If someone has just one hour a day to play, practise or learn Chess, what would you guys recommend as the best ways to make the best use of that hour, and improve your chess skills in that one hour? Most important to things to read, learn, practise etc in that hour??
It seems to me that (unless you're natural) just playing chess alone will not necessarily lead to any improvements in chess skills?
Thanks
My suggestion would be that you make some kind of timetable, like at school. On Monday, you do endgames in the hour, tactics on Tuesday, and so on.
@elikay770 You play a lot of Blitz and Bullet on Lichess. It may be fun, but it can be detrimental because it fosters bad habits. Depending on what your goals are, you may want to spend some of your time studying chess. Especially tactics should be emphasized in that study time. The next biggest bang for the study time spent is the elementary endgames.
I don't know what your chess level and knowledge of the game is. I don't know if the idea of studying chess is at all appealing to you.
just don't play bullet
i'd spent like 30 mins on puzzles instead
then alternate the remaining 30 between chess video or chess games ( rapid like 5 + good increment or even better 10 min)
@jomega What do you mean with studying? Reading a book, look at different scenarios with an engine or something else?
@Dutch_Player By studying, I mean any chess activity other than playing chess. The activities don't necessarily have to be organized in any way, but I think it best to organize the activities - to have some sort of plan to reach goals that have been set. Also to have some metrics to gauge success as part of the feedback one needs.
not a bullet fan, myself. but for me blitz may be like bullet to others. and i would play as bad in blitz, as others in bullet.
so whatever your wavelength in terms of comfortable speed (where you can hear yourself thinking, and not just the clock ticking, might be a rule of thumb), consider that a better way to learn from each move you make there.
The above posts seem the best advice. Although they do not explicitly says why bullet would have to take a pause in your diet, I would call on time control scale to be it. And I would like to complement, and suggest (i may be wrong, but i think the idea is not yet here):
I think the whole gamut of time controls, may be a good thing to play from time to time across all of them. to test different aspect of your memory recall processes, and different aspect involved in chess. Some time controls exaggerate some aspects over others, it does not mean completely useless. but to be handled with care, if you do want to learn general chess, time control independent.
I plan, if I can live that long, to go do some tourism in those fast games, but only with testing intent. my sweet time spot right now is 5 days per turn (more like 2 days on average, but I do spend the same time on one move as that some people spend on many games). That was a tale from the beyond (on lichess game categories).
@jomega Thank you. Which activity did you find most useful?
If you have a decent memory you can watch YouTube videos of the people at St.Louis chess academy. I like the lectures and slide shows of the kids chess class. Yeah, sadly, watching chess tutors, I.M.'s and G.M.'s teaching each part of the game to 5 and six year old kids is instructive for me.. Solid instruction on different openings, mid game and end game strategies,, I like Eric Rosen quite a bit, G.M. Ben Finegold is a good tutor,
You can set up a board and pause the video and try different things,,
How determined You are to improve will be a big factor, but, Ive discovered that not having a steel trap memory is a real disadvantage. Finegold will be talking about a game and tell a story about a game that had That same board setup in the seventies,, Yeah, not me..
The puzzles are helpful, there are other options, too. Recognizing patterns is helpful. Theres a Loose Piece locating challengs series. Click on the Learn heading and wear the whole thing out..
@Dutch_Player If one of the goals is to increase in chess strength then for those under the master rating, the biggest bang for the study time is tactics. The second biggest bang is elementary endgames. I'm an advocate for a method of study know by the phrase "deliberate practice". All the activities need goals and feedback to tell how you are improving. Playing chess at a reasonable time control is important. Every game should be analyzed by you and then the best thing would be to go over your annotated games with the strongest player you can find. If such a person is not available then next best is to do a computer analysis. But you have to take that computer analysis with a large grain of salt. The computer will be wrong at times! Those reviewed games will help guide what to study in tactics and endgames. That will make the study time targeted instead of random.
Let me mention... doing Lichess puzzles in the way I've seen many people do them is not a very efficient way to increase chess strength. Many do not do them with deliberate practice. For example, they do not go over the puzzles afterward with a strong player or even the computer. They either get the puzzle right or wrong, and then go to the next one. They do not do the puzzle with a time constraint that attempts to match whatever time control they use in their games. They do not try to classify the motifs in the puzzle. etc. Doing the puzzles in this inefficient manner may lead to you getting better at solving the puzzles but then you find that you are still making elementary tactical errors in your games.
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