What do you think of my study plan?

Started with it and about a sixth of the way through. Nothing very interesting so far. But I do like that there is quite a bit of text rather than just diagrams as is the case with the Polgar book

@donostrilssmell I am still not sure I get you. As a beginner I might be wasting a lot of time calculating pointless lines but I guess it is something I have to do to get better and not do it as I improve. 

If you mean what @stiggling said, then it makes sense. Trying to brute force through all positions is not possible. What I have been doing so far is looking out for certain things that might indicate the presence of a tactic, such as an open king or overworked pieces, pins, and critical squares. In such cases I spend quite a bit of time calculating as much as possible. Otherwise I just play the move that looks logical and is not terrible strategically (like blocking an undeveloped piece)

Maybe it's just a confidence issue?

In any case, glad I'm not the only one capable of being a little harsh around here.

I've been getting a little flack for it lately... not wholly undeserved.

Oh, crap, I misread it.

Well, I'm drunk so I'm in a mood.

Currently busy being a jerk in Elroch's topic

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/off-topic/the-science-of-evolution-no-politics-or-religion?page=1428

He blocked me for a bit too.

He's a bit of an oddball, but I think one of the few reasonable people around here, when it comes down to it.

Haha, yeah.

I asked Ziryab for a match recently and was ignored. That's fine. So many jerks around here, and this account looks really new. I might have ignored me too.

Elroch tends to stick to his evolution topic now, posting news clippings every once in a while. I don't see him talk so much.

@ghost_of_pushwood @stiggling get the hell of this thread and use DM. Don't spam here. 

@thetaleofwob thanks for the advice

I have my settings so that I don't see such things. It wasn't personal.

I'm pompous, you know. (And pithy, like the heart of fruit).

This usually happens on the forums. After a topic is answered people use it to chat about whatever. Nothing personal.

IMO the 3 basic activities are drills, study, and playing. Drills like solving tactic or endgame puzzles or going over memorized openings. Study like books or analyzing, and playing is best at long time controls against players rated 100-200 points higher than you.

For study IMO the 5 basic areas are openings, tactics, strategy, endgame, and annotated game collection. My advice is to pick a primary area of focus for at least 1 month, and that will be the bulk of your study time. Personally I tried to pick 1 classic book for each (except openings). For example Zurich 1953 for annotated games, Pacman's Modern Chess Strategy for strategy, Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual for endgames.

To "study" tactics my experience has been with books, which IMO have higher quality puzzles, but I suppose you could do it online. The most important thing is saving puzzles you get wrong (in a book I just make a little mark that means failed). Wait at least 3 days before trying the failed puzzle again. It stays in the "fail pile" until you get it correct at least once.

The second most important thing is every time you fail a puzzle you have to understand why your intended solution fails. Sometimes this is hard and you'll have to use an engine. After my calculation is over I like to write down my solution to make sure I can't avoid facing a wrong move.

The least important thing to focus a lot of effort on is openings, but they're still a little important. My advice is to play 1.e4 or 1.d4 and as black answer 1.e4 with ...e5 and 1.d4 with ...d5 (1.c4 with ...e5 and hypermodern stuff with a reversed london). Then after each game compare the opening moves to a database. Do this after every game and you'll eventually memorize the first 5 or so moves to the most common responses. That's plenty in the beginning. Other than that this guy has some nice intro videos to openings https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa2Ezoefyh5Gm9gXwg0kCdA

Ideally you can use google to find local clubs in your area and play some long games there. If that's not possible for one reason or another, consider a group like this
https://www.chess.com/club/slow-chess-league

And you can even play long games now and then vs an engine if you really have nothing else.

Try to avoid passive learning like videos. If you find an instructive video, they can be good, but set up a board, get out a notebook, and pause often to take notes and do some analysis yourself. There are many good lectures at the STL chess club on youtube. I like Akobian, but there are many others.

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In the end though, and this is from someone who likes to organize plans, all this stuff is not as useful as it seems. The most important thing is that you enjoy it enough to actually do it day after day. I tend to do a little bit of study every day, not because I planned on it, but because I'll suddenly think of a game or opening I want to look at, or I'll see something on the forums. So I understand why you'd have a personal attachment to this topic, but at the same time I tend to feel like one of GoP's first posts here, that it's not so important... not so important, but hopefully from the length or detail of this post you'll believe me when I say I'm hoping you have lots of success in chess  

ok, no problem 

If you (or anyone reading this) wants to play sometime, let me know. I'm open to different time controls as well as rated or unrated. I've played a few 100 games with @imronilm1204 so you don't have to be rated near me for me to play.

 Wow. thanks a lot for the reply. Lots of great advice there

Dereque Kelley youtube channel looks great. Wonder why youtube recommendations didn't suggest it to me yet

I do understand that videos have limited use but like you said it is a good way to get familiar with a lot of the terms and buzzwords in chess.

That is a really interesting point regarding saving failed puzzles for later. I am certainly going to do that. I can easily make a pencil mark on my book but don't know how i can do it on chesstempo and lichess. I have to figure that out

My rating is misleading for the reasons I said. And yes you are right, it is very frustrating to analyze own games at my level. Luckily I have found a buddy from here for analysis and he is around 1700 so i get a lot more out of the analyses. But i will start doing what you recommended as well, which is to post the games here with some brief thoughts so others can comment and advice

I am terrible at fast paced games. Even 15 + 10 seems too fast for me. Once the timer drops to single digits I start panicking and blundering. Recently I had a 15+10 game against a 1900 and I was winning from the opening, had a great crushing position but simply blundered since the time was a bit low. So yeah I am gonna play games as slow as possible. 

Thanks for the well wishes. your post is an early Christmas gift for me. Thanks for taking the time out to write it

A pompous patzer wrote in his self-published book, Five Days to Better Chess (2017), that the sequence should be checkmates, endgames, middlegames (tactics and positional elements), openings, and great games in rotation. That strikes me as similar to your suggestion. You can find the book on Amazon.

I guess it's true that great minds think alike

Now to sell a lot of copies just throw in something really controversial, and then promote it online as some revolutionary cure all to chess improvement like that... guy whose name I'm not going to attempt to spell. Maybe you've seen him around. 

study is 10x overrated play play play play play play pl7y

Yep. My error is that I say nice things about Jeremy Silman, Yasser Seiriwan, Yuri Averbakh, ...

(I also favor people who didn't quit chess when they got a book deal).

True. I don't play much. A mere 150K games in the past twenty years.

Lasker was great because he was champ while playing at a rate of only 10 games every 20 years