What a 1500 elo player looks like

you wrote:

Section 0: Blunders.

We blunder. We blunder a lot. Usually 4-5 times per game. It may be a blunder of a pawn, piece or even a full queen(In one of my latest games a guy forgot about the pin).

My response:

I think this varies. I personally have a tendancy to blunder more often than people at my rating range, and usually people at this rating blunder less than 4 moves per game, if not just 1 blunder the whole game, with some mistakes and inaccuracies.

You wrote:

Section 1: Opening, middlegame and endgame

The opening knowledge varies from person to person. Someone may play some troll hippo-type setup, someone other may have a full book on the najdorf. The opening doesn't matter much anyway, because we will still blunder the advantage away 4/5 times. This advantage may be nice to have, but not worth the study. The opening prep may overrate you by 50-60 elo, no more. I recommend sticking with e4 e5 and d4 d5 opening principles for a while, and work on your concetration. I myself switched my full in-depth french defence repertoire for some goofy 3.c3 bishop opening stuff, and somehow improved over 120 elo. If you really want to learn something about the opening, learn the open game concepts: the center fork sacrifice, the fishing pole, maybe play h3 to avoid the annoying Bg4 pin, etc. I think scotch or 4.c3 italian is the best for that.

My response:

You may be right, but I feel that most of the time even at this level people take you out of book too soon.

you wrote:

Middlegame: our middlegame knowledge is kinda limited, usually we all just go for a straight up attack after developing the pieces. If there is no way to start an attack, someone just randomly pushes a5 for no reason, while the other player might try to re-route the knight to win the bishop pair. Everyone tries to catch the opponent on the tactic, and that works sometimes. We also lose tempos really often.

my response:

In my experience, people at this level often do not play a5 for no reason.

you wrote:

Endgame: Speaking for myself, all I know about the endgames is just the opposition concept, how to draw the philidor position and that's basically it. We don't usually study some advanced endgame techniques, we just try to create a passed pawn and win.

my response:

The game is won in the opening/middlegame at our level. It's rare where we get into endgames.

you wrote:

Section 2: Tactics

Tactic knowledge is pretty good at this level. We usually can calculate up to 3 moves deep into the sacrifice, altho in 50% of cases there is a defence, which makes us look dumb. Altho we sometimes miss simple tactics(like I did today when I missed the fact that I could sack the rook for the knight, and the opponent couldn't recapture because of the checkmate threat)

my response:

Tactical ability can vary depending on the type of player you are playing. If you are playing someone like me, I can think of 8-10 move calculations rather quickly which someone else will burn up their time on the clock thinking about it, someone of the same level. If you are playing a young, improving player, this may be true most of the time, but if you are playing an older hobby player that's been at 1500 for most of their life, this may not be the case. People like that have gaps in their chess knowledge that keep them from advancing, and they would rather just play then study the game to get to a higher rating.

You wrote:

Section 3: Attacking/defending

We all attack. The attacking knowledge is pretty good, but we lack the mating pattern recognition, which sometimes makes us retreat even when there is mate in 3.

my response:

I actually can spot mates really well, but you are right, most people at this level tend to not see common mating motifs for the queen attacking the lone king in the center of the board with other pawns and pieces helping out. An easy way to get better at this is to read the first chapter of the polgar book, the famous one. Do it until you can do the problems in your sleep.

you wrote:

Speaking of myself, my defensive capabilities are kinda lame. All I do when I see that my opponent CAN potentially attack me, is pulling as much pieces closer to my king as possible, trying to equalise the number of attackers and defenders and play from there.

my response:

Those type of motifs are to be used after you calculate what exactly your opponent is trying to do. If you see no threats, you can try to do those things. Calculation first before strategy.

you wrote:

So, in my opinion the greatest problem with 1500s is our focus and mind-set. All of our blunders come from either a relaxation or stress/pressure.

my response:

In my opinion, the biggest problem nowadays is lack of practice. People expect to improve after 50 games. A lot needs to be done before you reach the next level, in chess that is.

My improvement plan for myself is:

1) remove blunders/learn how to hyperfocus

2) work on tactics

3) work on mating patterns

4) work on my defences

5) return to the openings, and try to make the most challenging repertoire that would allow me to gain the advantage from the opening phase: if it's developmental - i will start an attack using the improvement from my 2 and 3 steps; if it's a material advantage, assuming that i wasted tempos on winning that material, i will try to survive the attack using the improvement from my 4th step; then trade everything and finish the endgame.

If anyone has any recommendations, I would be happy to hear that.

My goal is 2000 rapid. I hope I succeed.

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My response: It's hard to come up with a good plan, wish you luck on your chess journey!