A Week in the Life of an Adult Chess Improver

Every time I read or type "Adult Chess Improver", I impulsively want to initialize it and say ACI and then I almost immediately hate it. ACI sounds like a part of my leg I don't wanna f*** up or some kind of insurance I'm supposed to get when I buy a house. I'll stick with adult chess improver.

I thought it'd be interesting to track how much time I spend on chess in a week, rounded off to fifteen minute increments. The week started off a bit lighter than usual because I haven't had quite the same motivation as I'd had on average over the last year but overall it's a pretty good spread and representative of what I'd consider a typical week. 

Some Definitions

I think I've been over this before, but I usually put chess work into one of two categories: active or passive. Examples of active chess study for this week included playing chess over-the-board (casual rapid games in a park), working through Yusupov's second book, working on memorizing my opening repertoire, and doing checkmate problems from Polgar's giant book. Passive "study" time included watching the FIDE Candidates Tournament, reading the introduction to a Hellsten book on Amazon's sneak peak page, and browsing /r/chess or twitter. It's still chess technically, but I'm not really stretching any muscles, if you will.

The Numbers

Here are my estimated times per day:

The week started on Sunday April 25th and ended at 11:59pm on the night of Saturday May 1. In this time span, I was able to spend 20.25 hours on chess. About 13.75 of that time was active chess study. Again, this was a relatively light week compared to some of the weeks I was working on the first book in Yusupov's series, for example. I'm able to get in chess study time while at work most weekdays and that's actually where most of my chess time is accumulated. On an average weekday, I'm able to spend 3.3 hours on chess--although some of that time is browsing online chess communities, or passively watching some chess content on youtube. (The 2.89 average hours per day in the chart below is taking into account the entire seven-day week, 3.3 hr/day is my average for Monday through Friday.) When I'm home, I'm doing fiancé stuff like planning a wedding, making dinner, and watching after our senior dog so I do not have quite as much time to get in as many chess games as I'd like.

Conclusion

I ended up with a touch over twenty hours:

For a rather light week, I think this is pretty good! I wish I included some more numbers in the summary chart. For instance, 13.75 hours of active study comes out to an average of almost 2 hours per day of performing active chess work (playing/analyzing games, calculating tactics, solving positions from books). And I multiplied my total weekly hours by 52 to conclude that I might spend around 1053 hours a year on chess. Which I think is great, and in a decade, I'd surpass the Gladwellian 10,000 hour mark (see Malcolm Gladwell, among others), whatever that might mean. However, I should probably only calculate my active chess hours for that metric. So 13.75 * 52 = 715 hours per year of active chess work. At that pace, It'd take me about 14 years to reach the 10,000 hour mark. Or, if you want to reach ~1000 hours of active chess work every year, then that would require about 19.25 hours a week. Well, this past week I spent 20.25 hours on chess so if I simply transform some passive chess "work" like youtube videos into harder chess study, I'd be very close! I hope this was interesting for some of you and it might inspire you to track your own chess habits. 

Best of luck.

My Chess History

File this in the "No one cares, bro" section. This is primarily for myself and as I'm making a more concerted effort in training and improvement, I thought it'd be helpful to track down as many "major events" in my chess-playing past.

A brief rundown of my chess playing history

SOMETIME 2002 High School, Sophomore Year - Saw Searching for Bobby Fischer, bought a chess set, a few books like Chess for Dummies, Josh Waitzkin's chess book, Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess (don't get this book), a handheld chess game, ChessMaster 4000 for PC (maybe 5000?), etc. I spent more time buying stuff and half-assedly using it than time on practicing and playing. Lost interest after less than a year and zero serious improvement aside from learning terminology and basic knowledge.

SOMETIME 2017 - For whatever reason, Facebook started putting chess videos in my news feed--usually GIFs of old famous games--and it reminded me how much I liked the game. I downloaded a bad app to play chess against a computer and a friend or two before finding r/chess, John Bartholomew, and eventually lichess.

OCT 2017 - Created lichess account. I remember playing that fall and winter but really slowing down in the spring and summer since I had other outdoor hobbies that took up a lot of time.

APR 2018 - I went to the St Louis Chess Club for the US championship. As mentioned, I slowed down quite a bit in the summer but it ramped up again in the fall.

AUG 2018 - Went to sinquefield cup. I think around this time, my chess interest started taking off quite a lot more. I started playing chess seriously this whole time now without taking breaks in the next summer.

APR 2019 - US Open again, by 2019, I'd say I was fully into chess as a major hobby

AUG 2019 - I went to Sinquefield cup yet again.

FEB 2020 - Started "Tuesday Knights" Tourney and joined USCF. I was able to play six rated games before COVID-19 put an end to that.

APR 2020 - Started trying to play a more focused repertoire as black: Caro and Slav. 

JUL 2020 - Completed 1001 Chess Exercises for Beginners in one day. Focused on doing tactics (nearly) every day since then.

SEP 2020 - Started 1001 Chess Exercises for Club Players

NOV 2020 - Switched black repertoire to Sicilian.

MAR 2021 - Played in first weekend OTB tournament; won 3/4 games, best finisher U1500 and tied for first in AMATEUR (U1800) section; rating jump to 1391. Also began focused work on Yusupov's Series of books.

JUL 2021 - 75 hours of deliberate chess study in one month.

AUG 2021 - Played 75 blitz/rapid games in one month

SEP 2021 - Reached 2500 puzzle rating on chess.com

SEP 2021 - Played in my second weekend OTB tournament (indy), won 4/5 games and tied for second in Novice (1300-1600) section. Rating up to 1509

NOV 2021 - Played in my third weekend OTB tournament (kansas), won 3/4 games, rating up to 1531 (still provisional, but highest ever)

JAN 2022 - Played in my fourth weekend OTB tournament (STLCC club championship), won 2/4 games, withdrew final round. Rating down to 1482

MAR 2022 - Played in my fifth weekend OTB tournament (Mid-America Open), played up a section, went 1 out of 4 and withdrew final round.

MAY 2022 - Played with the chesterfield group at mcdonalds. Lost and drew a game.

MAY 2022 - Played

Fall Update

Due to a run-in with /r/chess involving me mindlessly posting a link to copyrighted material, I've decided to remove all book notes from my blog. I've saved those posts as drafts so I can still review them when I see fit but I don't want them out in the ether. This blog isn't widely viewed but I don't want the wrong person seeing it and reporting any posts with copyrighted material in it--even if it's just a diagram or verbatim quote.

Beyond that, I've taken a short 1-2 week break from playing a classical game but I did get my rating up to 1721. I'm about to embark on the Lichess4545 and Lichess Lonewolf Leagues so that'll absolutely force me to play games over the next six or eight weeks. I have a game tonight in the Lonewolf league (I think it's 30+30 time control) and then tomorrow I play my 45+45 game. I'm seventh board on the team.

I plan on getting ready by doing some mate-in-two problems from Polgar's 5334 puzzles book. I hope to analyze some of my slow games from these leagues on this blog. In fact, today I came up with a spaced repetition method for that book since they are all pretty simple and straightforward patterns.

Spaced Repetition on 5334 Chess Problems
I've been going through the book slowly at work. The book is massive and it's broken into:

306 mate-in-one problems
3412 mate-in-two problems
A few hundred mate-in-three problems
600 miniature games, etc

I've gone through all the mate-in one problems and ~150 of the mate-in-two problems. I want to set up a system of review such that:

1) I go through, say, 500 problems once
2) Go back over those same ones a second time, keeping an eye on time. Any problems that take longer than 20 seconds, I will write down and review later before my next cycle through.
3) Keep cycling through until I feel confident I can do the problem set in an average of 5 seconds per problem.

I bought a chess set

I don't really have anyone to play with but FUCK IT! I've always wanted a nice set of weighted pieces so I went out and bought some. There is a chess board on its way as well. I figured I'd start with the pieces as that selection would be more subjective to my personal tastes and I could play with them on my crappy vinyl roll-out "board" to find out exactly what square size I'd need for a board. Plus I could be more flexible in my choices instead of buying a "set" with both pieces and board in one price (that was usually higher).

Shortly after checking amazon.com, I discovered that I really like the aesthetics of a set that I began to see referred to as the "Leningrad." Who knows if that is an accepted name, but it was the knight in particular that caught my eye. Its bowed head looked honorable and respectful as opposed to the more traditional knight I've seen with its head pointed forward.

I ordered them from a store called Staunton Castle and it shipped from India. The packaging was great and the pieces feel amazing. Nice and weighty. Substantial. Good felt on the bottoms.

The one set I had when I was younger was a cheap magnetic travel set that had approximately 1 inch squares. I bought a vinyl and plastic tournament set two years ago and I was surprised at how much larger the pieces were. It took me many games to get used to the size. The board alone was about 21 inches wide! Quite different compared to the travel set. I started to see that the chess pieces the professionals play with are quite large as well and most of the quality sets for sale online are similar size. The king in my set is around 4 inches tall and the base is about 1.625 inches. I got the ebonized set so the black pieces are quite dark. Thanks to amazon points, I only had to spend $81.78 on these pieces.

For the board, I decided to go for a 2.25 inch square to match the vinyl board I'd been using to practice. I found that boards looked too crowded if you didn't get a large enough square size. Between watching the 2019 Sinquefield cup on youtube and reading comments about the board (the table is amazing) and also getting inspiration from /r/chessporn, I was settled on a 2.25 square. Then of course is type of wood, color, border, etc. I didn't want a huge border and I wanted completely solid wood but those are hard to find and expensive. Most options were veneer but reviews sounded good so I settled with chessusa.com.

I went with a mahogany board. Click here to go to the store's page. As for price, I took advantage of Chess USA's new customer discount and only had to pay $103.96.

I will post a picture of the board and pieces when I put everything together!

It is a bit overkill since I rarely play anyone OTB at my house but I'll be super excited to see this on display and to use it for practicing opening memorization and playing through master games.

Things to Come

Here are some things to come. This can serve as a preview but it will also help to keep track of some ideas I'd like to post about. 

These are the subjects I want to cover in the next few weeks:

• How I analyze my games (always have a "takeaway" lesson)
• An experiment in classifying my games (was it primarily decided by Tactics, Strategy, Endgame, Blunder, etc)
• How I train tactics (finding a routine and how to approach tactical problems)
• Familiarizing myself with chess openings (the Chess Openings Tree image)
• Developing an endgame training plan

And aside from that, a few things I want to have ongoing coverage for:

• Any important milestone I've reached or lesson I learned
• Game analysis that I found instructive
• Notes on the current book I'm working through
• Advice on customizing improvement plans
• The psychology behind chess improvement as an adult with a life
• Updates on my goals progress

First!

A blog about chess improvement for the "advanced beginner" chess player! In talking about my own goals and improvement plans, I hope to help others near my skill level. Off we go. I'll start with where I stand and where I want to go.

I have accounts at the two main chess sites but I spend most of my time on lichess.org. Here are my starting numbers from that site:

     BLITZ: 1320 | 41.8% (152 games)

     RAPID: 1478 | 56.2% (111 games)

     CLASSICAL: 1683 | 83.0% (170 games)

     CORRESPONDENCE: 1805 | N/A% (83 games)

CURRENT GOAL: Increase my classical lichess rating to the 90th percentile

I chose to begin in classical for a few reasons:

• Primarily, because it's recommended to newer players to improve by playing slow time controls. You have more time to calculate, visualize, and plan.
• It's a smaller pool of players so it's easier to move up. Not many GMs or IMs are playing 45 minute games online :) 
• Blitz can be infuriating and I rarely feel like I learn much. I learn so much more in a classical game because I know the moves I played were my best ideas. I can see in analysis why they worked or why they didn't.
• My idea is Improve in Classical --> Improve in Rapid --> Improve in Blitz

I began taking tactics training more seriously a few months ago and have steadily been increasing my rating. My current win/loss/draw ratio in classical is W97 L69 D8 so I'm still winning a lot of my games. That is encouraging!

My plan to improve:

• Play more games - I haven't played all that many classical games! I follow someone that's played nearly 10,000! I always felt that when my win rate is close to 50% that's when I will be at my first plateau. Since I'm still winning more than losing, I think I haven't hit my "real" rating.
• Study tactics - Spaced repetition tactics training in ChessTempo.
• Continue reading books - My games against better players this week have been getting slightly strategic in nature so I want to focus on that element and I have a few books that can help. 

So from that, here are my Short-Term Goals:

• Play 30 more classical games to get to 200 total!
• Continue my ChessTempo tactics training and make a post outlining my routine.
• Work through Capablanca's Chess Fundamentals which appears to cover two things I need a lot of help on: endgame principles and general middlegame plans.
• Work through Silman's The Amateur's Mind for more middlegame help.