There are many ways to improve your chess skills. However, what might be the best way to improve the chess skills for someone might not be the same for another, due to differences in personality, preferences and other factors. Here, I'm going to list a few ways that one can improve your chess skills.

If you're just an absolute beginner, who has just started with chess, the best way is simply to play more. Get used to the game, so that you are easily able to tell which squares are threatened by queens and bishops (these are the pieces whose line of attack tend to be harder to see for beginners). Build up your "chess sense", enough to be able to spot basic techniques that you can use and likewise be used against you like pins, forks and discovered checks.

After you have had enough experience on the chess board, it's time to move on to studying chess books. Here, there are two ways to go about it.

One is to read up on chess openings. Learn two or three openings and their common variations by heart and use them. Read up on other openings too, even if you don't intend to use them. This method has the advantage of achieving fast results in a short time. You'll likely note a drastic improvement in your win rate. However, this method involves a lot of memorisation work and might not be to everyone's taste.

The other way to go about it is to read up on chess theory, especially endgame theory . Learn about pawn structure, and why isolated pawns are bad. Learn about strong and weak squares, and open files. And learn which combination of pieces result in a draw or win for endgames. For as Jose Raul Capablanca, World Champion from 1921-1927 once said,

"In order to improve your game, you must study the endgame before everything else, for whereas the the endings can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middle game and the opening must be studied in relation to the endgame."

It'll be some time before you can actually learn to fully apply these chess theories. You likely won't be able to grasp the full magnitude of what they are all about until you have actually played a number of games. You'll certainly find your agme improving once you have learnt how to apply them to your advantage though.

Whichever way you chose, eventually, you'll still have to go down the other path, if you intend to continue improving on your chess skills. The good news is that if you chose to learn chess theory first, before learning openings, it'll no longer be a matter of blind memorisation for you. You'll be able to understand why a move was made, see how it helps in development of the pieces, in controlling the centre, how it helps you to fight to gain an advantage.

If you think you have mastered both chess opening, and chess theory, and want to further improve your game, then there are only two options left :Practice and study. Play frequently, against different opponents, so you can experience different playing styles. Study your games, to understand why you lost (and to a certain extent, why you won, but generally people are more motivated to study games that they have lost, myself included) and study the games that grandmasters have played. You'll find your chess skills improving, perhaps not as fast as when you were just beginning to learn the game, but nonetheless, still improving.

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