My 6 Month Plan

Hello all. I learnt the rules of chess around February this year. Between then and late April I did nothing much but play my dad and other school friends at a low standard. When it came to June, I decided to join my local chess club. This helped me improve a lot and I plucked up the courage to enter my first tournament in September. I played in the under 105 ECF (1488 FIDE) section and came joint first with a respectable score of 7/10. At the same time, a local player rated approximately 2100 FIDE very generously offered me coaching, free of charge, once a week. This coaching is not intense but I feel like I learn something every week. We cover things such as bishop vs knights and tactics. I play in a team for my club, normally on board 2 or 3. After my initial period of prosperity, I feel like I have plateaued recently. I played poorly in both 100+0 and 10+5 tournaments in the past few months and I feel like I am not making much progress at all. The final straw came on Friday night when I drew against a player in the team lower than mine at the club- it was a horrendous game. I have not used the past 9 months in the right way to benefit my improvement; I studied books that were way ahead of my level because I had no guidance to begin with. Now I feel like I have plenty of help around me and I have decided to devise a plan to help me for the next 6 months, commencing January 1st 2018:

month 1:
logical chess 3x per week
silman's endgame course 2x per week
chess tempo 2x per week
lichess 10+0 maximum 2x per week (if tactics score is over 80%)
daily chess on chess.com (3 days) throughout the month
30+0 once a fortnight

month 2:
silman's endgame course 2x per week
chess tempo 2x per week
lichess 10+0 maximum 2x per week (if tactics score is over 80%)
daily chess on chess.com (3 days) throughout the month
30+0 once a fortnight

month 3:
silman's endgame course 1x per week
amateur's mind 1x per week
chess tempo 3x per week
lichess 10+0 maximum 3x per week (if tactics score is over 90%)
daily chess on chess.com (3 days) throughout the month
30+0 once a fortnight

month 4:
silman's endgame course 1x per week
amateurs mind 1x per week
chesstempo 3x per week
lichess 10+0 maximum 3x per week (if tactics score is over 90%)
daily chess on chess.com (3 days) throughout the month
30+0 once a fortnight
opening study 1x per week

month 5:
silman's endgame course 1x per week
my system 1x per week
chess tempo 3x per week
lichess 10+0 maximum 3x per week (if tactics score is over 90%)
daily chess on chess.com (3 days) throughout the month
30+0 once a fortnight
opening study 1x per week

month 6:
silman's endgame course 1x per week
my system 1x per week
chess tempo 3x per week
lichess 10+0 maximum 3x per week (if tactics score is over 90%)
daily chess on chess.com (3 days) throughout the month
30+0 once a fortnight
opening study 1x per week

This is not a final plan but I believe it is close to what I want it to be. If you have any advice or questions please feel free to leave a post. Thank you.

You can buy it on Amazon or New In Chess. I guess plenty of other sites or stores sell it too, as it's pretty well-known.

I also learned the rules of chess in February. I just started playing people at my school and playing the computer. For the past few months I have been doing tatics and the lessons here. For the last month I have stopped playing 1 minutes games. It won't pair me up with anyone.

I would like to know why you choose this books, one by one. on the other side, you are planning x sesions per week, but how many hours or games or whatever per sesion?

Okay, sure. I chose Irving Chernev's Logical Chess because I have seen it mentioned almost everywhere as the go-to book for beginners. It introduces key strategic concepts and offers a window into the master's mind. It will ease me into the process quite nicely. Next, I chose Silman's Complete Endgame Course because it is easy to use- it's like an endgame bible, of sorts. I won't improve if my endgames aren't up to scratch. Thirdly, The Amateur's Mind further develops key strategic ideas and suggests the flaws of a beginner's thought process during the game. Finally, Nimzowitsch's My System. It's a classic- and for good reason. If Silman's Endgame Course is the Bible of endgames, then My System is the Bible of strategy. Would you suggest any other books? Have I made any poor choices?

 

To answer your next question: I would like to say I will be flexible with the plan to meet my social life's needs etc. but I would guess '1x' of Chesstempo would be about 20/30 minutes or until I feel like I'm not making any progress. '1x' of lichess 10+0 is just one or two games, depending on how I feel. '1x' of opening study will only be about 20 minutes. Finally, '1x' of any of the books will be until I complete a section of the book. For example. one game in Logical Chess or a chapter of My System. Again, if you feel I'm doing anything wrong please let me know.

I´m not the right person to suggest you any chess book, sorry. But I was very interested in WHY you choose these ones.

But generally:

1. You have to set you clear goals for a concrete time-frame. Your goal or goals have to be measurable, 

Ok, you have a plan for the next 6 month. But what are your goals for this date?

Usually in sports you make your annual (or different length) plan thinking about the most important competition or competitions (it depends on the sport), I would suggest you to do the same if it fits you... What is going to be the most important tournament in 2018 or in the first six month? 

Then you make your plan, so that you reach your peak performance for the type of games you are going to play, the tournament structure... just before the competition.

Yo can have 1 goal or several, measurable.

Example:

- ELO rating

- One or several online ratings

- Tactic rating on chesstempo

- A percentage of right answers with a software or book tests

- Result in a ournament (if that makes sense)

- Whatever you think that is really important.

 

Think about it like making a picture - where are you now and where do you want to be in six month?

Write it down of course and share it with your trainer. He is going to give you an invaluable feedback.

And in between this 6 months you take some pictures - make some tests- that measures the progress to your goals or whatever you think is important

 

2. Use technologie when it makes sense to use technologie - that makes a huge diference.

Chessdatabases, software, apps,,,

 

I wish you good luck and hope my ideas help you the next 6 months

 

 

 

Another thing,

you have to keep track of all the work you do and how long you do it.

The more data you have about your training and performance better. But try to keep it simple

My humble advice would be to simply this even more.  My experience has shown that deeply studying one book/subject is better and produces faster results than studying multiple.  Think of school: it's easier to study for one exam than it is to study for three.  You are more likely to confuse yourself or learn something only to forget it later.

I would suggest studying one book, perhaps Logical Chess Move by Move, and just go through that.  No other books.  Read it dry, absorb everything you can, and only then move onto a different subject.  Supplement this with constant tactic training.  Here, I would suggest studying by types of tactic if possible.  That is, solve 50 tactics involving pins, then 50 of forks, etc.  Once you have that as a foundation, you can profit from 'random' tactics far more.

Note that tactics are best trained with high frequency, not necessarily high volume.  That is, doing a few tactics every day keeps you sharper than doing a whole bunch only once a week.  If you have a tactical puzzle book, you can leave it in the bathroom or wherever and look at it for a few minutes.  The more you look at the chessboard, the keener your vision becomes; you just have to put the time in.

As a final thought, make sure your goal is to get better, not just to read a bunch of books as fast as you can.  I've read lots of chess books, in the sense I've gone through them quickly, pondered a few positions, nodded my head and then moved onto the next one.  This type of reading didn't help.  When I've deeply studied material, where I go through it multiple times if I don't understand something, it takes longer but the results are by far better.  You have four books in your itinerary.  That's a lot.  You may need to adjust.

All said, take this for what it's worth, my suggestions are not law, and you may learn differently.  Good luck on your chess journey.

Thank you for this valuable feedback, guys! I will release an updated version when I get back home.

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I totally agree with one small caveat.  If you want to build a rudimentary opening repertoire, then doing this for a small percentage of the time while studying deeply the current book of choice seems reasonable. V