what is your chess training philosophy? I have a lot of time and am trying to increase my daily chess workout to go from a B-rated to an A-rated.
Extreme Chess Training
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@mcfischer
This is a work in progress, but here is what I have so far...
The program is going to consist of 3 phases, each phase lasting 60 days. The first phase will focus on tactics and the following phases will be on the endgame and on strategy. At the end of each phase, I will participate in a tournament to help gauge my progress. I am compiling positions and content to go along with the program, but I have just recently started doing this and it will take a while.
Right now I am on week 1 of the tactics phase, and things are going well. A draft of the schedule looks something like this:
Monday
Tactics Trainer - consists of doing 1 hour at chesstempo.com
Tuesday
Play a standard game and analyze it afterwards
Wednesday
Stoyko Tactics - consists of doing 1 hour of positions from Imagination in Chess. These are tough, so taking up to 15 minutes per position is not unusual. I am also using a tactics checklist based on Heisman's 'Seeds of Tactical Destruction' Novice Nook.
Thursday
Play and analyze
Friday
Speed Tactics - Consists of doing 1 hour of easy tactics. I am using positions from Bain's Chess Tactics for Students. The idea is to do as many as you can in 1 hour. I am averaging about 120 positions per hour from the Bain problem set.
Saturday
Core Tactics - consists of doing positions from the Alburt's Chess Training Pocketbook.
Sunday
Open day - idea is to have fun, take a break or work on any one of the exercises above as extra credit.
Join the Extreme Chess Training program group @ http://www.chess.com/groups/home/extreme-chess-training