"Waiting until you are 'good' to play in events is ... a common error; you won't improve as quickly without consistent live competition; locking yourself in a closet to just study is rarely the optimum path. Taking your lumps is a necessary part of the learning process and the younger you start, the better chance you have. Most really good players play hundreds of tournaments over a period of years during their improvement phase." - Dan Heisman (2012)
"... tournament play offers that rich, 'all-weekend' chess experience where you congregate with other players, eat and talk chess during meals and in-between games, and benefit from the entire ambiance. ..." - Dan Heisman (2013)
In the 2006 GM John Nunn book, in connection with opening study, it is stated that, if a "book contains illustrative games, it is worth playing these over first".
"... I feel that the main reasons to buy an opening book are to give a good overview of the opening, and to explain general plans and ideas. ..." - GM John Nunn (2006)
In one of his books about an opening, GM Nigel Davies wrote (2005), "The way I suggest you study this book is to play through the main games once, relatively quickly, and then start playing the variation in actual games. Playing an opening in real games is of vital importance - without this kind of live practice it is impossible to get a 'feel' for the kind of game it leads to. There is time enough later for involvement with the details, after playing your games it is good to look up the line."
Hello, all.
I post occasionally but I have a question on where to go after a certain point. I have been playing consistently for the past 2 years on Chess.com and also have purchased the Silman book on Reassess Your Chess. I took a break for about 4 weeks where I played maybe one game and I dropped 200 points on tactics and 150 on regular blitz.
Anyway to my question. I feel as if though I am progressing to the point where I can see a lot of tactics and etc but I think I am needing to work on openings? I have chosen 3 openings for black and for white but for the life of me sitting down and going over the variations and memorization of it all is mind numbingly boring. I see a lot of people say that tactics are boring but positional play and line memorization IMO is 10x more boring. Aside from that where should I go from here.
-I am looking into joining a local chess club to get more insight.
-Force myself to learn the deeper lines of the 6 openings I picked.
and that's about it.
Any suggestions?