Training Update
Tonight I spent some time working through more of the class D section of Silman's Endgame Course. Most of my time was spent entertaining our dog, so I didn't get nearly as much done as I wanted even though my wife was working tonight.
I did my daily tactics training and have my rating hovering around 1900. I have improved my success rate by about 1% since I started back up the other week.
Last night I ended up finishing Stean's Simple Chess, and I have started to read Silman's Reasess Your Chess. I am going to follow his advice and read the first 52 pages, then read An Amateur's Mind, then come back to Reassess Your Chess. After Silman I'm not sure what I will read next. It will probably be Kmoch's Pawn Power in Chess. The choices are:
- Romanovsky's Middlegame Planning & Middlegame Combinations
- Kmoch's Pawn Power in Chess
- Euwe & Kramer's The Middlegame
- Soltis' Pawn Structure Chess
- Pachman's Modern Chess Strategy
- Euwe's Judgement & Planning in Chess
- Aagaard's 'Excelling' series
- Nimzovich's My System
- Tisdall's Improve Your Chess Now
For my training right now I try to get in 2 hours a night at least, usually after my wife and the dog have gone to sleep for the night. I try to work on a topic for between 1-2 hours in a session, then move on to another topic. My schedule is structured with a heavy emphasis on playing through master games right now, plus working on strategy, endgames, and mating patterns & tactics. Openings also get some time these days, but they still are the least emphasized area of my training. In addition I work on analzying my past games.
In the Spring I was getting in over the board games at least twice a week, which I think helped my game greatly and was a big reason for me jumping almost 300 points in the Spring. Once work calms down I plan on getting in weekly games again. I think it is vital because book knowledge isn't going to do you much good if you can't/don't apply it.
I still have an outside shot of making my goal of 1600 for the year. I started out at 1200, and made 1500 by June. I just need a couple good months of chess in November and December to make that final push. More work to be done. :)
