How to introduce "structure" in the learning method.

Dear all, I would appreciate your advice on something.

At the moment, I am following a do-it-yourself training program, which more or less looks like this:

- Daily tactics problems
- Playing slow games, followed by analysis with chessbase (openings) and Fritz (tactical misses)
- Slowly building my opening repertoire, focusing on a few lines and adding to them as I play and encounter new replies
- Read master games annotated by GMs

What I feel I am missing, considering I am an extremely structured person, is some kind of "structured way of progressing". I think I would greatly benefit from something like that, but I am struggling in finding something.

I was considering things like http://www.chessmagnetschool.com/ or http://www.chessmasterschool.com/, but not sure if either one could be what I am looking for.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

I think you are on the right track! “Slowly” is the key! Anyone who thinks they can literally improve overnight is fooling themselves a bit. I aim for a middle ground of sorts.

For instance, if one day I play like a 2100, and the next I play like a 1700, then my actual performance overall is somewhere around 1900, which is fine by me, really.

However, because I understand that improvement takes time, I study in moderation, and try to study the things that will actually HELP me, as you seem to have nailed.

As I have said before, the chess videos really helped me greatly. I suggest throwing a few of those in once in a while! :)

I feel you, Buddy! We Chess Improvement "Do-it-Yourselfers" could use a guiding hand. A few weeks ago, I suggested to a few members of the highly skilled chess.com staff that they should provide weekly Training To-Do lists for us patzers. The feedback of a coach is of course a great way to learn but a solid mix of suitable training activities should be a giant step in the proper direction.

The To-Do list does not have to be rocket science but I think most of us could use some help in finding, say, the master games to study etc.

Here might be an outline of a generic To-Do list: http://chess-training.blogspot.com/2006/10/generic-training-schedule.html

Hmmm, this tread deserves some attention!

Thanks both for your replies!

Skwerly: yes, I am not concerned with speed (I am not looking for "shortcuts"), but I would love to have a clear plan to stick to, with clear indications about what to study when and next, which is the issue for the moment..

Just a thought.... as good as computers are to use in improving I would suggest studying it out on your own first for a bit and then look at the computer for improvements.

Playing through variations and lines for both sides without comp aid has helped me :)

Good luck!!

Actually, I have been trying Complete Chess Course by Convekta, and it looks very good to me. I would be very grateful if any of the high rated players could have a go at it and post a brief comment (it can be downloaded as a free demo, and it is possible to see the complete structure of the course and try many theoretical lessons and practical exercises). The cost is very low I think, but it would be a big time investment, so it would be fantastic having some feedback prior to embarking in this adventure! Thanks in advance, Andrea

 I agreed with this statement, AndreaCoda.

I think you've got it down, the key word is 'slowly', the longer you look at the board the more you will see. 

Learning opening traps as a means of quickly bettering your game often gets a bad rap.  However I feel its important to learn them, not so much in the hope of catching people out with them but more along the lines of learning what moves are to be avoided in the openings, as a lot of the moves that lead to disaster can appear very natural at first.   

You seem to have a very good approach. I wouldn't put any money down for teachers until you really notice that your improvement has stopped, which I doubt will happen until you reach atleast 1800-2000 if you are studying every day like that on your own. My 2 cents.

There's also a Positive/Negative tracking idea that I've been using. Simply grab an excel sheet (or whatever works for you) and while you're going over your games, add a +1 for any good chess behavior/application-of-thought-process(for e.g. Placed Knight on an outpost) and -1 for bad (did not activate the King in the endgame) behaviors. Toss in bigger negatives for blunders and tactical oversights.  Now, consult with a stronger player (always preferred to Fritz/Engines) when you're trying to decide if your move was a +1 or a -1 because they can talk to you about plans and ideas as opposed to variations with an evaluation score.

Of course, you can't award yourself +1s willy-nilly ... you need to convince yourself that this +1 was at a critical position where you played the best move possible after some thought and ONLY if that move was not trivial or easy. ALSO => Obsolete some of your +1s if you feel you're doing this confidently later on. For e.g. once you can make timely minority attacks in your sleep, you need to stop awarding yourself +1s for it.

So take your +1s/-1s, tally them up, graph them or whatever else you'd like to do with them. The benefit of this will appear after going over some 10-20 games where you will start to identify

- if your "minuses" are "exceeding" your "plusses"
- and which part of the game are you seeing more "minuses" and "plusses".
- where do most of my minuses come from? Tactical mistakes? Errors in analysis or more in evaluation?

This in turn, mercilessly refactors the training regimen you happen to be undertaking. You want to work on things that need working on.  If you need to add more plusses, go after material. Have way too many minuses? Stay away from the new stuff and work on correcting your negative behaviors.

Given work demands and family, one of my personal goals is to be more efficient at getting a lot out of 30-40 mins of study every 2-3 days and this seems to be helping me.

Hi guys,

IMO, the 'best' way to improve your chess game is to play opponents that are better than you are.  I think playing against opponents that are rated 200-300 above you is best.

Watch your backrank. 

the chess training tactics and chess mentor on this site are actually very good. Go through them lesson by lesson and you can see your rating improve - what is good is that the difficulty of the puzzles in the tactics trainer increase as your r ating increases.  I use chess mentor mainly for the endgames - some nice typical positions there which one needs to know like the back of one's hand

oh btw, do try a few brain exercises every now and then - things like sudoku and scrabble or other mind games you find on the net for free - helps to keep the brain muscles toned and flexible!

Thanks all guys, some very good and sound advice in there!

I have actually restarted with private lessons (one every two weeks), hoping they will help me remove bad habits - the idea is to use them mainly to review key games I play (I have noticed there is a HUGE difference between the analysis I can do with Fritz and the comments I receive from a Master).

In parallel, my coach has advised me to use www.chessimo.com, to become stronger tactically. I started using it, the concept seems ok to me ("burning" tactical patterns by repetition of problems which start up very easy and gradually build up in complexity).

Thanks again all for your advice and support!