Challenge 2500 | 4. Improving bit by bit

This week

Let's get right into the subject matter. What I've done this week:

• Daily: 2x 20 min. of tactics on ChessTempo (Problem set: Blitz, Difficulty: Medium)
• Daily: 4 Blitz games (3+2 pool)
• 3x: 20 min. Blind Tactics
• 5x: 50 min. Opening repertoire work
• 2x: 50 min. Lichess puzzles
• 3x: 4x Puzzle Storm

Besides the daily tactics and chess games, there wasn't much structure to my training, as I'm still very much experimenting with different methods and tools, trying out new ones and leaving out ones I don't like.
At some point, I'd like to have a very consistent routine, but for now, some volatility is unavoidable.
I'll go through the methods/tools listed above one by one and discuss whether I find them useful and if I want to continue utilising them.

Blitz tactics on ChessTempo

For those who don't know, solving 'Blitz' tactics on ChessTempo means that the amount of time spent on a puzzle is factored in when your Blitz rating is updated after that puzzle.
For instance, if you solve a puzzle correctly, but take too much time relative to its difficulty, you lose rating points. In general, the faster you solve a puzzle, the more rating you gain.

I'll definitely keep doing this daily. It feels like doing this consistently over the course of weeks and months should make a significant difference versus not doing it. Besides, it's probably the most fun part of my training.
In total, I've attempted 239 of these puzzles this week and got 182 of those right, which amounts to about 76%. On average, I spent 1 minute and 10 seconds per puzzle. I'll probably try to increase the accuracy even if it means spending a bit more time per puzzle, but in general, these stats seem reasonable for this kind of puzzle-solving.
Not really sure what else to do with these statistics, but it should be interesting to see how they develop week by week.
The most important metric is the rating though, obviously. My rating for blitz tactics on ChessTempo is now at 2290 (up from 2254 at the beginning of the week), which is not too far from my peak (2315).
I really like having such a rating as it's a great way of tracking progress. I'll try to improve it week by week.

Blitz games (3+2)

I'll keep this in my daily routine as well, because I think it makes sense to have some sort of daily baseline chess playing practice. It doesn't take that long and again, it should have some benefit in the long run, especially if briefly analysing the games afterwards is included.
I will however most likely start playing those games on an anonymous account (possibly on another website) just so that I can play my openings without having to worry about revealing too much information, which could aid my future opponents in their prep.

Blind Tactics

While I like the concept, I'm not entirely convinced by how it is implemented over at https://listudy.org/en. The basic idea is that some position is shown on the board and additionally, in notation, a number of moves played from that position onwards is displayed. The aim is to find the tactical shot available in the resulting position.
What I like about this tool is that you can set the number of moves you are required to visualise, which means that if you can't visualise the board that well yet, you can start out at just 2 moves for instance. When trying this out, I started at around 12 and worked my way up to 20 during my 20-minute sessions.

What I don't like (or part of it) however is that the tactical shot is always very simple, typically a mate in 2 or 3 with a very common motive, so it doesn't require you to actually visualise the position fully: as long as you keep track of the most relevant pieces, you can sort of guess the mating sequence at the end, especially if you are an experienced player and have seen those sort of checkmate patterns hundreds of times already.
For other players, who want to start training visualisation, this tool might be adequate. Certainly, trying it out won't hurt (and I don't think it hurt me, but it is probably not the most effective way to train visualisation for me personally I find). If any of you have suggestions with regard to solving tactics blindfolded, let me know.
For now though, I'll switch to simply playing blindfold games. I have done this in the past, so I have an account on chess.com specifically for blindfold chess, to which I'll return.

Opening work

There is not much to say about this one. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it gets a bit tedious. In any case, it's indispensable, so I'll keep doing some number of sessions per week.
This week, I've exclusively done repertoire-building sessions, that is, thinking about what variations make sense in the broader context of my repertoire and compiling those variations into files with ChessBase.
I'll start learning some of the material (using ChessTempo) next week, since I have a tournament planned in late January and I intend to be well-prepared for that.

Lichess Puzzles

These don't have the 'Blitz'-component, so the time spent on any given puzzle doesn't affect the rating (as far as I know), which is why the puzzles are pretty difficult (some of them devilishly difficult), so I usually set them up on an actual chess board (as opposed to solving them on the screen) and attempt to solve them in full concentration for 50 min. at a time. On average, I attempt around 4-5 puzzles per session. Usually, if I can't seem to find the solution even after around 20 min. of thought, I'll just make an educated guess, which of course results in getting some puzzles wrong, but I don't think that's necessarily problematic. The main idea is to practice calculating. Whether I find the solution or not is not that important, although, of course, the goal is to get most of them correct.

I will keep doing a couple of sessions per week, as I consider this sort of puzzle-solving very important. Difficult puzzles like these resemble tough decisions in complex positions of actual games, so solving such puzzles simulates and therefore trains difficult decision-making.
Unfortunately, I did only 2 of the planned 4 sessions this week, so I'll try to make up for it and do 6 next week.

Puzzle Storms

I did a bit of Puzzle Storm just for fun. I can't really justify it as a separate training method (sadly), as it probably doesn't do anything that Blitz tactics wouldn't already take care of (except for improving mouse-speed perhaps). I thought I'll mention it anyway, but unless someone can convince me that Puzzle Storm/Rush is actually a useful tool for improving in chess, it will remain nothing but a pastime and I won't mention it in the future.

Next week + outlook

Next week, I plan on doing the following:

• Daily: 2x 20 min. of tactics on ChessTempo (Problem set: Blitz, Difficulty: Medium)
• Daily: 4 Blitz games (3+2 pool)
• Daily: 4 Blindfold blitz games (5+0)
• 4x: Opening work
• 6x: 50 min. Lichess puzzles

As for future tournaments, I have three (!) planned already, which I'm excited about.
One 7-round tournament in less than two weeks, and two 9-round tournaments in February and March, which will be after this semester's exam period (very much looking forward to 1,5 months of having a lot of time for chess!) These are the tournaments:

• 26.01. - 29.01.: NordWest-Cup http://www.chessorg.de/Listen2023/NordWest-Cup-Teil.php
• 11.02. - 18.02.: Lienz Open https://chess-results.com/tnr683837.aspx?lan=0
• 03.03. - 11.03.: Schachfestival Bad Wörishofen https://www.chessorg.de/Listen2023/Woerishofen-Teil.php

A total 25 games of classical chess. Should be fun! For now though, one more week of training.
That's all. Thanks for reading and have a great week!