How to Get Better at Chess: A Practical Guide to Long-Term Improvement

Why You Might Be Stuck

Step 1: Build a Smart Study Routine

Step 2: Play With Purpose

Step 3: Train Your Thinking Process

Step 4: Master the Endgame

Step 5: Develop Psychological Resilience

In today’s fast-paced world, many chess players — especially young ones and their families — want quick results. Winning trophies, reaching new rating milestones, and beating stronger opponents feels great. But here's the truth: if you're focused only on speed, you're likely missing the deeper chess game — the part where you truly reflect on your mistakes and analyze each game.

Real chess improvement is not about shortcuts. It’s about steady, consistent growth — built through smart and focused training, long-term thinking, and studying your own chess games regularly, learning from mistakes and developing important practical skills and strong personal qualities that ultimately create champions. This guide will help you understand how to get better in chess, step by step, by building strong habits through practice and structured learning.

Why You Might Be Stuck

Many players hit a plateau in their chess progress even after studying hard. Why does this happen? Often, it’s because they focus on the wrong things or develop inefficient chess habits early on. Here are some common mistakes – particularly among young players – that might be holding you back:

• Doing the wrong things chaotically and without structure: If you train without a clear plan – jumping from solving puzzles, practicing tactics, or playing chess games like blitz with no focus – your progress will stall because important skills (like strategy or endgame fundamentals) get neglected. Improvement comes much faster when you follow a structured chess study routine instead of a chaotic approach. Try to define your goals and plan each training session in advance.
• Spending too much time on tactics and blitz/bullet chess games: Tactics puzzles and lightning-fast games (blitz or bullet) are fun and can sharpen your calculation skills. However, if most of your chess time is spent on these quick sessions, you’ll develop shallow habits and see little improvement in longer, serious chess games. Blitz encourages playing by reflex, so balance it with slower, more thoughtful games and study to build deeper strategic thinking and endgame skills.
• Memorizing chess openings without understanding key middlegame ideas: It’s common to memorize opening moves from a book or chess coach, but then struggle once you’re out of your preparation. If you don’t understand the why behind those moves or the plans for the middlegame, your game quality will drop quickly after the opening phase. Always aim to learn the ideas and strategies behind an opening, not just the move order, so you can transition smoothly into a strong middlegame.
• Studying material far beyond your actual chess level: Diving into advanced chess books or grandmaster-level theory can backfire if you haven’t mastered the basics yet. When you study material that is too far above your current level, it’s easy to get confused and overwhelmed – and you end up learning very little. It’s more effective to stick with material appropriate to your rating and build a solid foundation (tactics, strategy, endgame fundamentals, etc.) step by step.
• Watching grandmaster games or reading books without active engagement: Passively watching chess videos or reading books can create an illusion of learning. If you’re not engaging your own mind – for example, pausing to guess the next move or evaluating a position yourself – then you’re not really training your decision-making. Many young players watch grandmaster streams or read about chess but skip analyzing their own games. Remember, active practice and self-analysis (reviewing your games, thinking through decisions) are what truly drive improvement.
• Analyzing games superficially with an engine: Modern chess engines are powerful tools, but relying on them too much can hurt your growth. If you just run through your game with an engine and casually glance at its suggested moves or evaluations, you’ll miss the lesson. This kind of superficial analysis means you don’t reflect on why you made mistakes or how to fix them. Try to analyze your chess games on your own first – identify your blunders and thought process – before using the engine to check your work or provide deeper insights. By reflecting on your mistakes, you turn engine analysis into a learning opportunity rather than a crutch.
• Ignoring physical fitness and character development: Chess might be a mental game, but physical fitness and mindset play a big role in improvement. If you neglect your health – sleep, exercise, nutrition – you might lack the energy and focus needed for long games and study sessions. Likewise, ignoring character development (traits like patience, discipline, and resilience) can hold you back when facing tough opponents or setbacks. Staying fit boosts your concentration, and building a positive, resilient mindset helps you handle stress, bounce back from losses, and keep improving over the long run.

Improving your chess skill means going beyond such surface-level tricks and habits. It’s about learning how to think, how to plan, and how to study the game of chess in a meaningful way – from the opening to the endgame.

Step 1: Build a Smart Study Routine

To improve at chess, you need a balanced and well-organized training plan. Improvement doesn’t come from random effort — it comes from structured, focused, and consistent work. Here’s how to build a chess study routine that actually works:

🧩 Organize Your Chess Environment

Start by setting up your physical and mental space for focused study. A quiet, distraction-free place with a real board (or digital one with focus mode) helps build concentration and discipline — key elements of long-term progress.

📅 Create a Clear Training Plan

Don’t try to study everything at once. Choose 3–4 core focus areas based on your current needs (e.g. endgames, calculation, positional play, openings), and build your routine around them. Make your plan realistic and consistent, not overwhelming.

🎯 Study Material That Matches Your Level

One of the biggest mistakes is jumping into advanced books or grandmaster-level lessons too early. Instead, work with material appropriate for your rating and stage. Don’t chase complexity — build and strengthen your chess foundation first.

🔍 Analyze Your Own Games — Without an Engine First

This is one of the most valuable habits in chess improvement. Review your games slowly, move by move. Look for unclear plans, missed tactics, or poor time management. Try to understand why certain moves didn’t work. Use a physical board or a digital board without an engine at first. Only after forming your own conclusions should you turn to the engine to compare and deepen your understanding of the game.

♟️ Study Classic Games

Choose well-annotated games by strong players or world champions. Try to guess their moves, understand the reasoning, and look for recurring ideas. This builds your positional understanding, planning skills, and pattern recognition.

🧠 Learn Openings Slowly and Thoughtfully

Instead of memorizing long lines, focus on studying model games.

It’s important to understand the plans, typical structures, and piece placement behind each system. Stick to one opening per side and learn it thoroughly before expanding your repertoire. Try to build a strong connection between the opening and the typical middlegame.

By studying openings this way, you expand your arsenal of ideas and grow as a chess player overall. Chess is the world of ideas!

⚔️ Train Tactics and Calculation Technique Consistently

Tactical sharpness and calculation technique are key skills that every chess player should develop daily to make their game more consistent!

Create an atmosphere of full concentration during training — one that mirrors a real tournament chess game — and refine your decision-making.

It’s very important not just to solve puzzles, but to constantly analyze your thinking process and make adjustments.

💪 Take Care of Your Body — and Build Character

Regular physical exercise is often overlooked in chess training, but it plays a crucial role for a chess player. It helps develop endurance — essential for long games — and boosts your overall energy and mental clarity.

Just as importantly, sports help strengthen your character by building willpower, mental resilience, patience, discipline, and determination — all qualities that chess players need to succeed over the board.

⚖️ Balance Fun and Discipline

It’s important to enjoy the learning process and occasionally have fun — especially for young players. But real growth in chess comes when you learn to focus not just on what you like, but on what you need.

Every chess player has their preferences: most enjoy solving tactics and playing games. But fewer enjoy the less glamorous — yet vital — aspects of training like deeply analyzing their own games without using an engine, or working seriously on endgames.

To become a truly strong chess player, you must learn to concentrate and take satisfaction even from the less exciting but essential areas of chess improvement. Developing this mindset will not only improve your chess, but also build powerful life skills: discipline, mental toughness, inner strength, and a creative approach to problem solving.

Step 2: Play With Purpose

Playing more games won’t help in chess unless you have a clear intention and a learning mindset.

• Play serious games (classical or rapid with increment), where you can think deeply and consciously apply the knowledge you've gained through training. Avoid autopilot moves — treat each game as a practical test of your preparation.
• Study every game — even blitz — to learn from mistakes. Save key variations and conclusions in a database like ChessBase — this helps you build your own experience base over time, which is far more valuable than just playing game after game without direction.
• Set clear goals before each game: better time management, minimize avoidable mistakes, improved decision-making in critical moments, fight for central control, etc. With focused goals, even losses can become powerful chess lessons.
• Balance tournament play with training. It’s important to make time for deep analysis of your own games and consistent, focused work on both your weaknesses and strengths. Endless tournament participation without reflection not only reinforces bad habits but also exhausts a young player's nervous system — one of the most critical resources for any chess player.

Your chess games are your greatest teacher — but only if you actually study them, reflect on them, and extract lessons. Aim to play chess less on instinct and more with purpose.

Step 3: Train Your Thinking Process

Chess isn’t just about moves — it’s about decision-making. Learning how to think during a game is a crucial skill.

• Learn to identify the essence of each position — what really matters and what drives the plan.
• Train yourself to recognize critical moments — when the outcome of the game may depend on your next move — and to distinguish them from quieter positions, where several reasonable moves exist and precision is less crucial.
• You must be able to rely on general principles and intuition, but also calculate variations accurately and with discipline.
• Use the "candidate move" method to structure and discipline your thinking process.
• Ask key questions like: What is my opponent’s idea? What changed after the last move?

Training your thinking improves your consistency, helps you sense the dynamics of a position, and leads to better, more practical decisions at the board in every chess game.

Step 4: Master the Endgame

Endgame training is especially important for young chess players. It builds appreciation for simple positions, improves overall technique, deepens understanding of pawn structure, and helps players fully grasp the strengths and limitations of each piece. Ultimately, many games are decided in the final stage — mastering the endgame can significantly improve your results.

The endgame is where many players struggle — and where the outcome of the chess game is often decided.

• Study key endgame principles, such as piece coordination, the principle of two weaknesses, passed pawns, pattern-based thinking, and zugzwang.
• Expand your knowledge of key theoretical positions. As you grow as a chess player, this knowledge should grow with you.
• Practice converting basic advantages, such as an extra pawn or having more active pieces in the endgame.
• Develop the habit of continuously studying and expanding your chess endgame understanding. Stay curious — it will pay off generously, earning you valuable extra points in every chess tournament game.

Step 5: Develop Psychological Resilience

Many talented players underperform due to stress, fear of losing, or pressure — especially in tournament settings.

Psychological strength is just as essential to your success in chess as your preparation for the game.

• Focus on the process, not just the result. Improvement comes from doing the right things consistently — through regular training, deliberate practice, and thoughtful chess study — not from chasing instant success in the chess game.
• Accept that mistakes are part of learning. Learn to extract important lessons and grow from your losses — they’re often your best teachers in the game of chess.
• Build true confidence. Remember: chess is not a math problem with one perfect answer. It’s a rich, practical game full of psychological nuances and imperfect decisions. Often, it’s the player with stronger confidence, nerves, and a practical mindset who wins — not the one constantly trying to find perfect moves.

While mentally weaker players give up after losses, those with true inner strength lose — but learn from their mistakes and come back stronger.

In the end, it’s not just chess skills, but psychological resilience, the ability to grow through setbacks, and the discipline to keep going — that create true champions. And in chess, that makes all the difference!

By Aleksander Goloshchapov