It is possible I may have more time on some weeks and less time on others. By improving across a large number of areas, I will shore up my weaknesses and improve my strengths. A lot of Amateurs spend a lot of time studying openings which stunts their growth. Learning a little bit about openings is important but spending a lot of time on them is not constructive. The most important areas to spend time on is Tactics, Studying Master Games and Studying your own games after playing them. What good does learning every opening in MCO if you never use it or are lost once you get there.
If you have your own chess study plan please post in the comments so we can compare. I would love to figure out how to improve mine.
I will follow up with posts on how I am studying the various areas, what tools and materials I am using and how to measure progress if possible.
7 hours a week
| Time to Spend | Activity | Why is this activity important |
|---|---|---|
| 1/2 hour | Opening Study | Slowly growing my opening Repertoire |
| 1 1/2 hours | Tactics | Improving chess tactics will be biggest factor for improvement |
| 1/2 hour | Middle Game Study | Learn how to get to positions where tactics will help win games |
| 1/2 hour | Endgame Study | Win won games, draw seemingly lost ones |
| 1 hour | Master Game Study | Studying masters games will help me in all areas of chess. I will see the kind of openings they play, tactics they use and plans they develop. |
| 2 hours | Play Games | If I don't practice what I learn I will forget it. |
| 1 hour | Review Games | Learning from ones own mistakes is a requirement to improving in chess. |
Interesting! Thank you for sharing. I have tried zillions of training plans but they have all failed because I have no solution to the following equation:
ReplyDeleteFamily + Work + Chess > 24hours/day
Anyhow, I have set aside 15-30 minutes per day for a zen chess moment using www.chessmagnetschool.com which I like alot because it gives you a nice mix of problems to solve.
I have also tried to make room for a slow game per week but the stats for 2010 are sad (3-4 games, I believe).
Occasionally I dip my nose into some collection of annotated games. It can be a pleasant activity but it often turns out to be learning by nodding as I do not manage to stay focused enough to try to come up with thoughts of my own. Ideally, I should play through the games (using a computer in order to be able to play/try variations easily) without any notes before reading the annotations. That calls for planning wich is beyond me at the moment.
I try to find comfort in IM Martin's statement that 15 minutes of efficient training/day is enough for an improvement of about one point per week.
Yeah, that equation is tough. I agree that there is not enough time in the day for everything.
ReplyDeletewww.chessmagnetschool.com sounds interesting. How does it work out for you?
Only having 1/2 an hour a day I would consider doing just tactics and then playing games and studying master games.
I agree! Tactics should be the bread and butter. Most of the problems are tactics problems but you also get a few endgame problems and other type of problems to solve. I think there are problems up to the 2000ish level but that has to be confirmed.
ReplyDeleteThe Chess Magnet School offer a free trial month. The yearly fee is something like 30USD.
For some unknown reasons I think that the magnet school is nicer than, say, Chess Mentor @chess.com
Chess Mentor has more bells and whistles but I somehow thinks that a lot of the Cm courses fail to make use of all the tools. Also, I find the CM ratings to be flawed. CM is very generous.
Give it a try and please tell me what you think!
(make sure to take the advanced placement test to avoid bored with to simple questions)
I look at so many middlegame positions (tactics included), that if I didn't like chess I would probably puke.
ReplyDeleteSo, the organization thing has gone out the window. If I were more limited by time, then I would need the discipline to only study a tactics book.