A 1400 who wants to be 1600 should be studying tactics and striving for tactics rich positions . The horse comes before the cart . There ' s more than one way to get to 1600 . Not dropping pieces as often as a 1500 is one of them , but to become stronger you ' re eventually going to need to develop tools other than tactics . Focus on something , improve at it , climb . At 1400 it doesn ' t matter what you focus on , literally anything is going to pay dividends . I know that around here mentioning anything other than just training tactics to climb from the depths is heresy , but there ' s a reason coaches and training programs ie . Yusupov ' s don ' t just drill tactics endlessly . There are other facets of the game to improve at . As long as he ' s striving to develop his pieces quickly , control the center , and prevent his opponent ' s ideas I couldn ' t care less what he ' s playing . He ' ll improve .