Typical study plan for a 2000 trying to reach 2200?

Hi,

I am trending around the 2000 blitz mark at the moment (3+0 time controls) and 2100 rapid mark (10+0  time controls).

I have been playing for roughly 3 years, and started out around 600 in both time controls in 2019. I've been stuck at ~2000 blitz for roughly 6 months (fluctuating between 1950 and 2050).

In order to reach 2200 blitz, what would those in that rating range or beyond suggest as the main areas a 2000 should typically focus on?

Alongside lessons, I've done probably 20,000 tactics, some king + pawn and rook endgames and some middlegame planning/positional concepts (Silmans re-assess your chess book) and more recently, starting to work on my openings - mostly driven by looking at my own results with black and white against certain replies and refining them in conjunction with comparing my openings database to an open database to see where I've played inaccurately, and then going online to find some youtube resources that explain the ideas a little better.

Moving forward, which area(s) should I focus most of my attention on now to get the biggest return on time investment?

My gut instinct seeing some other posts on the subject is actually going back to basics and simply solving more and more tactics and building up my pattern recognition skills.
Is this correct? If it is, is there a recommended way of studying this in a preferred manner beyond that of simply solving the random positions chess.com's tactic trainer presents you with - and doing these one after the other.

Are there other areas you think are 'must knows' for 2200+ (online blitz rating) or areas that are a good use of your time?

Thanks!

Jan Markos in his book Under the Surface notes that a chess player really gets a better sense of intuition by studying annotated master games. Obviously, players have a lot of their "greatest hits" collections published, which can be good especially if you're looking to understand a certain playstyle better. Annotated games like in the magazine New in Chess are also great resources. Personally, I like annotated games of entire tournaments, because you also get games that are draws, or you get games where both sides make mistakes, which are sometimes more instructive than flawless games.

Especially if you're playing blitz, I'm guessing that having a better intuition would be real important, so maybe that would be an avenue to explore as well.

Thanks for the feedback. Can you recommend any free resources for annotated games? Is "New in chess" a subscription magazine?

Endgames are probably the most effective to study.

Some GMs are analyzing games on YouTube. I don't think they're as good as written annotations, but they are free, so if you're looking for free, I would look for those. Right now, the Candidates Tournament is going on, so that would probably be a good resource to look into, as many GMs are annotating those.

Thanks - any other ideas from anyone else?

Sounds like you haven't studied the endgame yet. Endgame knowledge helps you make appropriate middlegame decisions.

You can also start keeping some minor stats on your games. What openings are you scoring the worst with? What types of games are you failing at the most (ones where you were attacking? Defending? Closed? Open? etc).

And then a study tip... when you identify something you want to learn (like attacking or an endgame or an opening, etc) then start collecting GM games... what I mean is look at GM games (some people have already put together lists, just google) and when one is interesting (or confusing) to you save the link on a list (or save the moves in a database, etc). Don't save games that look boring to you heh.

Once you collect, for example, 20 attacking games, play over them quickly (just a few minutes per game) and categorize them or look for similarities. For example some attacks happen down the h file. And this collection can be a long process. Maybe add 1 or 2 games every week, and eventually it builds up... and then every time you get 20 more games (for example) then play over the games again to see if you notice anything new or enhance things you already know.

As you collect more games under the theme you're studying, you'll start to notice common patterns, and once that happens the games that used to be confusing to you aren't so confusing anymore. You start to understand and even predict those moves.

And just to be clear... you'll find lists like "20 greatest attacking games"

So then you look at the games, and keep the ones that interest you, and ignore the ones you don't care about.

Other easy sources of games are, for example, all the world chess championship match games... Let yourself be greedy and by that I mean, you can even ignore the draws, and just look at decisive games. Or, you can ignore all games except 1 opening... the point is to find high level games that are interesting to you and that involve something you're trying to learn.

Thanks - good suggestion re grouping certain types of games together for bulk review.

Acknowledging that you are clearly in the 'beyond' category, I believe there is something here that could be of help to you...

Good Positional Chess, Planning & Strategy Books for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/introduction-to-positional-chess-planning-strategy

A simple idea is to watch games of a person who gets to 2200/2300 with a lot of blitz games and work on the position with Stockfish to understand why he gets to that level.

For a strong AI you are looking to spot its algorithms for a strong human its patterns. 

If there were 1, and only 1 way to get to ____ rating, then sure, copy whoever is at that rating.

But that's not how chess works   There are many different combinations of skills that allow players to be various ratings. So it's better to improve your own skills than to copy someone else.

There is no secret ingredient.

Basically you need a little bit of everything, study more tactics, openings, endgames etc...

If I was to do it all over again for myself with my current knowledge and I was trying to reach 2200 blitz from 2000 blitz I would do :

Pick up one or even two books on checkmate in 2 puzzles. And study those.

Pick up a book on endgame studies and study.

Pick up a book on tactics , something like just checkmates puzzles or combination puzzles.

And like 25% of my time I would study and improve my current openings, YouTube., database or some books .

It sounds like you're doing many things right. You have a plan, you have goals. Keep doing what you're doing.

The only additional step I would recommend (which I didn't see you mention), is to focus on how you analyze your games.

As a generalized rule, you should spend more time analyzing a game than you did playing it. So a 3+0 blitz game generally takes around 6 to 10 minutes to complete.

That means, when analyzing your game, you should, ideally, spend more than 6 to 10 minutes analyzing it.

A lot of players do the opposite - they play a game, then they only briefly review the game for few seconds or minutes afterward, in a minimal amount of time.

That's not proper learning. Review and analysis is where you learn and improve. It's where you should invest much of your time.

For every 3+0 blitz game I play, I spend at least 10 minutes or more analyzing that same game - exploring different lines and variations. Tumbling down the rabbit hole, so to speak. This is where those "ah-hah!" epiphanies come from - the little things that add up, over time, to improve your playing strength.

Always analyze - and do it deeply.

If you don't have much time and want rapid results :

Solve checkmate in 2 puzzles as many as you can and watch some IM players who regularly playing your opening choice, or just watch some study on YouTube about your opening, to grasp some ideas.

Thanks everyone.

Agreed, @ESP-918 - I think I'll prioritise my tactical training/puzzle time around checkmating patterns specifically.

Would you recommend theming them together (eg. hook mates, arabian mates, etc etc) or just play random puzzles back to back under "Mate in 2", "Mate in 3" on chess.com's custom puzzles filter?

Nice insight, yeah, I agree - so many players are too quick just to hit 'analysis' simply to see their percentage and the one or two decisive mistakes.
I used to do what you described quite intentionally back around 1600-1700, but can admit to myself I have become a little lazy with this recently, particularly with blitz specifically.
I'll do this with Rapid mostly.

find a few players that play similar openings and study their games. 

personally, getting to 2200 is being good at tactics and making position complicated. Also be very fast, you'll need that time edge.