The Role of Tactics in Chess Improvement

         On January 8th-10th of 2016 I will be playing in the reserve section (1400-1799 USCF) of the Austin Chess Club Championships. It is a five round tournament spread out over the course of three days with a time control of 90 minutes with 60 second increment, the longest time control I have ever played in. This means that I will have lots of time to calculate concrete variations during each game.

        I know that if I want to perform well and gain rating points, I have to work on tactics, tactics, and more tactics... and maybe a little bit on endgame technique as well . I have decided that from now on, I will solve tactics on chesstempo.com for a minimum of 9 hours every week between now and the Austin Chess Club Championships. I will then record a 15 minute snippet of my daily training session every day between now and the tournament and post each one onto my blog. Hopefully this will keep me motivated to stick to solving tactics and not get distracted by playing blitz.