So I've been trying to play a classical 15+15 game a day and sometimes throw in a blitz or rapid here and there. I believe I am 5 games away from getting to my magical 200. I've won a few, drew one or two that I shouldn't have, and lost some to higher-rated players. Anyway I'm still focusing on analyzing and learning stuff from every game.
Beyond playing games, here's how I've been studying the "four areas" that I laid out in an earlier post.
OPENINGS
I was trying to memorize some classical lines and othe rpopular openings from that spreadsheet I made. I was doing pretty well in the open and semi-open games (not sicilian yet though) when I sorta decided to halt that some. But I was able to do a lot of it at work, for which I'm pretty grateful.
TACTICS
I'm still trying to do some of the chess.com tactics every day. My puzzle rating on that is in the mid-2000s and I'm pretty proud of that. I attribute that to my idea to spend at least 10 minutes on the puzzle if I need to. They are noticeably tougher but fun to think through, and very satisfying if I get the right answer. Beyond that, I have Polgar's 5334 Chess Problems always pulled up on my work computer and in downtime I might do a page or two of those. I'm currently on the mate-in-two section. I still have it in the back of my mind to try a spaced repetition routine on this book at some point. It's a treasure trove of pattern recognition.
I'm also going through some of Dan Heisman's videos on youtube--I strongly recommend those if you haven't checked them out--and he mentioned one of his favorite chess books is called "Winning Chess Exercises for Kids." I managed to find a copy and, well, aside from the childish delivery of the material, it is actually a pretty great book. It's more or less 100 pages of worksheets. Each worksheet has nine problems and one short question for fun. It's three rows of three positions each, the first row being three mate-in-X problems, the middle row are material tactics, and the final row is three "find the best move" positions which might be strategical or defensive and it looks like the final one in the row is always and endgame position. As usual, I have a spreadsheet going at work where I record my answers for a page then grade myself and mark in red those that I got wrong so I can review at the end. I'm finding it pretty simple yet I still miss one here and there.
MIDDLEGAME/STRATEGY
I finished the reading and note-taking for Silman's Amateur's Mind but I haven't got through all the positions in the end of the book. I still want to go through all those at least once, but he goes through the entire game so I keep thinking it'd be more beneficial to play the whole game through since he gives more notes on it. Hard to do that at work.
I'm also trying to analyze my games with the middlegame strategies in mind but I think I need to focus on pawn structures more as I've allowed worse structures for myself in many games.
Another idea is to play through annotated master games, as Dan Heisman said that's one of the main reasons he thinks he reached NM so fast.
ENDGAMES
I read through Part 4 of Silmans Endgame Course but I must go back through and take more notes. There was a LOT of good information in there and it is the longest chapter in the book. I also need to practice more pawn endgames. I fucked up one in my most recent 15+15 game and it went from winning to drawn to losing and back to drawn. I was up a pawn, and....yeah I was thinking draw the whole time. Lame. So frustrating.
I need to begin practicing basic endgames against the computer.
Things TODO
Continue going through the tests in the back of Amateur's mind (ideally I go through them a second time more thoroughly).
Do the 4-moves-at-a-time visualization with some famous games (see "visualization practice" post).
Go through Part 4 of Silman's Endgame Course and take notes.
Start to practice endgame positions that are provided in lichess' mobile app and in Bernd Rosen's endgame book I have.
Do a few pages from "Winning Chess Exercises for Kids" a day.
Work on 5334 problems.
Continue watching Dan Heisman's videos
I recently bought his book "Most Instructive Amateur Games" (Something to that effect) and I will start working through those games on my physical board at home.
Try Heisman's "20-minute drill" where you pull up a random position from a master game, assess it, find candidate moves and decide on one. Key is to take exactly twenty minutes on the position before finding your move. I can also do this with the 25 positions in the end of amateur's mind actually.
Take a deeper look at this online book: https://archive.org/details/Simple_Chess_New_Algebraic_Edition
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