Dear theRomantic, 

first of all I agree with most postings  
that your opening knowledge is certainly not 
your only problem. 
Just one thing: You simply have no defence 
against 1.d4 that works for you. It is very important to 
find such a defence if you want to improve. 
I would say this is the most important thing you have to 
solve after improving your tactical abilities. It makes no 
sense to work on the endgame if you don't reach it.   

What do experts better than players around 1600 ? 

1) Experts make much less obvious tactical 
mistakes (counting errors, missing double attacks, 
one move blunders, ...) 

Therefore it is important to study a lot of 
EASY tactical exercises.  
There are many books devoted to this aspect. 
I like "Viktor Vamos: Chess tactics for beginners".  
Have a look at some threads on this forum for more books covering 
this aspect.   
It is essential to start with easy exercises !  
I would compare these exercises  with "finger training" 
if you play the piano. 
Your first aim should be to solve most exercises without 
using a board, then you should try to solve them quickly. 
Afterwards you could try to change the starting 
position as little as possible such that the solution 
does not work anymore.  

2) Experts play simple positions and endings 
much better. 
"Silman: Silman's Complete Endgane Course" is a good starting point.  
Silman starts his book with endgames every player up to 
1000 Elo must know. He continues with the endgames 
a 1200 Elo player has to know and so on. Of course you can 
always question the choice of the endgames to work through at 
a certain playing strength, 
but I think Silman's idea is very reasonable to spend a 
sensible amount of time studying the endgame. 
I strongly suggest to work through book from the very beginning. 
There is much advice for low rated players, which is
useful for everyone, especially in blitz or rapid games. 

3) Experts offer much tougher resistance if their 
position is inferior but not hopeless. In hopeless 
positions they find ways to make the win at least 
a bit complicated for their opponent. 

Playing slow time controls and playing OTB instead of 
ICC will force you to fight on with all your strength, 
if your position becomes worse. 
Playing two hours for forty moves You cannot play a second game 
on that day, if you have lost.  
This should increase your fighting spirit very much !  

Btw if a Tarrasch Defence has gone wrong you probably have 
to defend an inferior endgame without much counterplay, 
therefore aspects 2) and 3) are especially important if 
you decide to stick to the Tarrasch despite your very bad 
performance. 
Btw the same thing can happen easily if you misplay the White side of the 
French or the Caro-Kann, which are your Achilles heels with White. 

4) Experts recognize if their position changes from promising 
to inferior and fight for the draw. Vice versa if they get 
the better position after some tough defence having been worse 
they fight for the win merciless (Karpov !) instead of being 
happy to escape with a draw.  

A happy new year and play well! 

Quote:

But by playing the Spanish (= Open Game) they will learn this game - this opening covers a lot of structures and leaves plenty of play till the endgame. It's a mistake to start with "simple" chess openings, cause everybody knows that you keep them for the rest of your life because you know them and they are easy to play. The fact is a standstill somewhere. Dont go for a cheap and fast solution - whatever one does in life, this is certainly mostly the wrong way. You end up with mediocre abilities.

Quote:

Correct - just play through the games to become educated and get a decent feeling for chess (and have fun with the classical games - dont miss Fischer or Kasparov crushing their opponents - what more can you learn and how much more motivation for your own chess could you get. The books I enjoy most for the last years are "The Great Predecessors" - simply fantastic - just leave the complicated sidelines where they are and enjoy the art of chess with Garry.

Quote:

Listen to the wise men...

Though I respect him and almost always value his contributions here, I disagree with almost everything TN has had to say above.  If you read his advice, you see that it is quite good for a 2100+ player; play the Spanish; play main lines, and so on, and so forth.  But consistently, he seems to misunderstand that he's not talking to a 2150 player, but a 1500 player.  Either that, or he very mistakenly assumes that the same advice is applicable to players in both classes.

He says, "For anyone intending to reach 2700 level, it is absolutely essential to be able to play the Ruy Lopez and Open Sicilian as White and Black."  I have to yield to his apparent expertise in what it takes to make 2700, but so far as I am aware, you have to make 2200 before you make 2700.

For reasons that I have repeated innumerable times -- but which seem always to require repeating if low-rated visitors here are not to be left with bad advice -- players sub-2000 primarily need to learn (1) tactics, (2) theoretical endings (the ones with definite solutions) and (3) how to play open positions.  Again for the umpteenth time, the reason open positions are important is quite analogous to the reason that endings are important: a game of chess tends to produce them.  They are fundamental.  The object of play in very many closed or semi-closed positions is, precisely, how and under what conditions to open the game (all those ...f6 breaks in the French?  all those ...c5 breaks in the Caro? they are aimed at opening the position on favorable terms).  So if you can't play open positions well, you can't play chess well, and that is the long and the short of it.  Just the same, if you can't play king and pawn endings, what is the point of picking up a book on openings theory?  

A much stronger and more respected player than I, the esteemed Jakob Aagaard, was debating this and saying that many GM's aren't very good at play in open positions and some aren't even very good at tactics.  He may be right, but I think he means, relative to other GM's.  I respectfully maintain my view that to become a GM, an IM, an FM or even a humble USCF NM like me, you have to be able to conduct play in positions like those that arise from the Goering, the Danish, and the Blackmar-Diemer, as well as open positions of a less unbalanced kind like those arising from the Panov-Botvinnik, White's side of the QGA and Black's side of the Tarrasch.  You just have to be able to play like this because the play of any given game tends in this direction.  

So with the greatest respect, I think it is so much claptrap to tell a 1500-rated player to take up the main lines of the Spanish, which produce a semi-closed maneuvering game, play on both sides of the board, and the like, that is often way too sophisticated for players in this class.  Indeed it is claptrap to suggest that opening theory is important at all.  The point is precisely: not to study any more chess opening theory than an improving player needs to win his games.  Not to study theory! Not!!  So advice to study the main lines is a monumental pile of a proverbial substance, and it gets my freaking goat when this wretched advice is dished out and the innocent people receiving it come back and say, "Oh, thank you so much, I'm off to buy a book about the Spanish!"

These people aren't 1500-rated because they don't play the main lines of the Spanish, for crying out loud.  They're 1500-rated because they don't know how to play this game.

So please, young and developing chess players: play into open positions as much as you can, emphasize tactics and active piece play, and don't study any more theory than you need to win your games.  And don't ever make the mistake of thinking that the opening you played (assuming that it was reasonably sound) was the reason you lost any given game of chess; or that switching openings by itself will do anything for your game.

`For anyone intending to reach 2700 level, it is absolutely essential to be able to play the Ruy Lopez and Open Sicilian as White and Black.`

TN, are you sure about this? for instance Tomashevsky doesn`t play 1.e4 as white and Vitiugov (close to 2700) doesn`t play 1.-e5 as black.

Quote:

There are 2 fundamental openings: 
1.d4 - Queens Gambit
1.e4 - Ruy Lopez
These two are the classical backbone of chess - and educated chess players should at least have some knowledge of them.

Playing the Hennig-Schara gambit is an idea for you.

Not surprisingly I don't agree with most of what was said in this thread, I don't belong to the "must play open positions" club, given I was 2000 well before I ever added anything "open" to my repertoire as a primary point of emphasis.

The point of playing with an IQP isn't just for the sake of getting an IQP, that's non-sensical and will serve to stunt growth more than provide for it - it's about learning what a good IQP position is versus a bad IQP position. If you understand the resulting positions of a particular variation, then you're more likely to play it better. The goal of studying opening theory is not memorization of the lines (that's how people get lost positions very early on - suddenly the line isn't a memorized one anymore, and they don't know what to do), it's understanding of the positions. So whatever you pick as your opening of study, the goal should be to understand why theory developed that way, and what to look for, and what to avoid. Gradually as your knowledge of opening theory expands, so should your understanding of various positions, which will typically be what brings about growth - of course studying complete games accelerates the process, too. If the thread-starter does badly with any opening then the problem is one of understanding.

That Exchange French IQP mentioned above is easy to play as black. It features none of the features black usually has to be extremely careful to solve (the locked-in light squared bishop that typically takes a couple of precious tempi to develop, or lagging development).

In comparison black lags in development in the Caro-Kann version (ie: the ...g6 Panov-Botvinnik, and Houska's variations, including "the endgame" variation), resulting in him often electing to lock in his light squared bishop with ...e6.

I'm around your same rating and have actually had good luck with the Tarrasch.  There are people who whip out the g3 refutation line but they rarely seem to know what to do after that.  I also play the Panov against the Caro-Kann and the 4 c4 line against the French.  Just ram that d pawn forward when given the chance and make use of your active pieces to wreak mayhem.  I win plenty and lose plenty but the games are interesting and fun.  If you haven't read Abby Marshall's column on the Tarrasch on chesscafe that will probably help you...I think it should be in the archives under October.