PapaShepherd's...New Plan

Fresh off of a depressing end to my Beginner 2 plan, I utilized the ChessGoals plan format to create something that fit where I feel motivation right now. I'll just call it my 'New' Plan. I want to eventually do the two Intermediate plans, but I needed a break from being obsessed with my Rapid and Puzzle ratings on chess.com! I love the simplicity of Matt's study plans and using those as a template made creating my own a fun task.

My plan consists of a weekly block comprising ~10 hours of chess study/games with add-on items if I finish a day's allotment and want to spend more time.

The bulk of my time is spent in two 'long' games on Lichess and then analysis of those games. I will play in the Classical section and shoot for games where I can average 45-60 seconds per move. It's not G/120, but I played a 20|30 game this week and felt like I had plenty of time.

A second piece of the weekly time is review of my typical opening lines on Chessercise.

The remainder of my weekly time will be on an Empirical Rabbit style tactics study plan. I am building sets of 50-70 problems on Chesstempo in defined blitz rating ranges between 900-1250. The goal is fast recognition of basic tactics.

Bonus time each week includes a smattering of blitz games, a more thorough (slow) study of Logical Chess Move by Move, other books I have on the shelf, etc. I have them ranked in order of priority, so I doubt I will get much past blitz games and Logical Chess each week.

Starting ratings that I'll track for this Plan:

Chess.com Blitz :: 764

Lichess Classical :: 1707? (provisional)

Off to the races.

Why was the end of your beginner plan depressing? Good luck, you are motivated!

If you check my thread on that plan, I kind of blew up and dropped a lot of rating points at the end - for both my Rapid and Puzzle ratings. After some reflection, decided I wanted to get away from those ratings for awhile.

You are using some ressources I did not know about. Chessercise looks interesting! Is there a seach function or is it only those courses from the popular menu you can choose?

That's cool that you are developing your plan; I dig it!

Its all about finding the right balance of challenging study that is still fun. Too easy and you don't learn and too hard and you hate life. I find myself going too far in either direction all the time.

If there is a way to search, I haven't figured it out yet! I've only been able to find the popular ones and then have started making a few myself.

First Lichess Classical game from earlier this week. A win where I was never in trouble, but could have made some better choices. My coach particularly chastised me for not castling sooner.

Game from today. I was very cramped in this game and never even developed my Queenside rook. My main glaring error was missing two pins on the same move - one I could have exploited but instead walked into another. My opponent bailed me out with his own blunder two moves latter.

Positives: Castled early (have been neglecting this). Generally a good opening but for taking with Nxd5 instead of exd5.

Improvements: Particularly in these slow games, look at every piece. The pin on move 20 that I missed and then walked into was something I should be able to spot.

That first game no offense but I would chastise you too. You had a basically decisive developmental/positional advantage if you just play 9. O-O but instead Be3?? and the game is almost even and you have to be careful not to become worse with that horrendous double isolated e pawn structure. Only reason you're not worse is because you're so far ahead in development. It's okay to make bad moves, but there needs to be a plan or reason behind it still, and then you learn why it was bad and fix it. This was just a one-mover. Be3 has no plan or reason I can see whatsoever?

More than tactics or openings, I think the biggest thing early intermediate players struggle with is forcing themselves to figure out a reason for moves and then of course fact-checking it/comparing it to alternatives that also have reasons to play them. If you don't have a good reason, I don't care it it's engine top line choice, you shouldn't play it as you don't understand it. That mindset will cost you points.

Game 2 you played better, but you still displayed a classic early intermediate mistake of "what can I get away with?" What do I mean? Well when white played 5 cxd5, the most natural move in the world is exd5. It puts a pawn back in the center, helps prevent e4, and opens your light squared bishop up. Black is already fully equal maybe dreaming of better soon. Nxd5?? is nearly losing. You lose 4 tempi and give white the full center! How is it 4 tempi? Well The pawn is still on e6 instead of in the center (d5), the knight gets booted back to f6 after e4, and now you have to play b6 and Bb7 to unlock your bishop when it's immediately unlocked after exd5. Perhaps we could classify it as 3 tempi since the bishop on c8 will still likely needs to move out at some point, but yeah either way that's not good. This ties in to my previous comment...what was the reason or the plan? None. You just "thought you could get away with it." Classic mistake. Stop playing like that and you'll gain 400 elo and I'm not exaggerating.

"Stop playing like that and you'll gain 400 elo and I'm not exaggerating."

If only it were that easy If it were, I would be 3000 instead of 2100

I appreciate the comments @dazaga7890 and you are spot on. However, as JD says, if only it were that easy.

One of the reasons I am slowing down my games is to be better at thinking things through like this and having plans. I can readily see in going over the games with my coach that some moves have no purpose and it's a sort of "what was I thinking" on a second look. Working to get better and I appreciate the tough love.

"Likely will throw a bit of a wrench in the first two Tactics batches as I will have longer than planned between repetitions, but it will all be fine in the end."

Will be totally fine! Life is a thing for all of us and thankfully doesn't ruin anything.

That was a wild game! Scary stuff!

Game from a few days ago. Made a mistake and a blunder in the middle game and never recovered. Missed the ensuing tactics.

Game from Week 3 on Saturday. This was in the DHLC Slow Tournament here on chess.com. Games are 60|30. This was the longest game of my life, a full 2.5 hours. I got stuck a bit in the middlegame. Lost my way but played the rest of the game vey well. Chess.com's new post-game rating feature gave me a 1600 for this one.

My coach really wants to play here instead of Lichess for ratings tracking. I had a tournament game for today so played that but also snuck in a 30min game last night that multiple toddler wakings derailed.

The tournament game went much better. My opponent unfortunately missed a hanging piece early on and thus the game wasn't as exciting as the first 60|30.