Intense Chess Before School Starts

I have about 2 and a half weeks until school starts again and I really want to get my hands dirty with chess while I can.

Currently I'm 1460 rated OTB, but I hope to get quite a bit higher as fast as I can. I have an opening repertoire pretty much set, but I have yet to go through a lot of games and really understand the openings, I basically just know the first 6-10 moves in all the openings I play. I know some basic end game stuff, but I need to work on that. So for the next 2.5 weeks I've been thinking of following this daily schedule:

3 hours going through annotated games and trying to understand the reasoning for the choices that are made. Feel I need to invest quite a bit of time here since there are a lot of variations to go through and I really want to have a better feel for how I should continue my openings into the middle and later the late game. I have quite a few books from the starting out series which should be good for this.

1 hour tactics trainer. I feel I am at least reasonable at this since my rating here on chess.com is over 1800 in TT which  I believe shows that tactics are a relatively strong part of my game.

2 hours endgame study. Will be using Silman's book and trying to get through as much as I can.

1 hour playing 15|10 live chess here on chess.com. Don't really have any people I can meet up with who are at my level, so I think 15|10 chess will have to do. I feel like I don't learn as much from faster blitz so prefer that time control.

So that's 7 hours a day basically. I'm guessing I will watch chess videos and stuff aswell and probably play more some days, but that's what I will be aiming for at least.

Does this sound like a good plan? Is there something I'm forgetting?

p.s. hope this is the right section for something like this!

Pretty solid regimen!  Very encouraging to see that you're spending more time looking at annotated games + tactics + endgames than dithering about with openings (a notoriously inefficient way to improve for somebody at your current strength level)

Only thing I find missing here is a feedback loop (requires a stronger human player, NOT an engine!!! - this could be a relatively stronger friend, coach, people on this forum etc.) to critique your game losses and point out things that are not obvious to you about your move selection/choices etc.)

There are a ton of debates in these forums about "self study" vs. "getting external help " but honestly, if you really want rapid gains, having somebody poke and prod at your recent games is incredibly beneficial.  If the public forums seem hit-and-miss for good game critique, join up one of the many groups that really do a great job of offering constructive advice about your game.

pretty good

Thanks for answering guys! And thanks for the tip about having a feedback loop. Seems like a really good idea and something I'll start working on.

if you want you can send your games to me and I'd give you my feedback. I'm 1784 OTB

Wow thanks a ton! I might take you up on that offer!

no prob

You'll pick up openings when going through master games. As long as you research the various lines and think about why the moves are played, you'll learn openings and find out how they continue to the middlegame and beyond.

Yeah I feel like I'm learning a lot from looking at annotated games and trying to understand them.

A question about that though. Does anybody know a good method for choosing which games to look at? I mean if I really wanted to I could be stuck looking at nothing but scotch games for weeks. I really want to go through games indepth, but if I "have to" go through so many I won't have time for that. Should I maybe skip a few openings, ie the danish gambit (I answer 1.e4 with e5) and others... maybe even the torre, colle, london, trompowsky and just try to learn nimzo and queen's indian (my two main answers to d4) and try and convert the knowledge I get into those other openings?

I mean I really don't want to focus too much on openings, but I'm just having trouble finding the time to look at all the annotated games I want to.

One thing I've learned about annotated games is to go over the ancient ones (pre-1900s ) first and work your way up.  It is tempting to pick games where they play your favorite opening but do those "later" AFTER you get done with some of the classics as strategy remains strategy no matter what opening you are playing.

Start with Morphy and move your way up.  Also => make sure you are reading "instructive annotated" games meant for club players as opposed to some "my best games" memoir as the author might not have intended for it to be a club player's instructional book.

For example : Chernev's Logical chess, most instructive games of chess , Euwe's Chess Master vs. Chess Amateur and Weeramantry's Best Lessons of a Chess Coach are great books with tons of instructional content that are not intimidating at all and meant to really help the club player.

Watch that you don't over work your brain... I have done that... then you practicly loose every game that you play... sad but true...

Thanks shivsky, I'll start looking into those books now straight away!

And yeah micah I have to be careful about that, it's something I've done in the past aswell, but hopefully I can keep it at an intense but still healthy pace ;)