How to effectively study chess

Those work well, how often should I do them like in what time frame?

Bobblehead wrote:

Those work well, how often should I do them like in what time frame?

 you should do tactics daily, and avoid big pauses. the more you do daily, the better. persistence is more important than the amount though, so even a little every day is better than a lot but infrequently. and beware of burnout, it's the worst thing you can do for your improvement because it kills your motivation, and without that it's impossible to keep going.

I did 200-400 problems daily on CTS for the first two years. which amounts to 100K+ tactical problems, and has been extremely useful. that's roughly 2-4 hours a day. -the amount of problems you can stomach a day is heavily dependent on how accurately you solve, and how much other stuff you have in your life. an hour a day might be a good starting point.

for other kinds of training, I'm a firm believer in hands-on training on a board. anything you want to learn, work it on board over and over and over again. move those pieces until they wear out. getting the knowledge is only 1% of the work, then you need to drill it over until you can do it in your sleep, drunk or dead. reading about it simply isn't enough.

I see books mostly as distraction and procrastination, which allows us to slack off from real training which is overwhelmingly laborous, tedious and even painful. of course you first need to obtain the knowledge somewhere before you can train it, but other than that, treat books more as entertainment than training. hardly any of us has really studied a single book thoroughly, or even read them. and that applies to masters as well. we simply scratch the surface and forget even that very soon. if we had studied one endgame book, one opening book and one tactics book thoroughly, we'd all be pretty damn good. but it never happens, because the human mind is inherently lazy and avoids doing the hard part at all costs. we simply skim the book, or stop at page 30, and leap for the next interesting book we just bought. pretty soon you'll have 100+ books, none of which you know from cover to cover like you should.

That is great advice, I really do understand what you are saying. You said you did 200-400 per day on CTS what is CTS? Thank you every one for commenting on this thread, please continue to post as I know that there is not just one way to study.

I agree that consistent tactics training is a must. I got stomped 3 games in a row today on FICS losing to huge tactical oversights. Spent a few minutes doing tactics problems and I played so much better the next game. It just gives you confidence and cuts down on your calculation time so much.

Yea i noticed that

Tactics training will help you improve but the real improvement is only likely to come when you use what you have been practicing. Play as often as you can, if you cannot find an opponent play a computer. By "play a computer" I don't mean play Fritz or Rybka, they will slaughter you and you will feel depressed. I have a couple of stand alone computers that make good sparring partners because they make tactical errors.

Also look at every game you play afterwards. You do not need to do a full analysis at this level. Just look for the tactical errors that happened - where you or your opponent blundered, where you or your opponent missed an opportunity.

Bobblehead wrote:

That is great advice, I really do understand what you are saying. You said you did 200-400 per day on CTS what is CTS? Thank you every one for commenting on this thread, please continue to post as I know that there is not just one way to study.

Check out this site: http://chess.emrald.net/

(Chess Tactics Server)

Bobblehead wrote:

That is great advice, I really do understand what you are saying. You said you did 200-400 per day on CTS what is CTS? Thank you every one for commenting on this thread, please continue to post as I know that there is not just one way to study.

 CTS (chess tactics server) http://chess.emrald.net/index.php

don't get sucked into the ratings racket, but focus on accuracy instead. in the long run, you'll get more bang for the buck. if you aim for a high rating instead, you'll get fast improvement at first, then hit a wall. with high accuracy the progress is slower but continuous. the optimal point to highest rating is about 68% accuracy, meaning 1 wrong and 2 correct out of every 3 problems. which is almost pure guessing, and also the reason why the improvement stops. the initial fast improvent is mostly due to getting used to the system, not tactical improvement. train for improvement, not vanity.

and it's definitely true that people learn differently, and one way of training doesn't necessarily work as well for everybody. so adjust all your training however you see fit, just be sure that the motivation isn't natural laziness nor vanity. physical pain (headache, nausea) and exhaustion after training usually tells you that you're on the right track. letting yourself off easy usually means zero progress.

always remember to have fun as well though, or you'll lose motivation and stop. it's impossible to train hard if you're not having fun. it's no different from physical exercise, which btw greatly increases your ability to torture yourself with chess training. pain is your friend, as are blood, sweat and tears. (this is why there are so many crazy, obsessive nutters getting good at chess, they can push harder.)

I always download the pgn file of my completed games and study them in bookup. As I usually play about the same openings I've specialised in two openings(one for white and one for black.

mvh Fredrik