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Now the question is how to get from 20 to 25 on puzzle rush? Someone can do it by going through PGN's, sure. I don't care if the guy with 20 knows more about openings and positional principles, I would still bet on 25 guy. Because he just sees more things on the board, can calculate further and is less likely to blunder. LukaCro edited if two players are playing chess, one scores 20 on puzzle rush, and another scores 25 on puzzle rush (say on average) I would always bet on one who scores 25 to win a match. But the 2 years spent on the books and taking them extremely serious is what primed me. Took me a few tournaments after that to gain confidence, and I barely remember 1200-1800+. But after completing the books and playing all the time during them, testing out things, I actually started rising the rating about 2 weeks after that. I am dyslexic, so I tend to go through things written a lot slower. It was 4 books, so took me around 2 years. I think I took 6 months per book when I worked through the Seirawan series. And you have to expect that results may not come immediately. If you learn chess similarly, it might come easier. When in school they did things that enhanced to learning like learning what an operation is (Eg: verb) then learned how to use it in a sentence. Most people forget what they went through to learn their first language because they did it from around the age of 6-9 months, and didn't stop. Learning chess isn't much different than learning a language. There is less forcing lines to learn, and you can learn strategical themes with them a lot easier. The reason is, it is a lot easier to learn an opening that has less tactical tension. With that being said, I also think that choosing an opening that has less tactical tension is also the way to go if you are under 2000 or even under 2300. I think the idea that looking at all phases of the game is probably more beneficial overall than just looking at one. I just recently found videos that are explaining middle game concepts well enough for me to actually get them. And in my opinion those books are rather crappy at explaining them. I have asked a few times to trainers how to learn more and they only say that they know from learning from specific endgame books. I have been told I am quite good at end games for my level and I only really studied out of Silman's course. I don't know how well the learn the endgame statement that Capablanca said holds today. Take it from an adult learner who didn't break 1300 till after he turned 30. Most of the time, the reason people don't go further is quite literally not doing the work to get there. I just searched it and looks like he did it in u150, which is even cooler.
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And he did it in one book with less than 400 puzzles. Sierawan did a really good job at explaining all of the basic themes that any u2000 player should know. If you want to know to secret to finding tactical themes it's actually just databasing them according to their theme. I have thought about looking at other puzzle books because I need to work on calculation and planning, and potentially get into advanced tactics. PGN study and analysis of MY games with stronger players is what really boosted my pattern recognition.
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I will say aside from the first three tactics books I explained earlier. You can obtain pattern recognition by studying PGN's of masters that play similar openings you play. Also you don't NEED to obtain pattern recognition from puzzles. And usually it's because I force myself to look at one or two because people tell me it will help me. I still to this day have not really done more than 10,000 puzzles in over 20 years playing seriously. And then of course after every game address why you blundered in the first place if that didn't work. Make it top priority to address this if you have the issue. You have to look at the board and see if anything is being attacked, look for checks and captures, and reassess for aggressive behavior after every move. I believe that the best way to stop "blundering" is to address the blunder check during games similar to how tpr talked. The most I did was the puzzles in "Bobby Fischer Teaches chess", "Winning chess tactics" by Yasser Sierawan, And maybe 100-200 or so of tactics out one or two recommended tactics books like 1001 brilliant chess sacrifices and combinations. How did I do it? I most certainly didn't blast out thousands of puzzles. I didn't start going up the rating ladder till around 30 when I blasted up the ratings. I brought the rating up from 800 from highschool. My life time rating up til then was about 900. I think has a lot of what is needed from what I read. Be it 1600 trying to break 1700, or 1100 trying to break 1300. People rated in the 0-1900 ranges here claim to do those hundreds of thousands of puzzles and never break their goals. MeWantCookieMobile don't think doing hundreds of thousands of puzzles is the correct way to solve the issue.