Been-a-min

It's been a minute since I've posted. I've received a few notes from people that read this so that's great to know. Even if no one reads, it's still nice to plop down some chess thoughts once in a while. I will give an update on some stuff I've been doing. I'm still studying chess quite hard and I've finally taken the leap into OTB playing at my local chess club--which happens to be the St Louis Chess Club. Yepppp, I know people out there will be screaming, "How have you not been to that club yet?" Well, I technically have been but it was only to view a few of the super tournaments. Anyway I will have a post about my experience there soon.

I want to address the idea of making a study plan. I just scanned through all my posts really quickly here to reacquaint myself with this blog and I noticed there is a lot of goal-setting, planning, study routine suggestions, etc. I'm trying to steer clear of wasting mental energy and time coming up with ideas and plans and instead directly work on chess. I heard this quote on the Perpetual Chess podcast and so I want to reiterate it here:

Time spent on any challenging chess work is far better than time spent planning the "perfect" chess study schedule.

That says it better than I could. Just do something that involves active studying of the game and you're good. And that's what I will try to do here, instead of help people lay out different ways to study stuff, I'll encourage you to just do it.

Lately for me, it's been endgames. Bernd Rosen's Chess Endgame Training book has been fantastic so far. I'm nearing the end of it which feels good. Overall I'd say you should work to actually finish books because it helps morale. You can always go back a second time and re-read it to cover the more difficult parts. That is kind of how I approach chess books anyway. I can read through this book at work actually, and then play through the ideas which I've done. But I'm currently going through it a second time, taking screenshots of the positions and typing up little notes for each one. I intend to load them all up in lichess' board editor and practice them. HINT: On the mobile app, there's also an "Endgame Positions" dropdown where you can select tons of configurations, then customize each one how you want, and finally practice it against the computer or check ideas with the analysis board. This is all hugely beneficial and endgames are actually something that is more than okay to practice against a computer. It feels so good to see a position that would have confused me a year ago and know exactly what to do, or at least put together some ideas on a plan.

There have also recently been some big discussions on /r/chess on how to choose what to study. Someone was brave enough to say beginners should study openings over endgames and that blew up. It was fascinating to read. Anyway, the overall point is to carefully study something and try to finish a big chunk (like an entire book that is suited to your level) and then move on to a different aspect of the game entirely. If you are very interested in openings, then study them as long as you're not passively watching videos or trying to absorb theoretical lines with a tape you play while sleeping. Studying the strategic ideas in your favorite openings is perfectly fine. Just make sure to mix it up and move on to endgames once you reach a good stopping point in your opening study, and then when you reach that point with endgames, get a strategic book, etc. Once I wrap up this book I want to (probably need to) begin building an opening repertoire finally. I have a book on loan from the library that seems great and I can't wait to get into that. I'll surely make a post about that.

So overall, I hope to have a few posts coming in soon. One regarding my three trips to the STLCC for my first OTB games. I'll do some game analysis on that too. And I'll have a post about how I intend on trying to build an opening repertoire, too. Maybe I'll finally get a post showing off my new chess board...well new as of last summer. ;)