Road to FM - Advice on Plan??

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Avatar of Starblah

Hello,

I want to put myself on a road to FM (2-3 years) and my 10 year old son. My 9 year old son, I just want him to be a good player, maybe FIDE 1700+ in a few years.

I wanted to ask the forum on advice for my plan for this path, if I should change anything before putting in tons of hours.

Where I am - played bullet most of my life from 1997-present. When my son took up chess a few years ago, I started to learn more and try to get better in order to coach him. At age 8 or 9 he got 2nd in the state and was winning the final game but lost the end game with a blunder. He's around 1000 USCF.

In my own attempt to work on my game, I got chess.com blitz into 2250's, bullet 2400's (I don't have computer setup for that now, so I'm like 2350), and Rapid I did the most recently, just crossed 2400 somehow but Rapid is very weird, sometimes I lose to 2000's or under, sometimes 2350's are easy; I don't understand it but I do get cheated against a lot. Rapid is very weird.

I have a good fundamental understanding of chess from my Dad who played recreationally at Princeton and was around 1800-1900 FIDE. I mean I learned the basics of the game, controlling the center, piece development order, etc. He studied openings but I did not.

I can put in 40 hours of study of chess per week. I usually just mess around and play from pm to midnight but instead I can study.

My breakdown for study is Openings, Middlegame (bought Chess Structures and Art of Attack for intuition/understanding, then chess.com puzzles for tactics, and chessable course on calculation/vision), and End Game (Silman's Endgame Course).

I thought if I schedule out study of all these things, and after 1-2 months, then start going in person to the chess club to play both their classical tournaments and rapid (15 minute), that would be where to start.

What do you think of this plan and do you recommend any other path?
What discourages me is that in starting the chessable repetoire, it is just SO MUCH study/work to learn a single opening, like 1,000+ lines, I was wondering since my chess.com ratings are good already, could I continue and just focus on tactics/calculation and get better that way without all this opening study??

Very open to all your thoughts, thanks!