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Hello, Rising Buddies! I recently read a blog on how to "Finally Improve." If you are like me, studying takes time and it seems more fun to try and learn by playing. But we all know that to really improve, we must study some. The original blog post is at https://www.chess.com/blog/TillG/lets-finally-improve and was posted by TillG of Germany. It is a great post which I recommend to everyone. TillG also wrote a follow-up post on the blog at https://www.chess.com/blog/TillG/training-routine-update. I am going to give my own little take on improving for those of us rated under 1100 in a series of posts. Comments are quite welcome! Some of you may know I practice sports psychology in Colorado, USA (along with marriage therapy - marriage is somewhat like a sport ). Like a lot of things we wish to improve about ourselves, we need to put time and effort on the task. We all know that studying is work. TillG suggests a few steps that are simple and can help make some real strides. First is to warm-up. How on Earth do you warm-up in chess? Stretch out? Sometimes we stress out . As TillG suggested, you can use Chess.com's Puzzle Rush. Personally I have found Puzzle Rush to be an excellent way to improve your thinking. I moved up about 125+ rating points after working 100+ Puzzle Rush exercises in one day. I was waiting for an appointment and had some extra time. My cell (mobile) phone was handy and I made some good use of the downtime. I really recommend you start each playing session with at least FIVE Puzzle Rush exercises. Another activity that can serve as a great warm-up is Solo Chess. Have you tried it? Have you ever heard of it? It starts out very easy and builds in difficulty. Warm-ups traditionally start slow and build. Solo Chess does that well. ONE or TWO complete Solo Chess exercises added to the Puzzle Rush exercises would serve as a great warm-up! Try it! Post if it works for you or not. Such exercises do not take a lot of time! Post any comments or critiques.

Welcome everyone to the Rising Buddies group. To help all of use to move up the rating latter -- one of the things to do is play in small tournaments with others with ratings under 1000. Please consider entering the Ruy Lopez tournament. The tournament starts after the first three moves in the Ruy Lopez opening. Each player will get to learn how to play the Ruy Lopez and defend against it. The Ruy Lopez is an opening for white that is basically simple, played by grandmasters. It is a terrific system that can be easily mastered by beginners and is 'open' system that does not require memorizing 15 or so moves. https://www.chess.com/tournament/u1000-learn-the-ruy-lopez-fast-and-small Jim Fox, Ph.D. JollyOleFox