Dear chess lovers
I'm playing chess everyday 5-6 hours, solving tactics, playing slow time control games, analyzing classics games like Capablanca, Alekhine, and I also study for 1 hour the endgame, or the next day the middle game or something else.
My rank is 2000 in all time format games
But I truly need a correct plan to improve my chess in a daily basics. If anyone could help me, I would really appreciete it. So I need a plan, ex : how much time for tactics? how much games to play? should I study more the endgame or middlegame? I got so much questions, I really need a coach!!!
keep it up....you''ll ..............get................there..................................sometime......... maybe.........
What is your age? Goal?
You cannot improve on a daily basis it will take time.
I hope I will help.
Checked your puzzles. Last 3 days.
1 day 78 good 54 wrong
2 day 107 good 76 wrong
3 day 21 good 20 wrong
Well you see, you do good amount of puzzles, but what I doubt is, do you really make an effort to solve those puzzles or you just spending 2 minutes and then making move maybe it will be good or maybe not, then next puzzle maybe will be easier etc. This is not how it should work when you want to improve :) You have to squeeze the puzzle, even better put the puzzle on real chessboard (since I hope your chess goals are not just to reach some imaginary online rating level, but you would like also to test your strength in OTB tournaments) and then imagine all the sequence like it would be real match against real opponent.
As for the playing games everyday. It is good, but good only if those are classical games, so your brain is constantly working on visualising and calculating rather than just throwing pieces by intuition in blitz or rapid. I don't think though it is needed to play everyday. You have to vary your training, for example:
Day 1 >>> 2 hrs puzzle 4hrs classical game against opponent you know, better stronger than you
Day 2 >>> 2hrs analysing your game from day 1, making notes, 4 hrs puzzles
Day 3 >>> 3hrs Opening/Middlegame study, 3hrs endgame study
Day 4 >>> 5hrs Classical game, 1 hr endgame
Day 5 >>> 2 hrs analysing your game from day 4, making notes, 2hrs puzzles, 2hrs opening/middlegame/endgame
Day 6 >>> blitz, relax all day long
Day 7 >>> No chess, just perhaps imagining something inside your head, some positions or trying to remember something
You can do one week endgame dedicated, one week middlegame dedicated and so on and so on. Make it interesting and demanding, if you will fall into routine it might get boring and eventually while doing puzzle you will be thinking about pizza or cars etc.
It is said brain is a muscle, so you have to train it like muscle. To train muscle you have to vary the way you train it in order for muscle not to adapt and stay in one place, but keep improving. ;)
@HommeSaoul 20 years old, my goal is to improve and reach 2300 Fide rating
@TrainingOTB I really appreciete your answer and I thank you a lot! It's an interesting plan. For the puzzles don't worry this is not my first account on lichess, I just keep it for funn and also my brother plays here.
I can start doing that it's really interesting and it's funn but I'm not if it's the right plan, My daily training is the same so seriously I need to change it. Thanks for your answer but can you tell what is your rating? How much time did you follow this plan and how this affected your game? Was it succesfull or not? Because right now I feel like I want to start it and it looks funn!
@TrainingOTB @teoal this is my account sir!
@TrainingOTB Also I need to ask you one more thing. Do you think that one day off in a week is acceptable? Because I asked in forums and people think that we should train everyday, no rest days! only when you feel to tired. And sometimes I feel like I want to do something else, so I feel a bit tired of puzzles, or endgame study. Thanks again!
Tactical training is paramount, take a batch of 1000 puzzles and do them in order 1-1000 until you know each one instantly and correctly, Solving a puzzle once is almost useless. Solving it 10x over a few months is very useful. It becomes part of your repertoire and you actually will do it in a real game when opportunity arises. Then increase to 2000, 3000 and so on. GMs know 10’000 positions, it is said. 1800s know 300 positions, 2000s know 1000, Masters know 4x more than 1800s etc.
Yes, a rest day is acceptable, and maybe a requirement when doing something for several hours daily.
Solving tactics for 2 hours daily is a guaranteed improvement. But improvement may not be linear, you may have to wait several days or weeks until rating suddenly jumps up a lot. It may even go down, then up more, in strange waves.
Analyze each game you play, the deeper the analysis the better.
Make sure you have read some classics so that you know what to do (tactics will help you with how to do it), the books that speak to me are: Art of the middle game (Keres, Kotov, first do the Kotov chapters, easier), and Silmans Ameteurs Mind, and Reassess your chess. Pandolfini’s endgame course would be great, but so many errors... maybe try Silman’s endgame course? Reviews seem good. My System has some goodies, but that book is hard for our level.
Opening repertoire becomes increasingly important, I like Ginger GM stuff, and Alburt’s black book. Like with tactics, watch the opening rep videos or read the opening rep books several times over until you basically memorized and understood the ideas and specific lines.
one more thing: play guess the move. I have an old cheap book “How good is your chess?” By Leonard Barden. You get to cover up the moves and guess what a player played, and you get scored. There are 35 games, Do the book in order until you get perfect 50 on all. That author, like Ginger GM, has a gift for explaining ideas and principles that can guide you without dry dead memorization. Apparently there are a few other books like this on the market.
Get fit if you’re already. Fresh air, sleep, lift weights, walk, run. Physical fitness is very under-appreciated, and effects your memory, alertness etc.
Good luck,
@llagga you're welcome. Just to be clear, I am not a coach or someone like that :) I don't think I could follow such a plan, couldn't spend 6 hrs a day for chess, but if I could that would be also my plan in order to take it seriously and improve. The main idea was to change the routine, so brain keeps guessing all the time. And of course you have to set the goal.
I so far attended only two OTB tournaments and before that yes I prepared, but way differently also for the very same reason, because simply couldn't spend 6 hrs a day on chess.
So my preparation was basically play classical OTB in a club, 2 days in a week, 2 games per day, which gave me 4 good games to analyse per week. Then I did analysis.
I solved many puzzles, I don't think I solved same puzzles. Just important after some hard puzzle to either tak e a note or try to concentrate and rememeber what was the clue, you know was it cross pin, was it sac, was it calm move in order to establish deadly attck etc. I think it helps to cement it inside our minds and to remember the point.
As for openings I watched plenty videos from Saint Louis Chess Club, especially GM Varuzhan Akobian and GM Yasser Seirawan. GM Akobian in some videos explained the ideas of positional play, the whole idea of improving pieces etc. Very interesting and it helped me a lot. Generally after playing many games I found that 1. Nf3 as white and as black Pirc opening are comfortable for me, so I started from those.
If you can dedicate 6 hrs a day for chess, I think you can reach really high levels really quick. Goal of getting to National Master title seems achievable.
I saved some of your guys' ideas for future, good thread, thank you!