How I study chess (beginner, 29 yrs old, 900 ish)

Cheers guys,

I'm 29 years old and I've discovered that I enjoy haressing queens on a board around 3 weeks ago on 1st of July 2012. My dad beat me in 6 games or so. I'm a competitive person so after that all I wanted to do was to learn chess in order to be able to beat him. After 2 weeks I've managed to do it but. If I bring my A game I can beat him hard but if I continue like this in 1 month I won't have any problem.

Now I'm passionate about the game and I want to study it. I'm aware that I won't become an IM but I hope someday I'll reach a level where I can enjoy a good chess game.

My goal is to gradually become batter at it. I have 2 hours / day for chess. Here's how I spend them now: 1 hour tactics on  and 1 hour playing 30 min games (next day analyzing them).

Also, I have all the books listed here and I plan to study the first six till the end of this year. I have full membership and by the end of this year I'll study all the articles and videos mentioned in the study plan for beginners.

My question is: would you divide this time (2 hrs/day) different? What helped you the most in the beggining phase? 

EDIT 1: a lot of answers from this thread are due to the fact that I've made an error in the title regarding my age (2 I/O 29)

You're two years Old? You must be a genius!

29, missed it in the title. But it's corect in the post. Thanks for the compliment anyway

Good plan.

Maybe I'd do 1 day play & analyze (with fresh memories of the game) and next day general study&training, but if you find it works ok for you the way you do it at the moment, no need to change anything

Well, I must say this is refreshing:  a beginner who's just looking to improve gradually and isn't setting out to be a GM in 6 months.  We don't see that kind of thing too often around here. 

The way you're dividing up your time sounds fine to me...although I can't imagine too many 30-min games getting played in an hour!  I think you mainly should play a lot when you're first starting out anyway.

(Btw you can correct your title [even though woody's probably gonna get mad at me for ruining his--or her--joke].  Go to your home page and scroll all the way down to the bottom of "My Recent Activity" to where it says "Manage All Content."  Punch onto that, then hit the EDIT thingie on the right of whichever thread you want to change, and you can make the correction.)

I should post more often in forums, I've learned a lot. Thanks guys.

@hicetnunc: I will give it a try and see what happens. What I love most about chess is that it's very easy to track your progress (accuracy in solving tactics, number of blunders/games). I've noticed that if I sleep more hours and I'm fully rested I play much better.

 @AndyClifton: I prefer 30 min games and I consider them to be too fast sometimes. I've tried blitz and more rapid games but I don't like them, not for me. Also, I hope you saw that I don't dare to dream at a IM title. GM, maybe if I have seven lives, I'll give it a try in my second one :)

May I recommend my free program, GuessTheMove (https://sites.google.com/site/fredm/). Even if you select another method, your study time should include playing over master level games, trying to understand why the moves are played.  This is the fastest way to see/study many realistic positions (quiet and dynamic) and get a feeling/intuition about where on the chessboard to put your attention and which moves are reasonable.

@fredm73: thanks for the link, I'll take a look at the site. As I've mentioned above, I will read the first 6 books from the link. The third one is “Logical Chess: Move by Move” by Irving Chernev. At the moment I feel that I could improve my game by taking care of other aspects of my game: paying attention at back rank mates (I got beaten a lot like this lately), get a decent sleep each night (currently I sleep 5, 8 will do the trick) and analyzing my lost games (I don't like to do it but I have to if I want to pass the 900 level). If I solve this 3 issues I'll take out another ace from my sleeve :)

-kenpo-, thanks for your kind words but at the moment I'm just trying to get better. I can't join a club as my job implies travelling a lot and I hope that next year I'll move to UK. At the moment my goal is to reach a rating over 1160 on chess.com (average of the moment) by 1st of January 2013 (6 month since the beginning of studying chess). This will make me very happy. After this will see what's next. 

With this activity plan and maybe a little theory on the side, I don't think you'll have any problems transcending 1200 within the suggested timeframe. Looks to me like you're doing all the right things.

Best wishes

How do you highlight things like that? I can't.

That's a secret of a 2 years old prodigy :)

But I'll share it with you: copy/paste the name from the thread. Put "@" in front of the name and write the reply. Simple

I looked at this because I thought the player was two years old.

Like my son started to learn at 2 1/2 years old. He loved moving his horsies. Here he made three Knight moves on the board.

Well?

@Woodshover: Not the name from the quoted content, the name from the header of the post.

You can even do less tactics each day--15-30 minutes is plenty for your brain to absorb. Also be aware that chess skill often increases by leaps and bounds...and then levels off for awhile, only to jump up again. It's usually not steady improvement. Some people get discouraged by that. 

I'd highly recommend Bobby Fisher Teaches chess, specifically because of its unique "programmed learning" format.  You will absorb it and apply it to your games VERY quickly.

If you want to understand chess start with the end!

Endgame is boring, but is really important to get better.

But it is booring, so it work, but it is booring. You get the picture. :-)

I wouldn't suggest studying books or analyzing games just yet. All you need for now is pattern recognition. Play lots of 5 or 10 min games and do a lot of tactics trainer. If you get crushed quickly, look up your game in the opening explorer, that way you will learn about all sorts of traps and openings errors, and without even knowing you will get to know lots of different openings. Only once you reach 1300-1400 is it worth it to start studying books. I'd recommend Silman's How to Reassess your chess and his endgame book.

Tactic trainer and games... Maybee a good start. But mating with rooks and queens. and simple endgame like opposition. Is still good to know. And will get lot of points. But yeah the real simple endgame stof. :-)

1. Basic Tactics Book - need a book recommendation.

2. Basic Openings Book - need a book recommendation, maybe Horowitz or Fine's book.

3. Silman's Endgame Book (just the first few sections for lower rated players)