it is a game of second chances. Chess, like life, rewards perseverance. I’ve turned countless losses into draws and wins because my opponents got overconfident while I dug in. I’ve also turned wins into losses because I was too intimidated by my opponent’s rating or reputation. Chess psychology can be distilled to two simple rules:
- Don’t ever be afraid of your opponent
- Fight as hard as you can until the game is over9
Simply following these rules will add hundreds of points to your rating. General Advice Study broader topics, like strategy or endgame, only when you feel like that topic is causing you to lose. For instance, only open a strategy book if you keep getting outplayed positionally. Otherwise, your default state should be studying tactics and analyzing your games. The tl;dr of this training plan is: play a lot, analyze your games, and primarily study tactics. Your knowledge of openings, endgame, middlegame, etc. will come from analyzing your games and going over grandmaster games. Only study one of those specific topics if it is clear you are specifically losing because of that topic.
Recommended Materials
This is just a compiled list of all the stuff I recommended in this article, and rating recommendations for each item.
Analysis
A hardcore guide to analyze your chess games (all levels)
Annotated Games
Winning Chess Brilliancies (1000+)
Mammoth Book of the World’s Greatest Chess Games* (1500+)
Endgame
Silman’s Complete Endgame Course (1000+)
Openings
The books will vary depending on your individual opening preferences. It is significantly more difficult to find a single repertoire book for 1 e4 openings that provides adequate depth and breadth, given that e4 is–objectively–a more difficult opening to play.
Starting Out: 1. d4! (1600+)
A Killer Chess Opening Repertoire (1600+)
Chess Openings for Black, Explained (1600+)
Chess Openings for White, Explained* (1600+)
Attacking with 1. e4 (1600+)
Strategy
The Amateur’s Mind (1400+)
Winning Chess Strategies (1400-1800)
Reassess Your Chess, Fourth Edition (1800+)
Tactics
Chess Vision and Knight Sight exercises from 400 Points in 400 Days Part I (all levels)
Chess Tactics for Beginners (all levels up to 1600)
CT Art 4.0 for Android or iOS (All levels up to ~2000-2200, an alternative if Chess Tactics for Beginners won’t work on your computer)
Chess Tactics for the Tournament Player (1400+)
Winning Chess Tactics (1000+)
* I haven’t personally used these items
Tournament Materials
If you’re playing in tournaments, you’ll need three more items: a chess clock (pretty much mandatory, since tournaments don’t provide them), a tournament chess set (sometimes tournaments provide them, sometimes they don’t, and it’s useful to have a set to analyze between rounds), and a scorebook (optional, but highly recommended).
Chronos Chess Clock: This is the clock most serious players use, because it’s built to last. Mine is ten years old and still running strong, despite lots of drops and falls. Two cheaper clocks I bought before my Chronos eventually broke; in the long run, the Chronos is the cheapest clock to buy. Nonetheless, if $100 is too much, I recommend the DGT North American Clock.
Triple Weighted Tournament Chess Set: A chess set is another long-term investment; you want one that’ll last. Weighted pieces feel so much nicer than hollow, plastic pieces, and are less likely to get knocked over during time scrambles when both sides have little time on the clock. However, here’s a cheaper, unweighted set as well.
Deluxe Chess Tournament Scorebook with Lay Flat Binding: This is the scorebook I use to notate my chess games (required in most chess tournaments). The cheaper, spiral bound scorebooks with paper covers eventually rip and tear, while this holds twice as many games (100, versus 50) and lasts forever.
United States Chess Federation Official Rules of Chess, Fifth Edition: This is strictly optional, but the official USCF rulebook is useful to have in case of disputes (for US players, of course). I’ve used my copy to successfully appeal unfair rulings made by tournament directors.
What about all the chess books I already have?
If you’re like many other chess players, you’ve accumulated many chess books that you simply don’t need for rapid chess improvement. My advice: trade them in for Amazon gift cards.
Other posts on chess improvement I’ve written:
Using Data to Improve Your Chess
Footnotes:
1 – Fischer’s appeal was that he was a sole American fighting against the Soviet machine that had dominated chess since World War II, and is 1972 World Championship match against Russia’s Boris Spassky was imbued with Cold War symbolism. Carlsen’s appeal is his incredible talent, his youth, his normalcy (compared to Fischer’s infamous egotism and antics) and yes, even his looks.
2 – I couldn’t find recent aggregate percentile data, but the USCF provides percentile data for individual active players, so I determined rating percentiles by looking up individual player ratings. The 50th percentile is around 800.
3 – I stopped playing serious competitive chess about four years ago (when I was 16, rated about 1950) because I got burned out. I still plan on someday making a return to competitive chess, and when I do I’ll pretty much be using this system to train and improve.
4 – I think the only reason I managed to improve reasonably quickly despite being so undisciplined about training was because I was young (my main competitive years were from age 13-16), I played a lot, and I had at least some natural aptitude. How quickly could I have improved if I had followed this system in a disciplined way? Probably about twice as fast.
5 – Here’s a very simplified guide for beginning players who want to improve rapidly in a month or two
-
Learn the basic opening principles: control the center, develop your pieces, and king safety. Googling this should yield useful articles.
-
Learn the basic checkmates: King + Queen vs King, King and two Rooks vs King, and King and one Rook vs King
-
Get Chess Tactics for Beginners and do 50 puzzles a day
-
Do the Chess Vision and Knight Sight exercises from 400 Points in 400 Days Part I
-
Play as much as you can
-
If possible, go over your games with a stronger player
6 – A lot of this is just to impress other players. It’s a common sight at chess tournaments to see players rattling off complicated sounding opening variations. At first these players intimidated me, but as I grew stronger I realized that these players were often the easiest to beat. Just get ’em out of the openings and crush ’em with tactics!
7 – I originally recommended a kingside fianchetto setup involving the moves Nf6, g6, d6, Bg7, and O-O, resulting in a setup as seen below. Experienced players might point out that this could lead to the King’s Indian Defense or the Pirc Defense, which turn out to be rather complicated openings. This is true, but I thought you can play both these openings with little theoretical knowledge up to the 1600 level and still be fine. Turns out they’re still rather difficult for people to play, especially the Pirc, so I no longer recommend it. See my related article, The Best Openings for Rapid Chess Improvement.
Diagram 1: The basic kingside fianchetto setup.
8 – Incidentally, I own but don’t recommend the book’s counterpart, Starting Out: 1.e4!
9 – This doesn’t mean never, ever, resign. If you’re down a queen in an absolutely hopeless position against a strong opponent, it’s good etiquette to resign rather than needlessly drag on the game. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself, “If my opponent were playing Magnus Carlsen in this position, would Carlsen be able to win?” If the answer is yes, keep playing. If it is no, then resign.
If you’d like to receive my future posts, including other posts on rapid chess improvement, in your inbox, enter your email below:
Disclosure: The Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, which allow me to earn a commission if you purchase using that link (you pay the exact same amount as you would via a non-affiliate link). Thanks for supporting this site!