coriollis' beginner study plan

As boring as it sounds, plain vegetables & water before a chess session make me feel light and fresh, which gives me the most patience to try to calculate on games and puzzles. Conversely, bread, pasta and junk food make have the most negative impact, as they make me feel heavy and dizzy when trying to visualize moves, so I try to have most of my meal be vegetables before chess training.

W14D4 (Rapid):

• Daily
• Puzzles:  (better than yesterday; new routine is 3 3min rushes as warmup, 20 mins. survival and 20mins rated)
• Game:
  
  • https://www.chess.com/game/live/11042657087 (win)
    
    • Good opening.
    • (Mostly) very precise play
    • Must make sure I understand my opponent's move before I make my own.
      
      • When they played 14. Rd1 I immediatly thought "that doesn't do anything" and played 14... Be6? losing a pawn. I didn't stop to think they might be setting up a tactic. As Dan Heisman would tell me to ask myself before moving: Is it safe?

The diet tips are kind of what I have noticed too! Trying to avoid blood sugar spike and crash during a game.

W14D6 (Rapid):

• Daily
• Puzzles: 
• Games: Playing a local rapid tournament. So far 1.5/3 (games)

Week 13-14 overview:

Stats:

• Rapid: 1101 -> 1171 (+70)
• Blitz: 1008 (=)
• Daily: 1271 -> 1296  (+25)
• Puzzles: 1932 -> 1910 (-22)

Plas is to stick to rapid/slow chess for the next 2 weeks.

W15D1 (Rapid):

• Daily 
• Puzzles: 
• Games:
  • https://www.chess.com/a/397zwaR8zq9rE (loss)
    • Good opening.
    • Did not trade my inactive piece for their active one.
    • Took note of the tactics I missed.

W15D4 (Rapid):

• Daily 
• Puzzles: 
• Games: https://www.chess.com/a/2uP3nzgDkq9rE (loss)
  • Played a good opening.
  • Good time management.
  • Made weak pawn moves trying to attack a "pinned" pawn because of miscounting of attackers and defenders.
  • Went pawn-grabbing before completing my development and making sure my king was safe, because I made the moves I wanted to make before the moves I needed to make, and because of putting material above king safety.
  • Helped the opponent activate his pieces because of putting pawn structure above piece activity.

I know formatting is a mess, I apologize to anyone reading.

"Wants" and "needs" for moves sounds really interesting... could you elaborate or give a resource?

I just finished a blitz game, not too serious, which obviously was satisfying in a way, but I know was junk.  Could one be more circumspect and play those "needed" moves rather than have a bit of lighthearted fun?

** Edit.  seems you were referring to pinching pawn/s, which is not always wise... may we both learn to value king safety! **

I first read about the distinction beetwen the moves I "want" and the ones I "need" to make from Dan Heisman's A Guide to Chess Improvement (Chapter 2: thought process). Despite noticing that my opponent could grab pawns in fron of my king while also opening lines for their pieces to attack, and also knowing the most principled way to play would be to develop all my pieces instead of going pawngrabbing, I went for it before defending and developing.

In the same book, Heisman reccomends to play as slow time controls as you have time for (even 90min if possible) because it's the only way to really practice thought process (that's not to say I didn't benefit greatly from playing my blitz games as recommended in the begginer's plan!).

It's hard to resist material: just this week (oh, thank you Forum for granting me the privilege of annotating!) I grabbed rather than deliver mate, and boy if your opponent sees it she will punish you for making the wrong move.  But the moves we need are to complete development first: thank you, and thank you Mr Heisman et al.

I hope you are able to fast track getting wise to beginner tricks by playing that blitz.  It will be interesting where you land after the twelve weeks!

Actually I already finished my 12 weeks 😆 that's why I allow myself a little deviation from the original plan (especially playing less blitz), but thank you! I hope your 12 weeks and beyond are fun and fruitful!

Indeed, and these numbers look pretty good!

I cannot conceive not enjoying this program.

It is pretty great , and thank you

W15D5 (Rapid):

• Daily:
• Puzzles: 

  • 

    
    
• Games:
  • https://www.chess.com/game/live/11755411505 (win)
    • Played a not-so-good opening; I've taken note on how to play next time.
    • Felt very sharp, took all my opponent's pieces

W16D6:

• Played a slow game:
  • https://www.chess.com/a/32kt9Uivzq9rE (loss)
    • Did not play a very good opening, took notes of the best continuations
    • Unnecesarily traded a bishop for a knight in an open game
      • because I did not consider anything else, I played automatically
    • Could've started opening the board with the enemy king in the center, but didn't
      • Because I stubbornly wanted to attack a very well defended pinned pawn; i.e. did not evaluate my own threats objectively
    • Started to look for ways to advance my pieces without finishing my own development
      • Made the moves I wanted before the moves I had to make
    • When in tactical trouble, did not find ways to save material, intead going for an unnecesary desperado
      • Did not exhaust all posibilities when looking for a way out, because of a priori thinking I'd made an unsalvageable blunder.

Very bad game, I got impatient, neglected my development and did not use my time to look for all candidate moves. I'll need to take that more seriously next time. I will study this game again soon.

W16D7:

• Daily
• Puzzles
  • Instead of chesscom rated puzzles I've been solving Ivashchenko's tactics for beginners, but they're not that easy! and I haven't been takin them too seriously :/ so from now on must remind myself to take up to 10 mins. per puzzle if necessary, but really try to get as close to 100% correct as possible. As for survival, maybe I can set a lower limit of time to spend on each puzzle (e.g. 5 minutes) to force myself to analyze everything.
• Study: To continue endgame study, will add 100 Endgames and the endgame chapter from the Soviet Chess Primer.

W17D3:

• Daily
• Puzzles
• Games:
  • https://www.chess.com/game/live/12759338649 (draw)
    • Managed to find a draw in a losing position.
    • Opponent played a not-too-good opening, I could've played more actively to try and punish them.
    • Missed many opportunities to play e5 and open the diagonal for my bishop, so after my opponent played it themselves my bishop remained ocked in for the rest of the game.
    • Blundered a piece (when in a little time trouble) because of not looking for my opponent's captures.
    • Did not calculate lines as far as I could've resulting in missed opportunities (in part because of the time control).

W17D5:

• Daily
• Puzzles
• Games:
  • https://www.chess.com/game/live/12942854075 (win)
    • Got a good position from the opening.
    • Transformed it into a bad position because of miscounting attackers and defenders (got lucky after that).
  • https://www.chess.com/a/rRFS2Nknq9rE (win)
    • Got a good position from the opening.
    • Did not look for captures, losing some opportunities and almost getting myself into trouble.

I often feel like I need to rush my analysis on my games and unsurprisingly it turns out faulty. I've gotten in contact with some other chess.com users to play slower games.

I need to spend more time reading these chess.com forum posts. Love the quick, daily updates! Seems like a great accountability tool. Mind if I steal the idea?

Not at all, please go ahead!

Haven't posted in a while, figured I'd make an update.

As I've talked about before I decided to play only slow (30+30 or slower) for a while. Because games are longer and deserve a more detailed analysis, I've had less time (and energy ) to update here.  Since april 10th I've played 6 slow games, the most recent today, and I've yet to win one 😂 It's quite draining to lose so many games, but it's forcing me to confront my weaknesses face to face:

• I often lose in winning positions, because I'm not acknlowedging fully that the more I'm winning, the more I need to think about defence (as I read in one of Heisman's books)
• I've twice had continuity problems (as Levy Rozman calls them) in which I notice an opponent's threat and forget about it in the next turn.
• Sometimes I allow big simplification of pieces while down a pawn because of tilt, making it easier for my opponent to win.
• Often I find myself in quiescent positions and have on idea what to do. I guess that will change with experience and study.
• And without exception, every move I make instantly (without looking for forcing moves for my opponent or me) either allows a winning opportunity to pass or (more often) loses the game for me.

This are the main things I'll have to improve on to try and go forward. I will keep playing slow games until May 16th, then I'll probably have a rapid week or a blitz week, but I'll decide on that later 👌.

Also, it's been a bit uncomfortable to play classical on chess.com, as results affect my rapid rating. A coach would probabl tell me to don't worry about my rating, but after playing the games I've already scheduled I'll switch to lichess for slow games.

This is my slow game collection, if someone's interested: https://www.chess.com/c/23MNb1LqC (warning, horrifying blunders).

It's been rough, but as GM Jesse Krai would say, this is also a process of self-discovery, and if my objective is improvement there's probably not a better method than having my butt handed to me 😂 (and analyzing of course)