Help with study plan

I have about 5 hours a day that I can spend on just chess as of now, and have no problem doing so , I would like a study plan (and book reccomendations), preferably one that worked for you in the past . As of now I just study tactics from chesstempo (about 1610 std on that site) and as well from other sources , and look over GM games from chessgames.com and try to figure out why the moves are made. Also playing and analyzing games on this site . Also, is OTB play a complete neccessity ? Because playing Otb will be hard for me but I will if it is what I have to do . I just want a systematic plan of what to do So I use my time the best way possible . I know this may be a dumb question because others may have asked before  or I could  have looked it up but I would rather get opinions from here . By the way my standard rating on this site is about 1410 , I know its hard to compare to an actual rating but it is a general idea . Thanks 

http://www.chess.com/article/view/study-plan-directory

Buy the Amateurs Mind by Jeremy Silman and read for 2 hours a day, spend an hour doing tactics or atleast do 10 standard problems a day on chesstempo (make sure to not move until you are completely sure about the answer), buy Silman's Complete Endgame Course by Jeremy Silman and spend an hour a day going over every section (ideally go through this book twice so everything sticks), lastly spend an hour a day playing atleast 2 15 minute games here or OTB  (1 30 min game would also work). Once you reach a higher rating (around 1600-1800) we can talk about stepping up your plan.

No matter what your level or how motivated you feel MAKE SURE to do the 10 tactics everyday. Tactics are a necessity to get anywhere long term. You want the tactical edge on your opponents, not the other way around.

Take a few minutes to read the starting comment on this forum

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/improvement-in-chess-according-to-elo

That sounds like a good (and amitious) plan. When you say a 15-minutes game, I assume that mean each person gets 15 minutes? (I can't believe I don't know the answer to that.)

Would the Tactics Trainer on this site suffice, or are you recommending paying for the premium on CT?

What would be your recommendation after 1600-1800? I'm saving a copy of this because your advice sounds very good, and I know I'll forget to ask for your advice if I don't do it know.

@OP, you say you don't want to play OTB, then what kind of time-control do you want to improve online ? Because I think the training has to be different if you want to improve in Daily chess, vs. standard 45 45, vs. standard 30 0, vs. blitz for example.

Yes, "15-minute game" means two players get 15 minutes for a game.

A good book to read around 1800 is My System by Nimzowitsch. I've also heard good things about Pachman's Modern Chess Strategy, but I don't know whether it's suitable for players around that level.

 @hicetunc I would like to play OTB and I know that is what would garner the most improvement ,and I enjoy otb tons more than online it is just getting to an otb tournament is very hard for me, and I want to aim the improvement towards longer time controls . @Rogue , I do a lot of tactics daily , but as far as chesstempo vs chess.com , id rather not pay , and instead buy a book (which i'm guessing will be better?) . 45 / 45 seems to not be an option aswell  because finding a game(atleast for me) takes near a half an hour  or longer in itself . @chicken Monster , yes that is what he means by 15m.

First off i wanted to say going over games on chessgames.com is a really great thing and the OP is really doing himself a service looking at master games. I didnt address this in my original response. However I personally wouldn't put it in the study plan yet, not until the higher levels.

You don't have to pay any money on chesstempo to get unlimited tactics. Not only that it has a standard and a blitz setting to the tactics problems chess.com's trainer doesn't have. It also doesn't reward you for getting just part of a tactic right the way chess.com does, basically the tactics are held to a higher standard and guessing is not rewarded.

Okay after 1800 uscf I'd suggest pawn structure chess by andy soltis 2 hours a day, still an hour of tactics or atleast 10 problems a day on chesstempo, A combination of Endgame Strategy by Mikhail Shereshevsky and Winning Chess Endgames by Lev Alburt for an hour a day, and switching off between going through a master/grandmaster game and playing a 30 minute game a day.

After that the course would continue to evolve, but once you've read and thoroughly understand Pawn Structure Chess by Andy Soltis I would say you can begin to study opening repertoires (like the gm repertoire series, whichever openings you happen to favor), since you will actually be equipped to understand them. If you get through Endgame Strategy and Winning Chess Endgames and understand them well enough to be able to solve all of the exercises in them, then it's time to replace them with Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual.

After a certain point (lets say becoming 2000) you want to devote a full hour to studying the games of grandmasters/masters. Pretend you're the winning side and try to see how many of their moves you can match, I'd say keep a piece of paper next to you and write out what you think the best move is for each move. Once you have gone through the game, you can check with an engine if you or the GM made the better move and what the best move was. Also if you want to flip through a bunch of games and just spend 5-10 seconds per move that is also a strategy that might have something to it. If you are able to guess more than 50% of the moves in 5-10 seconds I think maybe it's worthwhile. If not I'd try to spend more time on a single game. Trying to memorize quality GM games is another strategy that has actually been known to have good results. If you can memorize 20 gm games you will definitely reap rewards (if youre good enough to understand the games, will have to have completed pawn structure chess definitely).

I think this about sums up my general training recommendations. I wonder if anyone will have the motivation to make it through the first 5 hour daily training program I laid out.

5 hours a day sounds like a grueling task. I would suggest you start by implementing a shorter routine, try to hold it for a couple weeks, and if it works, expand it.

As far as specific recommendations go, I would suggest :

- going through a tactics primer, to help categorize tactical patterns (for example this one, but there are many)

- when you've finished it, try your hand at ChessTempo, mixed mode, for ~1hr/day (that would be 10-30 puzzles, depending on your current skill level)

- I would strongly recommend to play one serious game (45/45) per week, and try to analyze it by yourself, then submit your analysis in the forums or to a coach - a good place to get quality games without meeting cheaters is the Team 4545 league,

Then, there are many other things you can do, including going through instructive game collections or using some kind of systematic study tools, but the real test is to implement some kind of lasting routine, not something that would burn you out in a couple of days...

@hicetunic I am ok with 5 hours Time tends to pass quickly for me if I am working on something ,  and thanks for the advice as well as the links . Rogue king aswell you put alot of effort into helping and I appreciate .

Thanks much to you guys for this great post, which I am saving. I don't have five hours per day for chess like the OP, but I can shave it down.

Questions.

(1) Why Chess Tempo (unpaid version) over Tactics Trainer, or does it really matter?

(2) If you don't mind the fee for full paid Chess Tempo, will you gain anything worthwhile? It's farily inexpensive I believe.

(3) Why not more emphasis on tactics books and books of annotated GM games at an early stage? Maybe Amateur's Mind is about tactics -- I don't know.

Amateurs mind is about the middlegame/positional ideas aimed towards the 1400-2000 player, from what I have read , mainly talking about imbalances planning and evaluation . The paid version of tempo shows you more variations you can look at after finishing a problem , and gives you access to a "guess the move" feature for going over certain GM games, but I think this feature is fairly new to the site so not sure how good it is , aswell as a couple other things . 

ChessTempo (even in his free version) is superior to chess.com TT in many ways :

• the puzzle selection is better (all puzzles come from real OTB games, rather than a bunch of book puzzles, corr. puzzles, studies, etc.)
• you have the choice between three solving modes (without timer, taking into account time and mixed), 'mixed' being a unique set of problems, as it mixes attacking and defensive problems, making the puzzles much closer to a real-game situation,
• the scoring and grading systems are better (too much to say here, but for example, your answer isn't considered wrong if you find mate in 6 instead of mate in 3)
• the comments left by the users and the tags are of better quality
• customer service is very quick and excellent, even if you're not premium, you'll get your every question answered in a timely and professional manner by someone who knows what he is talking about
• there's no cheating, so the rating scale is not marred by people who found a glitch in the TT

As for the paying version of ChessTempo, it gives access to other very valuable features, including :

• an excellent database and opening tree (way better than chess.com's and regularly updated)
• a GuessTheMove database (~150 games and growing)
• an endgame trainer
• very detailed statistics
• customisable puzzles sets (want to focus your training on forks in 2 moves with less than 16 pieces left on the board, that's possible on ChessTempo)

Only advantage of chess.com's TT I can see is that it's on chess.com, so you benefit from the 'one-stop-shop' convenience.