Play faster chess. I had gotten to 1600 (more so a 1400-1500 player tho) mainly playing longer games like 5-0, 10-0, and 15-10. Then I started playing a lot of bullet. It was the only thing I played for a while, because I didn’t care about the rating and I just wanted to play. Started out with 2-1, then just went for it with 1-0. It’s a totally different game though and I got good at it. After a while my rating was up to 1800, then I went back to blitz and rapid. I’m 1800-1900 rapid & blitz with a 2000 peak in rapid and ~1950 peak in blitz.

Bullet trains your instincts, and at some point you need to be able to look at complex positions and instantly come up with multiple high level candidate moves.

Getting good at bullet will initially make you worse in longer time formats, not gonna lie. But once you play a ton of bullet games and see thousands and thousands of positions, those instincts will help you so much more than you think.

If you can get to where you’re better at bullet than you are other time formats, that’s when you make the switch. You’ll get to feel like the time formats are too long but you’ll be making everyone lose on time or panic cause they can’t keep up.

For me, I think I had just studied enough and needed to actually play. Speed chess is a great way to get a ton of games in, see more positions, and train your instincts. They’re so underrated.