Tactics Training Day 1 | Puzzle Rush
I have a problem. I'm not improving. Once I reached 2000 rapid rating. I stopped going up, and even went down a bit. Now I'm currently rated below 2000, and it doesn't look good. How do I improve? If I want to progress, I need some way to learn more (without paying huge sums of money for lessons from top coaches...).
So I've formulated a plan to get started. I don't have experience doing this, but what I intend to do is very safe and can't have any negative effects. Which is good, because if I studied concepts way above my level (for example, memorizing Ruy Lopez lines...), it could actually hurt my game and take me off course of what I actually want to do.
There's going to be two main things that I'll be doing: first, tactics training, and second, chess.com study plans. If you feel like you're not improving too and want to learn more, you can find them at (https://www.chess.com/article/view/study-plan-directory)
There are four different study plans for four different strengths of players. First is the plan for beginners, which is classified as ratings below 1399. Then is the intermediate study plan, which is for players rated 1400-1799. The advanced study plan is for players rated between 1800 and 1999. Last of all is the master study plan, for players between 2000 and 2199.
I'll actually be doing two study plans, the advanced and master study plans. I know that I'm not a master yet (obviously...) but I feel that it would be a good for me because I would learn a lot. My peak rating was 2037 about a month ago, so it would be within the master category. By the way, I'm considering my rapid rating, since that's what I spend most of my time on and what I care about more. Blitz and bullet are fun, but rapid is what I really need to get better at if I want to improve my game.
Anyway, my first task isn't doing the study plans. That'll be later. First, I'll be doing daily tactics training, using chess.com's Puzzle Rush, rated Puzzles training, and Puzzle Battle features. Today I'm going to focus on Puzzle Rush. Before this, I usually didn't do Puzzle Rush daily, just whenever I felt like it. I'm going to do it in Survival mode for the purpose of this plan, which is to improve, and I can't do that as effectively with a clock ticking and making me rush my responses (which, however might be the point of Puzzle Rush...). For the next week I will do Survival Puzzle Rush five times a day, recording my attempt scores here, along with the links so if you want to see the puzzles you can.
Before this, I didn't actually treat Survival as Survival and still did the puzzles fast because I have limited time to actually play chess and write this, but now I'll go slower and think about each puzzle more. My highest score was 44, but I'm going to reach for the stars and try to beat that score and get, lets say, 60. If I can get 60, I'll do something to celebrate. I don't know what yet, but I'll figure that out eventually. Procrastination is the way of life 
.
I think that Puzzle Rush is a very good way of improving tactical strength because it firmly ingrains basic patterns into your mind, and as the puzzles get more and more difficult, the patterns are combined and woven into situations that you might see in-game. It's a fun and useful way to get better, and I'm going to have a great time doing this!
Let's get started. Here's the recorded scores and links to the puzzles!
ATTEMPT 1: 39
https://www.chess.com/puzzles/rush/colorfulcake/5YxdyG
ATTEMPT 2: 40
https://www.chess.com/puzzles/rush/colorfulcake/4VoebY
ATTEMPT 3: 42
https://www.chess.com/puzzles/rush/colorfulcake/5Qu5dG
ATTEMPT 4: 38
https://www.chess.com/puzzles/rush/colorfulcake/5Qu5dG
I just realized how fast I've been going for the first four attempts. You can see how many mistakes I made that I shouldn't have, they were so obvious but I was sprinting through them. I'm going to calm down now and try to get the highest score I can get for the last one.
ATTEMPT 5: 38
https://www.chess.com/puzzles/rush/colorfulcake/5DHxZU
Seems like I can't get myself to slow down. I've been at this for hours, I'll do more tomorrow. Maybe I can get past my record then... I hope this plan helps me!
By the way, thanks to Excheqquer for giving me this idea. He's currently testing out the chess.com study plan and it is giving him success. He describes it in his blog, which you can find here (https://www.chess.com/blog/Excheqquer). We also compared our analysis of one of his games in one of my previous posts. You can find that here (https://www.chess.com/blog/colorfulcake/how-differently-do-a-1200-and-a-2000-think-game-analysis).
Thanks for reading, and I'll be back next time with updates on how I do!
