Your (2024) Chess Study Plan

If only I had studied chess in the hours I spent creating it, I might actually be good by now. But hey, I will be good. Because the groundwork has been laid.

At the core of my system. Yeah, mine. Back off Nimzowich. At the core of my system is this:

The building of Short and Effective Chess Training Methods into daily and weekly Habits.

Short, Effective and Habitual are the three pillars of my plan’s framework.

The actual content we will get into as well. But even if you're missing the content (which you hopefully won’t be if you read this article to the end) then if what you are doing follows these three things, then you will get better at chess.

The most reassuring thing about having the right plan is that you don’t need to worry about your rating anymore. You don’t need to worry if you win or lose your next game. You just need to put little ticks in little boxes. If you keep doing the right work, improvement is literally unavoidable. It is inevitable.

Following my own training program has shown me this time and time again. I don’t doubt the process anymore, even through periods of rating stagnation. Each of those periods has ended. I have improved. My rating has continually gone up. I trust my program now and I don’t need to worry about anything else anymore.

I just need to turn up and do the work.

Alright, enough preamble, let's look at the three pillars in a bit more detail.

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Building Habits

This is the golden nugget. I believe this is the reason I have continued to improve since I started chess.

Personally, I am much more likely to actually do the work I set out to do if I make it routine. I do the things I do every single day because for me:

Momentum is powerful.

We have all felt it. The slow ascent of our own self-esteem as we do the things we say we are going to do - day in, day out. Our sense of self-worth slowly grows as we build towards something meaningful, one day at a time.

For me, it feels better to do 20 minutes every day for a year and rack up 120 hours of training in that year, than to rack up the exact same amount of time in sporadic, intense and inconsistent bursts of 4 to 10 hours on random weekends.

I’m not sure why that is. I just feel like a more capable and organised adult doing things consistently, and a bit like a disorganised student cramming for an exam doing it the other way. Speaking of which, when I was a student, if I had studied a little bit every day, I might not have had to get stressed out of my box and pull 20-hour library shifts on the days before exams.

We all know how devastating to the mind missing a single day can be when we are working off of momentum. If you’ve tried to get fit, go on a diet, or quit an addiction, you will have experienced how detrimental one small slip-up can be to months of effort.

Failing once can completely undermine our self-esteem.

We can feel like we have lost our momentum. And it can cause us to give up entirely.

Small Chunks

This brings me to pillar number two.

The habitual training blocks we do should be short.

Why?

For me, it comes down to the maintenance of momentum again.

If I set out to read one chapter of a chess book per week that feels... big. It’s a real thought. And getting started can be a bit daunting. So I try to break all tasks down into smaller, more manageable chunks.

For example, my pattern recognition work is 20 minutes per day. But even that can feel like a slog. So I do 10 minutes in the morning and 10 in the evening.

Since I split the task in half I haven’t missed a single day... in four months.

That feels good.

By picking a deliberately manageable amount of time for each of my daily study tasks, I can ensure I actually do them every day - and maintain that all-important momentum.

I actually would like to do 60 minutes of pattern recognition puzzles on Chessable each day.

Of course, I’d get better faster by doing more.

But I know from experience that I will not hit that daily target. It's too much. So I’ve settled on 20 minutes a day. Since the switch, I haven’t missed a day.

The momentum, that consistency, makes me feel good. It’s worth far more than the extra 40 minutes. Because in the world of 60 minutes per day, I know at some point I’m going to miss a whole week and might not come back to the training... ever.

So the trick is actually to aim for less than your desired study time per day, opting instead for a number you know you can commit to.

Final note on the value of shorter chunks. Since I was forced to become a sensible adult after the birth of my child, I find myself experiencing days in which I am busy from the minute I wake up until the minute I go to bed.

There are many days when I don’t have a single uninterrupted hour to study. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have moments of glorious freedom throughout the day.

I can always find the time to tick off all the items on my list because they are short.

If the only item on my training program was: study this book for an hour, or: do calculation exercises for an hour, I would have plenty of days where I just wouldn’t be able to find the full hour. And thus I would probably just end up doing nothing at all.

Effective Training Blocks

There's no point in doing anything if it isn’t actually going to make you better at chess.

But how do you know what training will make you better?

Well, I don’t have a magical answer, but I do have an answer.

If you’ve been playing blitz for 3 hours every day for a year, and your rating hasn’t gone up, then it’s probably safe to say that this training method isn’t effective for you.

Pretty obvious, you might say. So how do we know what does work?

I believe one of the best ways is to look at others who have had success in their own chess improvement, find out what it was that worked for them, and then just... copy them.

Alex Crompton only studied easy tactics for a year, alongside playing games. He went from 300 to 1500. That’s an effective proven method.

So I emailed him, found out exactly how he studied tactics and I copied him. No need to reinvent the wheel.

Next, I spoke with Zach Cramer. When he goes about knowledge acquisition, he does it in blocks - studying only one thing over a prolonged period. He went from 1500 to 1800 doing this. So I copied him.

There are so many proven training methods out there, such as The Woodpecker Method, The Chess Steps Method and The Hiring Me as Your Chess Coach Method.

What?

Want to give it a try? You can book a free trial lesson with me here.

So in summary, to find effective training methods you can find out what other people who have made progress have done to get better, and copy them. In addition, you can take feedback from what hasn’t worked for you and others.

The Content of a Balanced Program

So my system involves finding effective training methods and breaking them down into short digestible chunks and turning those into daily habits.

But what do I actually do?

Good question. I’ll tell you now.

The way I have come to see chess, is that the actual content can be broken down into three different things: Skill, Knowledge, and Mind Stuff (which we can call the mental game or chess psychology).

You need to hit all three to get better at chess.

Skill

I see the skill-building parts of chess as muscles. If chess was tennis, then skill-building would be your gym work. If you don’t do gym work regularly, you will lose your strength and fitness.

It is important to make skill-building regular, habitual and increasingly hard, because that is how you maintain and build strength.

Knowledge

I see the knowledge part more like the tennis player's backhand technique. You can lose strength, but still maintain form. An injured tennis player can’t go to the gym, and so they might lose their fitness whilst they recover, but they don’t forget how to serve.

Same goes for chess. You don’t lose your knowledge as quickly as your skills.

If you learned the strategies for playing against an isolated pawn in January last year, you probably still remember the guiding rules and principles now. However, if you haven’t done a single chess puzzle in a week, you might already feel that you have lost your tactical sharpness in the next game you play.

Mind Stuff

Finally, we have the mind stuff - the psychological elements of chess.

Things like resilience, concentration, mental stamina, and handling nerves.

There is no one-size-fits-all training program for this area of chess. You'll just have to figure out what works for you as you go along your chess journey - but you definitely don't have to do this alone, either - someone a bit further along their journey than you can help you get unstuck.

A Balanced Diet

These are all the things I wanted to fit into my program: gathering knowledge or information about all the different parts of the game: endgame theory, strategic ideas, openings, etc. then I have my skill-building: pattern recognition, calculation, the practice of the ideas I have learned and other practical skills (such as time management) through playing games. And finally, there's working on myself and my mental game, mostly through game analysis, ranting to my wife, screaming in the forest, and meditative introspection.

Knowledge

Let's start with knowledge. The easy bit. Ahh as if chess was ever easy. Maybe this bit is just slightly simpler than the rest though, for a simple reason.

There is a finite number of bits of chess knowledge that we should know.

Or if Jesus de la Villa is to be believed - we must know. There is a certain number of theoretical endgames you are going to have to learn. Same with strategic ideas and pawn structures.

The list is large and the process of going through and learning the information from that list is long. So as with any large undertaking or long-term goal, I believe a systematic approach is best.

Within knowledge acquisition there are:

• Openings
• Strategy
• Tactics
• Endgames

I think this is the simplest way to broadly categorise all the things you can learn in chess. And yes, each of these breaks down into smaller chunks as well, but I’m trying to keep things simple for now.

The one thing I think is important about gathering chess knowledge is that it should be systematic.

Most amateur chess players approach learning chess concepts randomly. They’ll play a game, and decide to revise the plans in that opening. Then play another game, and watch a video about weak pawns because it was relevant in their last game. Then they’ll miss a mate-in-three, and decide to do the Checkmate Patterns Manual on Chessable for a week.

Approaching the gathering of knowledge in this way is like opening a recipe book on a random page each day. You’ll end up perfecting your lasagne before you're even aware of the existence of beef stroganoff.

If you want to be a well-rounded chef, you’d have been better off starting the book at the beginning and going through it in order. Like a sane person. I need to work on my metaphors.

Copying the Successful

Neal Bruce has an interesting way of systematically doing things. He decided to study tactics for four years, strategy for three years, and is now moving on to endgames. He has a list of chosen books for each topic and works through them one by one until he has finished all the books on that list.

I found this method quite inspiring. But when I heard that Zach Cramer would study a single topic - like pawn endgames or outposts or the Grunfeld - exclusively for six weeks at a time, I felt that would be more effective for me.

So I combined the two methods. I am in my second year of studying endgames. But unlike Neal Bruce who will go book to book, I am going from topic to topic.

Pawn Endgames, Rook Endgames, Queen Endgames, The Principle of Two Weaknesses, Space, Fortresses and so the list goes on. And on. Somebody please stage an intervention.

As I discussed in my interview with Braden Laughlin, I am a video learner. I spend 30 minutes daily on my current topic before bed. For me, that means watching a video on an endgame idea and taking notes OR watching a video on endgame theory and playing it out against my arch-rival Stockfish until it stops making me look ridiculous.

That’s it. It’s not much. But it is 365 endgame ideas and chunks of theory each year that I’ll hopefully remember going forward.

Frankly, it gives me anxiety to think that I might have holes in my chess knowledge.

Actually, that’s not quite right. It gives me anxiety to know that I might have holes in my chess knowledge AND that I might have no idea what those holes are AND have no way to find out!

By systematically studying the game, you know you haven’t missed anything.

Particularly if you started chess as an adult, you'll probably still be anxious about the holes at your current stage of knowledge acquisition, but at least you'll know exactly what you're anxious about - having a plan can rid you of some of that anxiety.

Skills

Remember my injured tennis player metaphor? If we don’t do our gym work every day, we will rapidly lose our fitness and strength.

You can have the best serve in the world, but if you're breathing out of your arse just walking onto the court, you're not going to win Wimbledon.

So you can't just study and gather knowledge, you have to try and implement the ideas you have learned by actually playing games.

Many games. I have split my skill-building into three short, effective chunks: Alex Crompton’s pattern recognition method, 3 hard calculation exercises, and two weekly classical games.

Now let's look at each part of skill-building in a bit more detail.

Pattern Recognition

So my twice daily pattern recognition. What does it involve?

Before I tell you what I do, I want to reiterate why I do it in two blocks of 10 minutes. I literally do the same thing in both blocks, so why split it?

Firstly, doing 20 minutes of super easy puzzles can feel like a bit of a slog to get through on certain days. Secondly, as I mentioned, I am busy. It’s just easier to grab ten minutes twice, than twenty minutes once on a given day.

The method I use is Alex Crompton’s method on Chessable's platform.

On Chessable I only have tactics books. The books are super simple 1-3 move puzzles. I have a custom spacing outlined by Alex which maximises efficiency.

So when it's time to do my pattern recognition, I sit down, I hit review, and if I clear my reviews before my time is up - I do new puzzles, which then get added to the rotation for repetition.

It’s basically the Woodpecker Method on steroids.

I set the timer to ten seconds. I never guess the answer if I don’t see the pattern immediately, and I try to calculate the sequence in full before the timer is up.

For a full breakdown of the method, you can read his blog post where he points to this method as the only thing he did to go from 300 to 1500 in a single year. He was also interviewed on the brilliant Perpetual Chess Podcast.

Some of my students understandably don’t want to go out and buy a premium Chessable membership and books on the platform. For them, I recommend the best free alternative, which is puzzle storm. This is also recommended by The ChessDojo as part of their Universal Training Program.

The most important thing is finding some aspect of pattern recognition you can realistically stick to as a daily habit.

Blitz is also a good pattern recognition tool, although I should caveat that faster time-control play has to be balanced with longer games.

Calculation

If you are playing enough long games, this isn’t going to be as important. Personally, despite playing 2 classical games a week, I still see this as a crucial part of my daily training.

I do three puzzles a day and set a five-minute timer for each puzzle.

Sometimes I give myself extra time if I feel like I’m close to finding the answer - just like in a real game. If I’m totally stumped I give up. Because if you don’t see the idea in the first five minutes, you are probably never going to see it.

I take extra time to try to understand what the tactical motif is on these puzzles and attempt to learn the idea. Usually, I just do rated puzzles on Lichess, but sometimes I work from a book. The Lichess puzzles tend to be at the right level and force me to put in a solid bit of effort in my five minutes.

I tend to sit down and make this a 15-20 minute exercise, but I can of course split it into 3 x 5-minute sessions - small blocks of time that you can easily find throughout the day. For example, in your coffee break or whilst you are waiting for your pasta to boil.

Games

The final and most important skill-building element in my routine.

We have already discussed the knowledge acquisition part of chess. For example, learning about what you should do in a good knight vs bad bishop situation is only part one of getting good at handling this imbalance.

Next, you need to practice. You need to experiment with the ideas to learn how they are implemented. To do that, you must play games.

These games should be ones you take very seriously. I try to convince all my students to play at least one long time-control game per week, but I stress that this game must feel important.

Playing high-stakes games means the lessons you learn from them are more likely to stick with you and be remembered.

Ever lay awake at night thinking about a loss? You will remember that lesson. If you don’t care, you are less likely to remember, learn, and do something different in your next game.

I play two games a week. I live in the middle of nowhere and can’t play rated OTB at the moment. The upside of this is that I went all of 2022 undefeated across all time controls, in all FIDE-rated events.

And the other positive? I found the Lichess4545 and Lonewolf Leagues. I play in both these well-organised competitions every week. I take these games very seriously. The stakes feel high enough to reinforce the lessons I learn from them.

I also play a few blitz games in a week, but I don’t consider these part of my game training. As I have mentioned, they can be a good addition to your pattern recognition training. But I’ll come back to my blitz games later when I talk about openings.

Final note on games. This makes up 50% of my study time. Normally that's about 3-4 hours per game of actually playing depending on how the games go. I then spend further time analysing them, which we will talk about in the next section. Because it belongs there.

Analysis and the Mind Stuff

I want to stress here that although the actual chess is important in analysis, I find much more value in writing down not what moves I considered, or should have played in hindsight, but my thoughts and feelings during the game.

Analysis is the majority of my psychological chess self-work.

The rest mostly involves me having small emotional meltdowns in which I ask my wife if I can rant for a bit about stuff she doesn’t fully understand (because she doesn't play chess).

This probably deserves a whole book on its own. But briefly, I’ll say that most of us can look back at a game and pinpoint certain chess errors.

You can say: I miscalculated here, so I need to work on my calculation. Or you can say: I missed this critical pawn break here, I need to go back and re-study the Caro-Slav structure.

But normally we know why our chess errors are chess errors often seconds after we make them. Studying more won’t help us.

The mistakes we make in games are generally ones we already know are mistakes.

It’s rare someone allows doubled pawns and then after the game doesn’t know why doubled pawns are bad. And yes, in some cases there are gaps in our chess knowledge that cause us to make mistakes.

However, most of the time we know what we did wrong, but we did it anyway.

We don’t need to understand what we did wrong - we already know that. We need to understand why.

Why?

Why, despite knowing the reason the bad move was bad, did we make it anyway?

For example, I used to have a problem with seeing a tactical win and getting so excited about it that I would play the move instantly and then miss the unpleasant fact that the tactic didn’t actually work.

If I only tried to understand this as a chess error, I might think I need to work on my tactics - my pattern recognition or calculation. But in fact, what I really needed to do to eliminate this recurring mistake, was to learn to identify the moments in the game when I got too excited. After becoming aware of these moments, I then needed to consciously stop myself from playing a move too quickly from that emotional space.

I didn’t learn more about tactics to eliminate this error from my game - I learnt more about myself.

I learnt to become aware of the excitement and calm down, slow down, and consider my opponent's best response. I play far fewer moves from an emotionally heightened state now.

If I am feeling anything remotely resembling excitement, I now use that feeling to guide me. I let it tell me that I might be about to make a mistake. So I use the feeling as a reminder to double-check my calculation.

I calm down, let the logical part of my brain kick in, and only make a move when I am sure I am making a logical move, not an emotional move.

Hopefully, that makes sense to you. I am not Bobby Fisher, and whilst I still write down what I calculated and saw in a game, I think it is much more important to write down how I felt and what I was thinking about on each move during the game. Even if it is something like: Move 26 - was thinking I could really go a snack.

Openings

This is my last chunk. And it is knowledge, but it didn’t really fit into this blog post under that bit so here it is, lurking at the end.

The standard advice given by chess experts is that beginners shouldn’t study openings.

I followed this a bit too religiously. It turns out that playing the Caro-Kann means more than playing c6 on move one.

Upon learning this, my friend and fellow chess blogger FM Nate Solon staged an intervention you can watch on his YouTube channel.

It became clear that I needed some opening knowledge and also - although it snuck up on me - I did at some point need to accept that I was no longer a beginner.

In my current rating band (around 1850 at the time of publishing this article) opening work was beginning to be necessary. In my first season of the Lichess Lonewolf League, many of the games I lost were over before move 10.

This gap in my knowledge was being targeted and I had to fix it.

So, I made a Lichess study and built a full opening repertoire. I chose my moves using a combination of the Lichess opening database for my rating band, but I mostly made my decisions by copying what GM Keith Arkell does, since he is my opening (and chess) spirit guide.

Once I had done this, I imported the study into ChessMadra, an incredible website built by Marcus Buffett that crops your Lichess study so you are only studying moves that you will see in a chosen percentage of your games. It allows you to drill the lines, just like Chessable - only it’s free and the repertoire is custom-built by you. I am a fan.

I haven’t actually played many of the lines I have chosen. And so the next addition to my ever-evolving study process has been to play games.

Blitz games.

Again, the former beginner in me feels like I am doing something terribly wrong.

Every blitz session, I imagine that IM John Bartholomew will walk up behind me, put a hand on my shoulder, shaking his head and say: “That’s enough now, Ono. You can stop.” And I’ll turn around in horror and shame as I see the disappointment in his eyes. “I’m so sorry John,” I’ll say. He will just shake his head, turn and leave.

Sorry about that.

So I’m playing blitz in order to drill my openings under test conditions, and to find the moves and positions I don’t actually like - quicker than I would if I only tested them in longer time controls.

Using the guiding principle that Nate gave to me during our video: “insert the first move you wish you had played instead”, I am slowly refining my Lichess study.

I review every blitz game to see if I got the opening correct, and to find the first move I wish I didn’t play and change it or add it to my study.

Simple.

I will just add that it has been useful for me to use blitz as a tool. I really don’t care about my blitz rating. I care about learning.

I spend as long as I need to, to get through the opening. And then I see the rest of the blitz game as a pattern recognition exercise, whilst I desperately scramble under clock pressure.

If I cared about my blitz rating, I don’t think I’d be able to do this. So if you want to try this but you don’t want to tank your rating, maybe use a second burner account.

Building this opening repertoire manually has been a huge undertaking. I’m not finished yet.

But when I do, I’m going to start by learning the lines, then move on to studying the structures and endgames that result at the end of the most common lines. I’m also planning to build a library of model games in each of my openings.

I don’t have a set time to spend on openings each day. For now, opening the Lichess study, reviewing on ChessMadra, playing a single blitz game, or adding a couple of lines is enough for me to put a tick in the opening box of my study plan template which you can download by clicking the link.

Conclusion

Hopefully, you found some of the concrete methods I have found and adjusted to build my own training plan interesting and useful for your own chess study.

Ultimately, I think the framework is more important than the content of the plan itself.

Everyone has different amounts of time, different learning styles, and different things they want to work on.

Mostly, I hope you can use the three pillars of my program to design something that works for you.

Find effective training methods, split those into manageable chunks, turn those into daily habits, and then just trust.

No more worrying about ratings, wins or losses. But simply knowing that by turning up to do the work every day, you will improve - whether you want to or not. It’s not a choice. Progress is outwith your control. It is inevitable.

Finally, I am insatiable in my efforts to find other effective methods of training. If you know of any, please let me know.

I'm curious to find out about your chess study routine (or lack thereof). If you want to discuss these with me personally, I can guide you privately as your chess coach.

You can book your free 60-minute trial lesson here.

Thanks for reading!

Tell me in the comments what your chess study involves, and what changes you are making in 2024.

Want to start the new year with a clear, systematic training schedule? You can download my Chess Study Plan Template for free.

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