The Path To Progress

When I started playing chess more seriously I didn’t track how much time I was spending at all on any specific part, I only knew I was spending around 8 hours a day playing chess. So was this time spent productively? In my opinion, it was but only to a certain extent. I would get side tracked and sometimes ended up playing speed chess or browsing some interesting (but not very educational) chess forums, which ended up feeling like a huge waste in the end.

I didn’t do tactics at all fairly at some points, sometimes skipping over interesting up les or interesting lines of analysis because it felt like a waste of time. But in reality this is exactly what I needed to improve on, as I tend to miss simple tactics on occasion, and it costs me a lot of games. The time I spent back then felt more like a drudge of rating grind rather than an tangible boost in chess skill, and my main improvements came from advice given to me after games and the sheer quantities of games I had played.

More recently I’ve begun to switch my focus over to learning more and being productive with the time I spend on chess. To accomplish this I’m currently making a paper log of how much time I spend on chess in a week, and sorting it into four broad categories. Category one is rapid games: rapid games are a minimum of 10+0 (better to have games with increment at least) and when I play one, I see how much time I took and fill out the log accordingly.

Category two is puzzles, good old puzzles... for puzzles I made a promise to myself to only do them consecutively, and spend as much time per each one to calculate it out as I need. If I ever just randomly try moves or skip around and cherry pick I’ll take away from the time spent, as this actually has a negative effect on puzzle strength.

Number three is game analysis, either a game of my own or a game of a master. Analyzing games is another important part of improving because you can gauge what you did wrong, what you did well on, and what you can work on to continue improving. With only games and analysis you could still progress far into chess, but only if done correctly. To do it in a better fashion, do not turn on the engine, and write down notes and put in lines that you calculate out so that when you turn in the engine you can check what’s right and wrong. If you just check with the engine/game review than you learn next to nothing, and will continue to fumble about until you learn to stop this.

The very last thing is the broadest category: learning. It compiles everything from reading an educational blog to books to studies to reading about concepts. Anything that teaches me something I don’t know goes into this category, and it’s the one where you really can’t slack in if you ever want to become great at chess. Learning and refining the parts of the game your worst in will skyrocket the level of your play, so doing anything remotely related to what’s listed will help. This is probably where I failed a lot of days when I was just playing game after game after game; I’d never get to the book I was planning on reading or the endgames and tactics I desperately needed to learn and memorize, and would never end up learning anything that day. I measured success by the end of days rating, which made me prone to irritation and anger when it was negative. I completely missed the long term goal of improving, which is probably why I didn’t improve as much as I could’ve with the amount of dedication put in.

It’s obviously fine and great to have time set aside to have fun and relax, but I really needed the lesson of balancing this, which is the whole reason for the log and the paragraphs of rambling. After a week of data finally happens I can look back and see where I can make a habit of spending more time, which will improve my overall skill set and thus, making me a better player. If you’ve made it to the end tell me all my spelling errors and if the rambling wasn’t coherent in places, and until next time, when I talk about the phases of the game. Have a good rest of your day!