Study Time vs Improvement

There is something that I have been wondering lately...

When it comes to improving does the time spent studying need to increase to improve the stronger one gets?

For example, does it take 100 hours of studying to get from 1200-1300 but take 500 hours of studying to get from 1900-2000?

Logic would dictate that it does, although at the same time since the effects are cumulative it may not.'

In my own case it does seem that it takes longer to keep improving as my rating increases.  As I get stronger I find that my results need to be much more consistent in order for me to maintain my new strength.  For example, I went over 1700 in January 2012, but then went into a tailspin due to a handful of inconsistent results and it's taken me until January 2013 to make it back over 1700 after having crashed to 1560 in August 2012.

I'm trying to come up with a reasonable estimate of time that it will take me to make expert.  So far my best guess is about five years if I continue to study for 20-30 hours per week.

I do not know what the ratios would be but the numbers required definitely increase as you go up (as the people you need to beat consistently are very serious about the game and also working very hard - it is really competitive). Even then you are not guaranteed to keep on moving up. When I was trying one of the things that held me back was inconsistent results against lower-rated players. That kept pulling me back down.

It is like this in all sports I imagine. Maybe at school in track there are seconds between the competitors but in the top-level competitions there are tenths or maybe ms between them?

Gerry

I'd say the time necessary does increase as you get better, but when it comes down to it, its the quality of the study time. 

It's probably more like:

7-10 hours: 1200-1300

50-90 hours 1900-2050

This is of course based on the time being very productive. 

~ Luke

I'm certain that it's more than 50-90 hours for 1900-2050.

I study a lot.  And my results have been showing the fruits of those labors as I have become much more consistent against lower rated players.

I personally think it will take me several years to gain the next 300 rating points.  I could be wrong, but that is what I suspect.

One thing that I have noticed for sure is that there is a commonly held belief that rapid improvement can only be had by juniors.

In the two years since I have returned to tournament chess my rating has improved by 200 points.  However, my overall ability has improved by roughly 400 points. 

When I started playing again in 2011 my rating may have been 1500 but no way was my strength more than maybe 1300 on a good day.  In fact, after my first tournament I quickly shed 75 rating points to drop well down into the 1400's but I climbed quickly from there.

So I definitely believe that rapid improvement is also possible for an adult provided that you are willing to put in the hard work that it takes.

But it does take some very hard work.

I know that at some point I'll have to really firm up my opening knowledge.  Not spend time memorizing theory, but instead to spend time trying to truly develop an understanding of the ideas and plans behind certain openings.

I mostly study annotated games,  Even when I study openings I dio it through the study of annotated games...

I also study positional ideas and techniques, and to a lesser extent endgames.

I like the tree approach to opening study. It seems to be easier to work with.....

I get confused with tree formats a lot of the time and wind up writing down each line on it's own index card so I have each branch all together without having to go back.

Just seems my brain processes stuff differently.

The moment one start memorizing chess moves, chess learning becomes slower. I prefer to study full games of particular openings.

I don't think that anything is wrong with memorizing.  Having said that, I also believe that memorizing moves without any underlying understanding of why they are made is a waste of time and will lead to more losses.

For myself I know that I need to do quite a bit of work on building a repertoire.  I play a lot of different stuff and I need to refine some openings while moving away from others altogether.

Currently I would like to really refine my openings as White.  I have started to play moves other than 1. e4 and I need to sit down and truly decide what it is that I want to spend my time learning.

Thanks i was looking for this and working on my own. Now i will make my own variation of it for my comfort. It will be trial and error to create a quality system to that works quickly but see the value of the hard to put into it.

I really need to get some chess opening training software.

I watch Jim Coons use that stuff to prep and it's no wonder that he knows his opening lines inside and out. 

What is your study regimen Chris?

Coons prepares especially well for games on Wed & Thurs because he knows in advance who he's going to be playing and generally has several games as both colors against them to look at.

He uses Chess Openings Wizard but a bunch of other stuff too.

Here is a rather detailed post on my blog...

http://ontheroadtochessmaster.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-plan.html