I've also noticed that uncommon but strong openings go a long way, at our level.
King's Knight, King's Gambit, Vienna Game, Bishop's Opening (1. e4 e5 stuff), Sicilian Defence (1. e4 c5), Queen's Gambit (1. d4 d5, 2. c4) are very common, and players will know a lot of lines from books and the internet.
I have found a lot of success starting with less common openings, such as the London System, and Scandinavian, Baltic, and Chigorin defences as black.
The problem with common openings is that a lot of players are just playing their books.
Play something uncommon, and most of your opponent will be playing on their own.
Then, for once, it's about who has better tactics, not who spent more time studying some book.
Work on your endgame bro
Then rack up those ratings ;D
I gather you mean your blitz rating on this site. If that is the case the training tactics everyday is important. Also work a little on your opening play. Try to be consistent with your openings. This will save you time in the games.
I think you have been doing these things already. There is one more thing you have to do. This is the difficult one. You have to look at your own games and figure out why you lost.
1. Start at the end of the game and move backwards to a position you think was ok for you. In other words, find the move/moves that 'ruined' your game.
1.a at first it might have been blunders but don't stop there! There was a reason why you blundered. You were in a situation where you made a bad decision. Take the move back and ask yourself to evaluate the position. Who was better? Or was it equal?
In other words you have to start looking at one of the most difficult things in chess: evaluation. It is one of the things that separate the good from the best.
2. Once you found the position where you did ok analyze by hand possible other ways to play the position. Spend maybe 10 minutes on this or more if you like. This makes you get a feel for the position.
3. After this now put that position to an engine and see what it says. Try to understand the moves. Play your moves to see how it evaluates those moves. Try to understand why they were worse. If you chose the best move or very close to best then be happy because.. you have now improved your chess! This is your goal.
With time as you do this, you will notice something. The moves you play will get higher evaluation scores. If you do this with all your games, I think you will reach 1700 within a year.
When you reach 1500 you should start playing in a chess club.
Good luck!
Study a random book by Silman or Kotov. That is all you need to free yourself from mediocrity. Do some puzzles as well.
Ready. I am going to read
Currently reading Silman.
Play slower games. 20 min per side at least. Don't move your pieces quickly, try to think in every move. Don't get lost in thousands of openings, choose 2 or 3 only and play them everytime. Don't try to attack too fast, develop your pieces first and put them in good squares (with lot of activity). Don't think only what you are going to do, but what your opponent is going to do too. Play "two games" inside your head. Practice tactics 15-20 min per day. And the most important: have fun, you are not making a profit from it ;)
SofiKadaj, I have another opinion about openings. I used to think as you (playing uncommon openings, trying to "surprise" my opponent), but when I started to play against really tough opponents (for my level, which is 1800 + players), it just brought me to bad positions. So I started to play common openings and tried to follow theory as long as I can. It made me improve a lot.
I do agree with you about psychological factors. It is a huge factor, I think understimated sometimes. You gotta have a "good mind" to play good chess (regardless of your level). If you are in a bad mood, your rating drops hundreds of points. That is a good thing about chess, it makes you want to improve your mental health, like an athlete wants to improve physical heath :D
A great way to improve that's often not mentioned is to watch games with commentaries from strong players. Go to YouTube and watch lots of 5 minute games from KingsCrusher and John Bartholomew.
Watch enough games and you'll start to see patterns in what they're doing, and their commentaries will help you to understand why they're doing it.
Most of the advice in this thread is well and good, but I feel quite a bit of it is geared toward how to transition from an intermediate player to an advanced player, rather than from a beginner player to an intermediate.
Generally at your level (and even mine) the absolute NUMBER ONE CAUSE of a win or a loss is hanging pieces. For my level 90% of my wins come from an opponent hanging a piece, and 90% of my losses come from me hanging a piece. It is just these are far later into the game, or sometimes the game isn't completely cut and dried afterward but it still ends up being the main deciding factor.
At your level, hanging pieces can simply be the result of not paying attention to pieces that are unprotected, or not counting attackers/defenders properly. In my case it's usually missing a simple tactic like a pin, skewer, or fork that is a couple moves away...for instance being aware of a threat but knowing it can't happen until x, y, and z occur and then not realizing z has just occurred and I forget that I can't make a move because of the threat.
Ultimately the easiest way to improve on this is to play more chess and play slower chess. Play a lot of classical, do it casual if you don't want to deal with ratings. Focus after your opponent moves every time checking your pieces for defenders, etc. and counting attackers on a square, and check again before you move if you are moving a piece who has a defending job. The more you do this in a slow game, the faster you will begin to do this, and eventually it will become a fairly intuitive thing that doesn't take away any clock time, as your subconscious will just process these things and you'll find your eyes jumping immediately to pieces that are unprotected or underprotected when your opponent begins to target them.
Cheers!