My 6 Month Plan

Hello all. I learnt the rules of chess around February this year. Between then and late April I did nothing much but play my dad and other school friends at a low standard. When it came to June, I decided to join my local chess club. This helped me improve a lot and I plucked up the courage to enter my first tournament in September. I played in the under 105 ECF (1488 FIDE) section and came joint first with a respectable score of 7/10. At the same time, a local player rated approximately 2100 FIDE very generously offered me coaching, free of charge, once a week. This coaching is not intense but I feel like I learn something every week. We cover things such as bishop vs knights and tactics. I play in a team for my club, normally on board 2 or 3. After my initial period of prosperity, I feel like I have plateaued recently. I played poorly in both 100+0 and 10+5 tournaments in the past few months and I feel like I am not making much progress at all. The final straw came on Friday night when I drew against a player in the team lower than mine at the club- it was a horrendous game. I have not used the past 9 months in the right way to benefit my improvement; I studied books that were way ahead of my level because I had no guidance to begin with. Now I feel like I have plenty of help around me and I have decided to devise a plan to help me for the next 6 months, commencing January 1st 2018:

month 1:
logical chess 3x per week
silman's endgame course 2x per week
chess tempo 2x per week
lichess 10+0 maximum 2x per week (if tactics score is over 80%)
daily chess on chess.com (3 days) throughout the month
30+0 once a fortnight

month 2:
silman's endgame course 2x per week
chess tempo 2x per week
lichess 10+0 maximum 2x per week (if tactics score is over 80%)
daily chess on chess.com (3 days) throughout the month
30+0 once a fortnight

month 3:
silman's endgame course 1x per week
amateur's mind 1x per week
chess tempo 3x per week
lichess 10+0 maximum 3x per week (if tactics score is over 90%)
daily chess on chess.com (3 days) throughout the month
30+0 once a fortnight

month 4:
silman's endgame course 1x per week
amateurs mind 1x per week
chesstempo 3x per week
lichess 10+0 maximum 3x per week (if tactics score is over 90%)
daily chess on chess.com (3 days) throughout the month
30+0 once a fortnight
opening study 1x per week

month 5:
silman's endgame course 1x per week
my system 1x per week
chess tempo 3x per week
lichess 10+0 maximum 3x per week (if tactics score is over 90%)
daily chess on chess.com (3 days) throughout the month
30+0 once a fortnight
opening study 1x per week

month 6:
silman's endgame course 1x per week
my system 1x per week
chess tempo 3x per week
lichess 10+0 maximum 3x per week (if tactics score is over 90%)
daily chess on chess.com (3 days) throughout the month
30+0 once a fortnight
opening study 1x per week

This is not a final plan but I believe it is close to what I want it to be. If you have any advice or questions please feel free to leave a post. Thank you.

"I feel like I have plateaued recently. I played poorly in both 100+0 and 10+5 tournaments in the past few months and I feel like I am not making much progress at all. The final straw came on Friday night when I drew against a player in the team lower than mine at the club- it was a horrendous game. "
This is typical and reaching a plateau is quite common. To get out of that, you must analyse your lost games. Analyse not only the chess aspects, but also mental and physical circumstances. If you played badly against the lower rated player it presumably is not because he has studied more than you. So study more will not alleviate that. Maybe you were tired, dehydrated, hungry, or you underestimated your opponent or you did not think properly because you expected an easy win. Also analyse your own use of time. If you make a mistake after a long thought, then some of your chess understanding is lacking. If you make a mistake because you play to quickly, then you should think longer. So maybe your study plan will not address your real need.

The study plan itself seems ambitious. I like that you put in endgame study, which is essential for progress. My System is also very good for understanding, even if it is somewhat outdated. I advice against opening study. It can quickly consume most of your time and it only helps to crush weak players that you would beat anyway and it contributes little or nothing to beat stronger players, which is the real aim.
You should also make time to analyse games. Analyse your losses, that is crucial to get better. Also analyse top grandmaster games. There is so much to learn from these in all aspects of the game.

I am bit older and I have seen many Gran-Plans... I recommend small steps. Playing chess well is not accumulating dry knowledge - it is learning a procedure which takes a lot of time. Praxis >> theory.

Cannot help but I have to quote:

„Ja, mach nur einen Plan
sei nur ein großes Licht
und mach dann noch 'nen zweiten Plan
gehn tun sie beide nicht.“

Bertolt Brecht, Dreigroschenoper

Good luck, but the larger the plan the more unrealistic. Long variation, wrong variation.

just play 200 or 300 1+0 games per day and let us know if it improved your game :p

@toucanchess I wouldn't recommend you to play 10+0, if someone is first learning it is better to play thinked matches like; 30+10, it may sound boring but it is the best way to improve, good luck :)

Dear,

My FIDE rating is 1360 highest being 1368. But from my games I came to a conclusion that on any given day I can defeat/draw against one 1800/1900 FIDE rating player and some other day I may lose to somebody of 1150-1250 FIDE rating.

Again Time control of games now a days is always another important aspect. One day I defeated IM Shackles in a Superblitz tourney organised by him here in Lichess. (The game was a draw as it was Queen and Rook pawn Vs Queen which IM also discovered out of surprise during post mortem.) The game had 3-5 mistakes by both.

The real way to improve is to enjoy chess with certain objective which you already have. Be in good circle with Chess fanatics like achja who would pull you in to chess with their continuous chess activities.

Anyways, it is important in chess to learn continually and be happy when you implemented something you had learnt.

Dedication and Hard-work along with right set of learning ingredients can help anybody improve in any field now a days. Just have faith in yourself and lots of patience.

Thank you for the advice, everyone. I will tweak my plan now.

The element of fun + learning is very important in Chess (probably in everything). There are a lot of avenues available for to improve on a game(videos+books+Coaches) and they all add up to increase an understanding in the game. You are lucky for to have found a Coach who for his passion for the game is trying to improve your game. The thing that I read is to play correspondence games that span a couple of days so you can reason out every move and helps to note down your thoughts at the moment.

Good luck with your Chess and plateaus and peaks are part of life and isn't any different in Chess.