My Tactics Training Schedule

It seems like my training schedule is a constant work in progress. It's a balance of how much time to spend on tactics, gameplay, analysis, book reading, and watching streams while still having a life. After working through the first section of The Woodpecker Method, I started to really like the idea of spaced repetition. From that I bought a ChessTempo membership. It's $4 per month so it's completely worth it for me.

My ChessTempo Plan

I started a custom set of problems rated 1000-1200 and set it to spaced repetition. The plan was to build a set of 200 of these problems and review them every day or every few days. Once I got to 200, I would start a custom set of problems rated 1200-1400 and solve 200 problems in it, reviewing them as well as the 1000-1200 set periodically. From there I would move to 1400-1600 and evaluate the difficulty of those. Spaced repetition works best for somewhat easy puzzles that don't require a lot of grinding calculation so if the 1400-1600 rated problems are too hard, I'll stop my spaced repetition there.

I'm not sure on the best schedule for all of these so it's a bit haphazard. Currently I have the 200 problems in the 1000-1200 set completed and I open them for review periodically. Usually when I open that set up, there are anywhere from 30-50 problems to review. When I'm done reviewing them, I'll open the 1200-1400 set and add to it. 

Make it Your Own

A takeaway here is to customize your training schedule! You might want to start with checkmate in one puzzles, or focus on tactical motifs and do 100 fork puzzles, then 100 discovery puzzles, and on and on. I chose general problems and focused on rating ranges. At some point I'll also filter through all my attempted problems on ChessTempo and find the tactical motifs I struggle with most. I've read that there is a way to do this and I think it's brilliant.

Try different things until you stumble on something you can do day after day. I started my current tactics addiction by deciding I'd do 500 lichess tactics puzzles over and over until I have them all memorized. I made a big google sheet and saved every URL of a puzzle as I attempted them. I'd do bundles of 25 and re-do them later that night, then periodically re-visit them. After posting my idea to reddit, I decided this was a bit silly but I already had 75 or 100 puzzle URLs accumulated so I altered it to 200. I ended up memorizing them all and I was able to do the 200 puzzles in about an hour one day. Granted, this may not have helped me with much more besides memorizing 200 exact lichess puzzles but it was something!

The point is to start with anything and you'll quickly find out how you best learn. I got addicted to tracking the URLs, timing myself, graphing improvement, scheduling when I'd review old puzzles, and when I'd attempt the full 200. From there I was able to get The Woodpecker Method which I strongly recommend. I completed the 222 easy problems at the beginning of the book (with yet another spreadsheet to hold me accountable and help me keep track of progress) but the intermediate problems were a tad more difficult and I was slower so I moved to ChessTempo from there.