Are you a serious chess player? Do you have a study plan?

Hey guys, do you study chess? If you do what's your study plan? What's your chess story? I'm just curious. 

I started studying chess about three months ago. I knew the rules before then when I was younger but I never really played. I've been playing and studying chess for about 6 - 8  hours a day for the last 3 months and I've gotten a lot better. Why? My goal is to be an IM by 10 years time.  I'm currently 1680 on another site. I'll be playing my first OTB competition in February. So I'll know my chess rating in the new year after a lot tournament play. 

I have a folder called 'My Chess Study' on my  PC. It's divided into

1. Opening
2. Strategy
3. Tactics
4. Endgame
5. My Games

Opening : I pay very little attention to opening, for the simple reason I'm not good enough yet. I'm not losing my games based on opening so there's no need to do extensive study in openings. However I do have a small opening repertoire.

I play only 1. d4 as white because I like closed positions ( That might change but right now I like 1. d4) As black I play the  Nimzo Indian or Queen's Indian against 1. d4

Against 1. e4 I play Sicilian.

I use 'Fundamental Chess Openings' which I find is a good opening book that gives the ideas behind the opening moves. To practice the moves I use Chessable. It's a good opening training website. I don't use it often. I practice openings when after a game I didn't know what to play and wanted to see the theory so I can understand and remember what's meant to be played the next time I see it. I don't agree with mindless opening study at my level. 

Strategy : Probably one of the most interesting  topic in chess for me. I love studying strategy. I
use two books. Jeremy Silman's 'The Amateur's Mind' and Andrew Soltis 'Pawn Structure
Chess'. On Youtube I'm currently watching the tutorial video series on 'My System' by Aron
Nimzowitch (because I don't want to read 3 books on strategy it's a bit much at one time). Yeah, I really like learning chess strategy. Once I finish Silman's book I'll be going onto he's next other strategy book -''How to re access your chess''.

Tactics : I do lots of tactics. As much as I can. When I lose a game I get a little upset. So rather
than play and lose and play and lose. I take a break from playing online. I give myself an
exercise every time I lose. The exercise is I have to do 30 puzzles before I get to play my next
game. This really puts me in the mood to play and the negativity of the last game
is gone by then. Tactics really are so important. ** But their not the most important I think **

Endgame : I like studying endgame positions even though a lot of my games don't even reach
the endgame. A lot of my games are decided in the middle. But I know that one day I'll be
getting a lot better and I will need that endgame knowledge. I don't do too much endgame study but I do enough for my level. I have Jeremy Silman's 'Beginner to Master' Endgame book
and Jonathan Hawkins 'Amateur to IM'. This is enough. I'm currently at the Class 'B' chapter in
Silman's book and I've learned a lot.

Now I'd like to get to the most important folder that I have.

My Games : This as you can probably tell is where I keep a record of all my games. I have
two folders Win and Loss. When I started studying chess I was playing a lot of bullet and
blitz because I thought the more games I play the better I will get. This is not true at all. I
completely stopped playing short time controls and now I only play 15 min with 10s increment.
I need the 10 second increment so I don't lose on time essentially. I find 10s is the perfect
increment.

So, after I finish my game (win or loss) I download the PGN straight away and I go through the game in a chess software application that I have called Lucas Chess (Very good  app) I don't use an engine. I cycle through the game quickly and then I start from the beginning. I write a comment after every move I made. Every move.  I usually ask myself questions like 'Why did you play this variation?' 'What was your thought about this position?' 'Is this position critical?' 'What are the imbalances?' 'What' was your plan?' 'What was you opponent trying to do here?'

After I've annotated my game I try to find out where I went wrong in the opening. I use a database to see where the game no longer followed theory. Which is usually quite quickly. 
Only after I've done that (it all takes about 30 min) I analyse the game with the
engine so I can see where I went wrong *tactically*. Then once I find the inaccuracies, mistakes or blunders I use Lucas Chess to save the positions where I blundered and I add them to my Personal Tactics Trainer. This is where I can practice Tactics from my own games, so I don't make
them again. I usually wait a week before I do the tactics from the game so it's not so fresh in my
mind and I can assess the position properly. I usually end up with about 3-4 positions that I find each game which are important to study. **This is the most important part of my game**

Youtube : I have a number of different subscriptions to chess channels. My favourite is IM John Bartholomew by far. But everyone has their own favourite. I watch a lot of his standard games. I like Youtube for learning when I'm too lazy to read more of the book. Or even just for relaxing. 

Exercise : 

I was always very athletic when I was younger and I still am. I'm doing doing that much at the moment but I'm hoping to catch up over the winter. 

This is my story and it's for this reason that I believe I'm going to be an IM at the very least. Chess is the only passion I have ever had in my life. I used to be very lazy with my hobbies but I have such a strong will to be a good chess player. I think good will is a must to be a serious player. 

Do you have any advice for me? 

Thanks if you've gotten this far  

Patrick

I like ur plan   I also have similar  folders  on my computer with books in it and notes. But i dont have folders  for my games or for endgames. What i also have is folder called Tought process where i write down how to think well in the chess game and what r the things that i should focus on. So everytime i read something interesting  in a book or watch some chess video i write down the ideas and then try to use it in my game. What ive noticed is that if i dont focus fully  on following those principles and ideas that i know work how easily i fall back into my old bad chess habits and start playing badly. I think most chess players get stuck that way, they dont examine the way they think durning the game and then its hard to improve. Also what i think its important if u r being stuck at same raiting for a while that u r ok with that . As long as u keep working on ur game and trying to improve, something will click eventually and u will get to the next level . Im not really trying to become  chess master or anything but take that aproach with everything i do becouse its more fun that way  .Right?   

I think your advice is good. I like your mentality. If you do the right things it will eventually all come together. I have a notebook that I write small things on. Exactly as you do. Things I learn from videos and books go there. It's like a notebook of very important ideas and strategy's and my plans etc. Thanks for the reply. 

I'm really impressed by the thoroughness of your study plan.   How is it going so far?

Looks like the OP hasn't logged on since last November. His study plan looks quite good. Mine is similar, but I'll be updating it to make a few improvements based on his plan.

To the OP: if you do come back to the site and find this thread, when you finish Soltis's "Pawn Structure Chess", I highly recommend "Chess Structures: A Grandmaster Guide" by Mauricio Flores Rios. It covers some structures that Soltis doesn't, and gives more and clearer details on some that they both cover.

Thank you this is some helpful info.

Yes, i have a plan:

https://www.chess.com/blog/Die_Schanze/what-s-important-to-become-a-better-chess-player

older related articles in my blog:

https://www.chess.com/blog/Die_Schanze/my-improvement-plan

https://www.chess.com/blog/Die_Schanze/weekly-result-17-23-04-2017

No, I don't study hardly at all and have no plan whatsoever except to play and enjoy the game....studying too hard takes that away.

I wonder what happened to the Thylmanoid, seems he quit after doing all that plan , wasting time and money.

I think "i don't focus on openings" doesn't mean to do nothing on them at all. For me the best working approach is to get some kind of crash course and then try the opening online. After each long game or after a couple of blitz games i check the opening with my books. 

More than one time i had the approach with a total focus on openings, e. g. to get a grandmaster repertoire book, put everything into the chesspositiontrainer and memorize everything up to move 15 or 20...

I'm sitting in train or waiting for the train on train station something like 45 - 60 minutes each working day. I can use the time wise by doing calculation training, reviewing my games or i can waste that time by memorizing openings.

Hey guys,

I had to take a prolonged break from chess due to university. I'm studying chemical physics and I wasn't expecting the course work to be so arduous. The only chess I could fit in was watching Akobian lectures on YouTube and John Bartholomew standard chess games. I'm back now for the summer and I have the time again to pick up where I left off.