Doc - Another AMAZING article. Over the past couple of years I have incorporated many of your thoughts/idea into my training regiment. One idea that I have started using is Chess coordinates training. I have an ANKI deck of chess coordinates which spend two (2) min each day on. That and using a physical board, chess clock and recording mine my opponents moves on my Classical on-line chess games has helped me with more accurate chess notations of my games. As for tactics, each day I do fifteen (15) min of Lichess puzzles easy to normal mode. Three (3) times a week (M-W-F) I do thirty (30) min of Step 2 Mixed and on Tue-Thu-Sat do thirty (30) min of Step 2 Thinking Ahead. I use a board to set up each position and give myself three (3) min to solve each one. I write down the solution for each tactic. I do stop the clock for writing the solution and setting up the next position. I really like your idea on 'Study Positions' and may try to incorporate that into my training plan. The 'Some Honesty' section was spot on. BTW - you answered a question I've had about how you train, that being if you timed your session. Now I know that answer. I'll be very interested in your progress report on this training regiment. Thanks again Doc. Please keep'em coming.
Thank you for your kind words! Sounds like a solid training program. As for me. the early returns look good, but I’ll wait until we have more data… Wishing you luck with your training!
Playing lots of games until I had tactics sorted was definitely what pushed me from 1300 to 1800. I was a teenager at the time, so the progress was probably faster than for adult improvers, but I basically spent a ton of time playing fast games against one of the rudimentary chess computers that existed in the mid-1990s. I fell into the same tactical traps over and over until I started to recognize them and then suddenly I wasn't blundering all the time in tournament games and my rating jumped really rapidly.
That really seems to track what a lot of kids do, learn by doing. Adults just don’t have that kind of time… and if they do, they don’t have the neuroplasticity to learn from doing like the kids do. Sad but true
If I had the resources that exist today, I probably would have done a bunch of tactic puzzles to get the same result in less time - doing a lot of that kind of work on chesstempo.com was a big part of how I kept improving in my 30s.
Thanks for another fascinating and insightful read.
I think you have expanded on some important points when addressing the question of how to spend one`s limited time. I think at some stage (although not at the outset) we need to consider longer term ambitions as well.
I say this because the adage that what got you here won`t necessarily you there is definitely true in chess growth. To me this is the issue of people who took a fast track, tactics heavy, strategy to chess improvement - the Michael de la Maza`s and Tyler1s of the chess world.
I believe completing tactics training with something that builds a broad understanding of positional concepts is essential. I think a great book that is worthy of detailed study, but is very readable is Herman Grooten`s Chess Strategy for Club Players.
That said, the "easy" tactics drills and visualisation work are definitely the basis for immediate improvement.
I would suggest picking a book or program (recommended by many good players) and doing the whole book from START to FINISH and taking it SLOW. Ok that seems to be the opposite of what you want, but let me explain:
Take a couple hours a week and just keep plugging at the book CONSISTENTLY. Week by week. Don't rush to finish the book. Too many players go from one book or plan to another and never finish what they start. So if you decide that you really think the book "My 60 Memorable Games" by Bobby Fischer is the book for you and you have only two hours to study chess on Thursday nights... well then I would read and study 1 game a week and really try to understand what was played and written. At this rate, the book will take you over a year to finish, but I am sure you will have learned and remembered much of the material. Most people try to blast through a book over a couple of weeks along with a bunch of other things and they usually never finish the book and/or they don't remember much from what they read. To get more, it usually means doing one thing, but taking your time to really do it.
I would say that the more time constrained a person is, the more important it is to adopt this approach. It is much harder to really learn something if you have only a brief amount of time and you are flipping from one book to another and then another and so on.
Doc - Another AMAZING article. Over the past couple of years I have incorporated many of your thoughts/idea into my training regiment. One idea that I have started using is Chess coordinates training. I have an ANKI deck of chess coordinates which spend two (2) min each day on. That and using a physical board, chess clock and recording mine my opponents moves on my Classical on-line chess games has helped me with more accurate chess notations of my games. As for tactics, each day I do fifteen (15) min of Lichess puzzles easy to normal mode. Three (3) times a week (M-W-F) I do thirty (30) min of Step 2 Mixed and on Tue-Thu-Sat do thirty (30) min of Step 2 Thinking Ahead. I use a board to set up each position and give myself three (3) min to solve each one. I write down the solution for each tactic. I do stop the clock for writing the solution and setting up the next position. I really like your idea on 'Study Positions' and may try to incorporate that into my training plan. The 'Some Honesty' section was spot on. BTW - you answered a question I've had about how you train, that being if you timed your session. Now I know that answer. I'll be very interested in your progress report on this training regiment. Thanks again Doc. Please keep'em coming.
Thank you for your kind words! Sounds like a solid training program. As for me. the early returns look good, but I’ll wait until we have more data… Wishing you luck with your training!
Playing lots of games until I had tactics sorted was definitely what pushed me from 1300 to 1800. I was a teenager at the time, so the progress was probably faster than for adult improvers, but I basically spent a ton of time playing fast games against one of the rudimentary chess computers that existed in the mid-1990s. I fell into the same tactical traps over and over until I started to recognize them and then suddenly I wasn't blundering all the time in tournament games and my rating jumped really rapidly.
That really seems to track what a lot of kids do, learn by doing. Adults just don’t have that kind of time… and if they do, they don’t have the neuroplasticity to learn from doing like the kids do. Sad but true
If I had the resources that exist today, I probably would have done a bunch of tactic puzzles to get the same result in less time - doing a lot of that kind of work on chesstempo.com was a big part of how I kept improving in my 30s.
Thanks for another fascinating and insightful read.
I think you have expanded on some important points when addressing the question of how to spend one`s limited time. I think at some stage (although not at the outset) we need to consider longer term ambitions as well.
I say this because the adage that what got you here won`t necessarily you there is definitely true in chess growth. To me this is the issue of people who took a fast track, tactics heavy, strategy to chess improvement - the Michael de la Maza`s and Tyler1s of the chess world.
I believe completing tactics training with something that builds a broad understanding of positional concepts is essential. I think a great book that is worthy of detailed study, but is very readable is Herman Grooten`s Chess Strategy for Club Players.
That said, the "easy" tactics drills and visualisation work are definitely the basis for immediate improvement.
Once again thanks for a great piece.
I'll check out the book! Thanks for the suggestion
I would suggest picking a book or program (recommended by many good players) and doing the whole book from START to FINISH and taking it SLOW. Ok that seems to be the opposite of what you want, but let me explain:
Take a couple hours a week and just keep plugging at the book CONSISTENTLY. Week by week. Don't rush to finish the book. Too many players go from one book or plan to another and never finish what they start. So if you decide that you really think the book "My 60 Memorable Games" by Bobby Fischer is the book for you and you have only two hours to study chess on Thursday nights... well then I would read and study 1 game a week and really try to understand what was played and written. At this rate, the book will take you over a year to finish, but I am sure you will have learned and remembered much of the material. Most people try to blast through a book over a couple of weeks along with a bunch of other things and they usually never finish the book and/or they don't remember much from what they read. To get more, it usually means doing one thing, but taking your time to really do it.
I would say that the more time constrained a person is, the more important it is to adopt this approach. It is much harder to really learn something if you have only a brief amount of time and you are flipping from one book to another and then another and so on.
Not a bad suggestion. For the positional work where I do the slow thinking I'm going through Evaluate Like a GM.