Yusupov's Books and My Training Plan

It feels good to settle on a training plan that gives you an almost tangible feeling of improvement. As you work through your daily routine, you feel yourself doing actual chess work and you know this is the way to improvement. To me, there's not a much worse feeling in my chess journey than preparing some grand plan revolving around a book or project only to feel dejected that the work involved is not what you thought it was going to be and you eventually quit the plan entirely. In these instances, it feels like I put too much weight on the plan, as if it was going to do wonders. It just plain sucks when it doesn't work out and you give up. But you keep trying until you find something perfect for your level that provides the right amount of serious study. 

Enter Artur Yusupov.

I think I found a plan that has been working for over a month now. This is due in large part to re-discovering Artur Yusupov's famous book series. Working through these problems for the last month has given me a bigger sense of accomplishment than re-doing tactics three, four and five times from 1001 Chess Exercises for Club Players--which was my last project. The series I'm talking about is the Build Up Your Chess, Boost your Chess, and Chess Evolution books. There is some confusion over the order since Yusupov chose a slightly strange naming and coloring convention. 

Is blue first or green? Wait, do I do Build Your Chess 1, then Build your Chess 2, or complete one color pattern first? When do I do the Revision and Exam book? At the end, right? Will I ever finish it? How long does this take?

The color order in terms of difficulty is Orange, then Blue, then Green. Each color group has a "Build Up Your Chess" title, a "Boost Your Chess" title, and a "Chess Evolution" title and those are meant to be completed in that order before going to the next color. Orange is The Fundamentals and you do those first, Blue is Beyond the Basics, and Green is the Mastery series. And as far as I understand, there is a Revision and Exam book that you should complete after you finish the three orange books. Here's the order for those still wondering

1. Build Up Your Chess 1 (The Fundamentals)
2. Boost Your Chess 1 (The Fundamentals)
3. Chess Evolution 1 (The Fundamentals)
4. Revision and Exam
5. Build Up Your Chess 2 (Beyond the Basics)
6. Boost Your Chess 2 (Beyond the Basics)
7. Chess Evolution 2 (Beyond the Basics)
8. Build Up Your Chess 3 (Mastery)
9. Boost Your Chess 3 (Mastery)
10. Chess Evolution 3 (Mastery)

Finish them all and you've completed the Yusupov Challenge.

That sounds scary...But possible...I suppose. Right? I've never heard of anyone doing it but I can only imagine it'd do wonders to fill in the gaps in your chess knowledge, which is what Yusupov claims his books will do. My plan is to complete the orange series and I think this will do a lot to get me closer to 2000 OTB. Every chapter I do out of book 1 teaches me a few new things and requires me to calculate a lot more than doing those simple 1001 Exercises books. And it's more than just categorized tactics. Let's get into the book I'm currently working on.


Build Up Your Chess 1: The Fundamentals
Yep, I started at the beginning. Duh. I believe I started it about a year ago but I recently picked it back up again and I'm glad. The book, and this goes for every book in the entire series I believe, has 24 chapters covering a broad range of topics. Here's the chapter list for this book:

1 - Mating motifs 1
2 - Mating motifs 2
3 - Basic opening principles
4 - Simple pawn endings
5 - Double Check
6 - The value of the pieces
7 - The discovered attack
8 - Centralizing the pieces
9 - Mate in two moves
10 - The opposition
11 - The pin
12 - The double attack
13 - Realizing a material advantage
14 - Open files and outposts
15 - Combinations
16 - Queen against pawn
17 - Stalemate motifs
18 - Forced variations
19 - Combinations involving promotion
20 - Weak points
21 – Pawn combinations
22 - The wrong bishop
23 - Smothered mate
24 - Gambits
Final test

Pretty good start huh? And each chapter has an introduction then 12 problems to solve and grade yourself on. I love the structure and that's a key to finding a book to work through. I'm pretty familiar with most of the information he provides but the quiz section has put me to work--especially on the positional stuff. I am two-thirds of the way through and it's going great. I'm tracking percentages on the point totals for each quiz so I know my weak points for review later.

If each book has 24 chapters (plus a final test of 24 problems) and I complete all three orange books, that's 936 problems to solve. That's not including the eight to ten example problem he uses in the introduction for each chapter. If I take my time with all these, I'll surely fill in a lot of knowledge gaps and work on my calculation while doing so! I'd have to think this will be one of the best 3-book series to work through. For someone at my intermediate level, it's a great balance between review of things I've seen before and calculation in the harder problems in the quizzes. 

Here's a youtube video of Artur being interviewed in 2017 about the series.

Openings

The only other chess work I'm doing is working to build up a stronger opening repertoire for white. At the moment, this means making my digital flashcards of positions with an essay-question like prompt and then entering the solution with all variations and ideas/plans in a text file. I've began the project with a book called Starting Out: 1. d4. It's a good introduction to all the things you'll likely see as a d4 player but I find it quite theoretical unfortunately. I'm going through most of the lines and taking screenshots of all interesting positions for my flashcard system anyway, but I absolutely need more than this. We all know that most openings at my level are not played in the same way that masters play them. The Starting Out... book does not cover a lot of "doozies" (Tothian-speak for blunders or mistakes) in the openings so I need to fill these in myself. My idea is to eventually have a large set of flashcards for each major opening family and here's how I plan to build them:

• All interesting positions showcasing strategic plans and ideas from the Starting Out book for any openings I see often--I won't worry about Dutch or offbeat replies to 1. d4 for the moment. 
• Review these positions and add in any other questions. Add in the information to the solutions.txt or make new position screenshots if needed.
• Play through the illustrative games from the book and make more flashcards.
• Use Lichess' opening library but filter the games so it only shows moves from "non-masters", i.e. players below 2000 rating. This will show more doozies than were brought up in the Starting Out... book. Make screenshots of all these positions with prompts and solutions. This is probably the most important bullet point since I'll see more of these types of moves than, for example, perfect theory on move 10 of the slav.
• Continually make flashcards of positions in my own games where my opponent plays something weird or out-of-book. Or if I mis-play my repertoire.
• Go through Chess Structures by Flores and make more cards and notes on those positions.
• If I need more, go through Zurich 1953 and find games in my repertoire.

Whew! That's a lot and probably more than I'll ever do but I'm more convinced than ever that this will serve as a huge boost to my comfort level during the opening stages.

Conclusion

That's it! Openings and the Yusupov Book. I've lately been working on the opening flashcard system for a few mornings and nights a week, and then the Yusupov book during the workday when it's slow. I can generally do one chapter every two or three days. The opening work is slower and I've yet to begin reviewing my cards but I really hope I can stick with that. My idea is that the opening flaschards are tailored specifically to my game and the Yusupov books will be general chess work ranging from tactics to strategy and endgames. It's a simple enough plan I think! I realize this goes against my advice to "just do it" instead of telling everyone your perfect training plan, but I'm very excited about it and it's been working for a solid month! Good luck to any readers looking to find a routine that works for them.

My First OTB Tournament Experience!

In February of 2020, I played my first USCF over-the-board games. As mentioned in other posts, I was able to play six before the COVID-19 shutdown stopped everything. Chess-players in Missouri had to wait a year before any rumblings of a weekend tournament came around but sure enough one sprung up in Columbia, MO! It's something that's been on my chess "TODO" list ever since I started playing over-the-board so I jumped on the registration list as soon as possible. The tournament was ran by Blakeman Chess and it took place during the weekend of March 6th and 7th.

As some background, I'm in my mid-thirties and I've been playing chess seriously for over three years working very hard on improvement with a focus on slower time controls. My classical and rapid ratings on lichess are currently around 1800-1850. I've played less than ten bullet games in my life and rarely play blitz lately. My USCF rating before the tournament was 1096 (provisional/6). The tournament games would be 90m+30s with three rounds Saturday (9:00, 2:00, and 7:00) and two on Sunday. Sounds exhausting.

Expectations and leading up to the Games

As far as my chess life goes, I've never felt quite the level of "nervous excitement' as I did in the day before and the morning leading up to the tournament. It was close to the same feeling when I played my first games at the club over a year ago, but there was more anticipation leading into this weekend. Both then and now, it came down to a matter of  the "unknowns" for me. Last February, I simply didn't know a lot of basic things: 

• What was it like to score an entire game?
• What if I get put in the wrong section? Are there sections?
• What if I hang mate-in-one?
• Do you shake hands like they do in the super-GM tournaments?
• What if you make an illegal move?
• Do you have your opponent sign your scoresheet when you're done like Magnus and Fabi do? (The answer is nope)
• What do you do when it's over?

This post covers those learning curves from 2020. So I'm glad I was able to get some experience and I knew what it was like to play a classical game in the real world. Those questions were answered. However, a full tournament came with its own set of new unknowns:

• What's it like to play three games in a day? Then two more the next day?
• My only other OTB games were a maximum of two hours. These games might be 3 or 4 hours long, oh gawd. How mentally-taxing will this be?
• Do I need my own scoresheets?
• Is there a larger tournament strategy I should know? Should I take strategic byes?
• What do I do in between games?
• How do they announce the first round? Do I just chill in the lobby until something happens?
• With hotel and entry fee, this was a few hundred bucks, What if I lose every f***ing game and I want to quit chess after this? Am I putting too much pressure on some silly little tournament?

That's where I was coming from. Maybe that's helpful, maybe it makes me look crazy. The best thing about new experiences is they are a guaranteed education. You will learn so many new things. These range from the logistical operations of a tournament to the little nuances you notice in the tournament hall to the struggles and choices you make in the face of new things. The more experiences you have, the more you learn to embrace the nervous excitement. The best thing of all is this ultimately results in growth regardless of outcome.

On to the games

I won't use this space to deeply analyze the games. Instead I'll add thoughts and observations about each one, how I spent my time between rounds, and what it's like to be at a weekend tournament in general.

Round 1

After breakfast and a quick jaunt back up to my room to make sure I had everything, i.e. a writing utensil, I came down to the lobby a little before nine. As the lowest-rated player in the field, I had a "see the TD" note next to my name on the pairings list. He said there was an odd number of players so I could take a bye and play a rated or unrated game with him if I'd like. I said sure since I'd come here to play chess and didn't want to kill time for five hours. Turns out he's a 2100-rated player and so the game didn't last long. He was very nice afterwards when he told me I was under-rated. We talked for a second then I peaced out to my room with about four hours until the next game. 

Even though I did not have a strenuous game in the least, I tried to practice what others had recommended during my break: don't rush up to your room and cram chess between rounds. I laid down on the bed for a while since I didn't sleep well the night before, watched some tv, and eventually finished reviewing some of my opening notes I had. I grabbed lunch then right before next round, I did a handful of puzzles.

Round 2 (first rated game of the tourney)

Finally, actual chess against somebody on my level! I started to try out a pre-game system even though I was largely unprepared for these things. The tournament website said boards and clocks would be provided but to bring your own if you'd like. Many did. I didn't. It would have involved me carrying around my rolled up vinyl mat under my arm and the pieces in a Sony headphones bag. I didn't even own a clock until yesterday. I fixed all that and I've even got a little case on the way now too. I'll be super-pro next time. I'll also consider getting a scorebook since I had to notate the first game on blank printer paper. Anyway, at this point, the TD started printing generic scoresheets for players that needed them. I grabbed one of those, wrote down my opponent's information and the board number and went in. 

Just like when I first started playing games at the chess club, I realized there were some things that might go overlooked by those that have played hundreds of club and tournament games. There's a trial period where you're trying to learn the motions you like to go through before a game, how you become familiar with the playing hall and general environment, how you like to navigate through the game itself in terms of snacking, getting up, and drinking water. These things are not really mentioned to you when you go to your first tournament. They're simple things but I found that finding a comfort level with what to expect before and during each game was helpful in calming me down. From round two onwards, I started to get a grasp on how I like to do my pre-game setup.

I had the white pieces against a 1600-rated player. I know these people have families and friends and jobs and interests, so it feels a little wrong to relegate them to some four-digit number. Such is chess though. Anyway, the game was a slav with a symmetrical structure that went to an endgame where I eventually won some pawns and converted four pawns and a knight versus two pawns and a knight. It took four hours and it felt great when it was over. Getting this win was a tremendous confidence booster. Totally worth the time. It was 6pm now and I had an hour before the next game.

Round 3

There are some in-between-game choices you'll have to make that you might not think about until the time comes. For this one, I opted to skip dinner until the 7pm game was over. I'd rather snack before the game and play on a partially empty stomach than eat some crappy takeout or fast food then rush back to the hotel. I was black against another 1600 (provisional but I didn't know or care at the time--people may not have known my rating was provisional either) and he played a london opening. He was probably better after the queen trade but then I won a pawn towards the end and he resigned when I had a winning pawn endgame. This one took two and a half hours. I felt good, more confident, and pretty tired. I celebrated with Taco Bell. Naturally.

Round 4

When I went down to the lobby on Sunday morning right before the round. I felt great so far in the tournament. I'd won my two games yesterday so I thought whatever happens on Sunday is icing on the cake. I was assured my worst fears--losing all my games--weren't going to come true. I'd beaten two solid players. I figured I'd gain some ratings points. I had already learned so much about what it's like to play in a multi-day tournament. That's a win.

I hadn't even considered my place in the standings and it hadn't dawned on me that the first round bye was a full-point. I was solely concerned on playing each round and learning from it. By this time, I'd settled on a pre-game routine when I entered the lobby:  Grab scoresheet, write down opponent and rating, who has black and white, the round number, and the board number, go into the playing hall, find my board and set up everything on the table how I like it, then adjust my pieces and make sure the clock is all good to go. After I found this groove, I was so much more relaxed compared with the moments before round one when I entered the playing hall with nothing but a pen. I'd imagine anybody's first round at a new tournament might be similar. It's probably a good idea to scope out the playing hall and chat with some people before the first round ever begins to feel a little more comfortable.

I had white in a slav that featured middlegame fireworks that eventually settled to an ending in which I was up two pieces to one but my knight was stuck in the corner. I found a skewer tactic that my opponent didn't see (not sure if it's winning otherwise) and took the game. We chatted afterwards and that's when he alerted me to my standings and that I was going to be playing for first place in the lower division. After room checkout, I hung out in the lobby for the rest of the time which was a great idea. None of my other games finished at good times where I could shoot the shit with fellow players and the TD but if you have the time to do so, I recommend it. 

Round 5

It's the final game and I'm playing for first place. My mindset ever since the night before was that I had already performed better than expected and yet I still tried very hard in this game. I ended up messing up and playing some aggressive-looking move that seemed clever but didn't really amount to much and so I was eventually down a few central pawns. My opponent had two serious threats and in the end I lost the exchange. After he stopped my last-ditch idea--what I believe the redcoats would call a cheeky lil mate-in-one threat--I resigned.

Conclusion

And so with all the nerves and excitement and unknowns, I ended up tying for first in the U1800 division and winning the prize money for highest U1500 finisher. This was a great way to wrap up the weekend and I couldn't have been happier. It was a strange experience to not know I was in the front until the very last game and that undoubtedly helped me. It's not naivete or a sense of "Gee-golly I keep accidentally winning, is that good?" Honestly part of it was that I didn't even know the ongoing tournament scores were posted as part of the pairings list for each round so it was truly off my radar and there was zero pressure. For better or worse, I'm certain I'll be paying much more attention to these things in my next tournament!

Before last weekend, I felt like a 1500 rated player was scary and that I didn't even know if I was at that level to comfortably compete with such a player. I'll be less intimidated now. There is certainly a recency bias and a rose-tinted perception here since the tournament was only last weekend, nevertheless, the experience of my first OTB tournament was a massively positive one on a personal level as well as a results level. It's given me tremendous confidence in progressing up the ladder. Time will tell how I handle the inevitable bad tournament in the future. 

Moving forward, I'll feel far more comfortable at the outset of weekend tournaments like this. My ultimate goal is still to reach 2000 USCF and this tournament has given me a lot of positive energy towards that goal.

The weekend also made it abundantly clear that I have to agree with IM Andras Toth that this is real chess. To put it more diplomatically, this is the chess I want to play. I'm talking about real chess pieces, clocks, and long time controls. I like taking twenty minutes and doing a mediocre job at exploring a position. It's fun to hit a clock and write down a move. It's nice to meet people and share experiences. Go play some chess in real life when you're lucky enough to take part!

Post-Tournament USCF Rating: 1391 (P10)

Improve Your Chess Now Notes

Advice from Chapter One of Improve Your Chess Now

The first chapter of this book has some amazing tips on calculation. The main thesis is to trust your instincts and find the main or principal variation whether it is a tactical, strategic, or defensive position. Exploration of the main variation utilizing abstract thoughts and concrete analysis of important branches should follow naturally. This opposes Kotov's method calling for meticulous analysis of a large tree of moves and variations to the bitter end. I recommend you to read the entire chapter from the book to see his game examples and how Tisdall runs through his variation processing throughout.

Tisdall’s theory contends that a combination of the natural human approach to the position, tempered with some of the discipline advocated by Kotov, is most effective. The components of this technique are:

1. To aim towards the choice of a single critical variation. Branches are dealt with when unavoidable, and primarily to navigate the chief variation
2. The constant application of abstract assessment. (The key element)
3. A scan for critical candidates.

A Single Variation

Of course boiling a position down to one critical variation is rare, and generally characteristic of tactical positions. But the way to search is one line at a time, and with luck, identifying the most critical line first. The tricky part is, as ever, the selection and limitation of candidate moves. Basically, one will try to eliminate branches and shape a main variation.

Contrary to Kotov, Tisdall says our reflex is often to go forward and work out one complete variation at a time. You gather abstract elements of the position that way and create your “chief variation” which you then use to check other things against.

Try to always start with the most direct line. If you reach natural branching off points while calculating and struggle to find which lines (example, your opponent is in check and has four possible king moves) to look at first, it’s best to save the most difficult for last. He is in agreement with Kotov here. So how to know which is the most difficult? Tisdall says it’s usually possible to sort them out before analyzing and he thinks this is best done by having a quick philosophical chat with yourself. Often you can turn down one or two moves pretty quickly and you will continue your chief variation with the most critical/testing move.

Another argument is that by examining the potentially weaker defenses first, one can actually get a clearer picture of the hurdles to be surmounted. If great difficulties arise breaking down apparently inferior lines, one has to examine the entire enterprise (your supposed chief variation) in a colder light.

There is often a point in calculating and analyzing your chief variation when “the efficient GM gets on with it” when they conclude that they are playing without risk and they’ve discovered the most promising variation. Play the move and get the opponent’s clock ticking. We don’t need to solve every aspect of the starting position.

Calculation in defense puts a slightly different spin on the approach. Now the search concentrates even more on aiming to pare down the candidates to the most critical, and to examine the most critical first. There isn’t really a point to checking possibly suspect variations except as a last resort when defending.

Abstract Assessment

Try to set down your full process of thought as closely as possible—try to capture the inner monologue of your problem solving. This means not only the more abstract bits of your reasoning (as opposed to concrete variations) but also a running commentary of what goes through your head, your internal conversations.

He often uses an abstract approach to a tactical position because it’s more efficient than sitting down and meticulously travelling the branches to the end (Kotov's technique, basically). Intuition plays a big role in that.

Constantly processing the information gleaned from concrete lines into verbal terms that can help us interpret the vital signs of the position is an essential part of the technique.

In Tisdall's words, he places added emphasis on the intuitive side of the game, and uses it to harness the scientific side of the brain. For others the emphasis may well need to be the other way round, finding a way to enhance a general approach with concrete calculating skills.



Candidates

The creation of candidate lists is never the primary task (it seems to be so in Kotov's method). By leaning towards an instinctive choice first, we activate our intuition (and experience), engage the practical aspect of play by preparing to make a decision, and initiate an examination of the abstract factors of a position. All of which in turn guide our concrete analysis and begins the process of sorting likely candidate moves.




* * * The entirety of the Chapter Summary is great advice.* * *

Missouri Spring Championship - OTB Tournament Preparation

Whoa! An over-the-board tournament during a pandemic! What is going on? What is this going to be like? How will I play? Holy sh*t these are long games. How do I prepare?

What is going on?

Seriously? An OTB tournament? During COVID? Yep. I got an email from USCF letting everyone know that an organization called Blakeman chess is putting together small OTB tournaments and one of them is in Columbia, Missouri! I can't tell you how excited I was when I saw that. A weekend tournament has been on my TODO list and I wouldn't have dreamed I'd get an opportunity at this time considering the pandemic. They're limiting it to the first forty participants and so I got my name on the entry list pretty quick. I've been very careful over the last year so I felt reassured when reading about the precautions they were going to be taking.

What am I expecting?

In the weeks after registering, I've been viewing their entry list online. There is a GM, a few IMs and NMs in the 1800+ section. I'm in the lower section of course and as of writing, I'm the lowest rated player in the field (there is one unrated player I did not count). It may be surprising but I do not care at all about that! I'm over-the-moon excited to play this tournament and the more I think about it, the more I try to determine where to set my expectations.

The format is three games on Saturday and two games on Sunday. They're 90 minutes per side plus a 30 second increment so these will be long games and exhausting days. It's really quite absurd but I'm doing it. Knowing how I play classical games (I tend to play very slowly and take a lot of time), I will probably be exhausted by Sunday afternoon.

I've played six official USCF games over-the-board in my life and those were in a one-game-a-week setting so this will be my first ever weekend-tournament experience with multiple games in a day. Similar to the first times I went to the chess club to play OTB games, I know there will be a lot of learning experiences for this tournament, a major one being endurance. As far as results go, I'm not expecting to do great. I don't see getting even 3 out of 5. My first OTB games were a learning experience in that regard: don't assume anything will be easy or the games will be simple. People are paying money and travelling to this tournament so they very much care about doing their best in the games.

Goals 

I don't anticipate a lot of OTB games this year so I want to get as much out of this tournament as possible! As far as goals, so many things have crossed my mind. They've ranged from "gain ratings points" to "win more games than I lose." I've wondered if it's better to make wide-ranging goals that apply to every game or rather make a goal that I try to reach in at least one game. I don't know the answer to that but I think that I will set more general goals rather than specific goals. As an example, I'd rather set and meet goals like "get through every opening in a mostly equal and comfortable position" than "beat one +1600 rated player." 

I've settled on "things to focus on" rather than hard-set goals. I'll call them Focus Points:

• Play the opening carefully (i.e. not by memory) and try to get to an equal and comfortable position after the first ten moves in every game.
• Always remember to think about my opponent's best moves.
• Don't get too down on myself. It's a long tournament.
• Take my time to Visualize, Evaluate, and Trust my abilities.
• Drink water and eat fresh fruit (Thanks reddit)
• Take nothing for granted, try hard in every move.

Preparation

As of writing, I have one month before the tournament. Here are all the things I'd like to do leading up to the tournament:

• Finish my current tactics project - I've been doing spaced repetition on 1001 Chess Exercises for Club Players and as of today (Feb 4), I've completed the final set to get to 500 problems. I'll repeat that set a few times and then try to do all 500 over and over a few times. I can do most of this work during the weekdays.
• Work on longer calculation tactics - My tactics over the last year has included a majority of easier problems I solve over and over. I need more work in harder puzzles that I sit with for 10-15 minutes. I'll set up positions on a real board (using either the yusupov book or chess.com puzzles and spend at least 10 minutes on them)
• Complete my 30 games in 30 days in January and analyze my most common mistakes. Focus on those issues moving forward in my training games before the tournament. 
• Play untimed games against computers and use a physical board. Playing bots isn't ideal but it's something I can do in the evening without being tied to my computer for an hour as in a timed game, if I have to get up to make dinner, it's fine. The position and bot will still be there waiting.
• Work on opening flashcards
• Review Bernd Rosen's Chess Endgame Training book - I'm anticipating at least one endgame, so maybe spending a few hours on this book will help a little bit to remind myself how to calculate simple endgames.
• Review Stean's Simple Chess for a refresher on simple strategy. Play through the games on a physical board.

Zurich 1953 Openings Index

As a d4 player, Bronstein's famous book on the Zurich Tournament seems to be invaluable. I broke down all games into groups of openings. I think the best thing to do is to choose one opening and work through the best games in that opening so this index should help.

Openings Played, sorted by frequency:

46 King's Indians - 7, 13, 20, 28, 30, 42, 43, 45, 50, 51, 58, 61, 67, 72, 73, 75, 80, 91, 100, 105, 107, 108, 114, 126, 131, 132, 139, 143, 152, 154, 158, 171, 173, 178, 180, 183, 184, 186, 189, 192, 193, 197, 199, 204, 206, 207

42 Nimzo-Indians - 2, 9, 11, 12, 14, 17, 24, 26, 32, 39, 41, 44, 49, 52, 54, 64, 71, 77, 94, 102, 104, 110, 118, 122, 133, 134, 136, 137, 140, 150, 159, 160, 163, 167, 176, 182, 195, 200, 201, 203, 208, 209

25 Queen's Gambits - 8, 18, 21, 33, 34, 38, 56, 57, 62, 63, 68, 86, 93, 109, 115, 128, 130, 138, 151, 155, 170, 179, 190, 205, 210

I'll study these first. Here are the QG classified by variation:

Tarrasch = 33, 38, 62, 93, 130, 155, 210

Exchange = 8, 86, 109, 151, 170. 190

Slav = 34, 115, 128, 205

Orthodox = 56, 57, 68, 138

Accepted = 18, 21, 63

Ragozin (I think there might be another one or two of these that I mis-categorized) = 179

23 Sicilians - 35, 36, 60, 65, 66, 78, 88, 89, 90, 99, 101, 103,  119, 120, 123, 127,  135, 146, 161, 165, 175, 177, 198

15 Queen's Indians - 22, 29, 46, 59, 79, 84, 95, 106, 147, 148, 156, 166, 172, 188, 202

10 Ruy Lopezes - 4, 40, 47, 70, 92, 116, 142, 181, 185, 196

9 Retis - 10, 69, 74, 76, 111, 117, 124, 164, 169

8 Grunfelds - 15, 19, 25, 48, 55, 85, 98, 129

7 Englishes - 3, 82, 141, 145, 157, 162, 168

7 Old Indians - 31, 37, 87, 96, 113, 121, 174

6 French Defenses - 23, 53, 83, 97, 112, 125

4 Catalans - 1, 16, 153, 194

3 Benonis - 5, 6, 27

3 Dutches - 144, 149, 191

2 Caro-Kanns - 81, 187

Why I Use Tactics Books

I've gone through a few tactics books in my years of chess study. I've also put plenty of hours in various tactics trainers. If I had to choose between 1) A never-ending supply of tactics books or 2) Every online tactics trainer ever, I'd have to choose the first option. There's a wide range of online tactics resources: chess tempo, chess.com tactics trainer, lichess, CT-ART, blitztactics.com... I could go on and on. They're actually pretty friggin great and I'll discuss some very important PROS at the end, but first...

Here's why I think tactics books are better in general, in order of importance:

(Throughout the article, I'll refer to any online tactics trainers as 'apps.')

No "Click-And-Hope"

With apps, there often is a tendency to struggle with a puzzle and think, "It's been ten minutes, I'll just make a f***ing move." In other words, click-and-hope you've seen everything. Determining if your candidate move is right or wrong is always one touch or click away. I argue that for some, this can develop a sort of arcade-game experience with apps because you know if you make the right first move, the computer will play its best move and you can continue on to the next move, or the "next level." Consider a tactic that requires three moves to fully secure the advantage. If you're not diligent in finding all the lines the opponent might play, you might just play the first move and "figure out the rest after that if it's right" and tell yourself "oh I woulda seen that move in a real game." This is pretty clearly detrimental to your calculation and visualization skills. With books, I can much more easily sink my teeth into puzzles without feeling pressured to try out my first move and see if it's right. I'd write down all three moves of the solution and any variations in parentheses. Writing things down (let's be honest, 'typing it in a spreadsheet') sets it in stone before I check the back of the book. It also gives me opportunities to note any more important variations and jot those down as well. I feel like I get extra credit if one of my variations was noted in the back of the book. A good tactics book with comprehensive solutions will reward extra efforts like these, an app probably won't.

Good books don't have errors

Neither do good apps. Of course. What I mean is that the solutions section of a good tactics book will cover all important variations and other common moves you may have considered along with the refutation. So if you see a solution and you don't understand something, it is a learning moment. See this reddit thread 

• Using an App: "Oh okay, back-rank mate and my rooks are doubled, so I can take twice on d8 and it's mate." ~ ~ You play the first move and the app engine responds with ...Nxd8 ~ ~ "Oh shit, he has Nxd8... oh well, okay yeah so I can play Qe8 and that'll be mate, yeah I woulda seen that."
• Same tactic, but in a book (BUT using the book lazily): "Oh okay, back-rank mate and my rooks are doubled, so I can take twice on d8 and it's mate." ~ ~ Now, ideally you aren't lazy, you take more time, you check everything you can, and you write down all the variations you see including Nxd8 BUT in the event you quickly check the solution... ~ ~ "Ohhh, Nxd8...duh, shit I missed that move completely, and now I see that I still have Qe8# but I need to be more careful." 

You should view moments like this as a failure of visualization and I argue that this is easier to do when you're using a good book and writing down your solutions before checking. Comparatively, if you came across this puzzle in an app and messed it up, you might be inclined to gloss over the mistake as a "whoopsy-daisy" since you saw the mate right after the Nxd8 move anyway so who cares? IM Andras Toth discusses this in his Perpetual Chess podcast episode. Listen around the 49 minute mark of the episode. And then listen to the entire episode. Toth is a motherlode of improvement advice.

Themes

Books often group tactics by motif or theme. For instance a skewer chapter might have five different common skewer ideas, including several puzzles in a row that utilize a decoy sacrifice to line up pieces, then several puzzles that use a fork which, after re-captures, gets pieces into a skewering line, etc. They all rely on skewering patterns at the fundamental level and you get introduced to multiple variations on the theme. This is surely a blessing and a curse as the solver is essentially getting major hints for each position. So the positive is that it can be great to drill similar tactical patterns in a row, but you should understand how "100 Fork Tactics" is going to be a lot easier than solving "100 Randomized Tactics."

More than just tactical positions

There are amazing books such as Cheng's Practical Chess Exercises that combine both tactical AND positional puzzles with zero hints--thus, negating the 'con' of the previous bullet point :). This is tremendously helpful and you'll be hard-pressed to find an app that offers something similar that also gives clear explanations in the solutions.

Repeatable

They are easily repeatable if you'd like to try spaced repetition on a set of problems. I've spent a lot of my tactics training work reviewing problems from books I'd already done many times over. I also plan to re-visit books I've completed a year ago. All of these things are harder to do with any given app.

Morale

They are finite. You can complete books and that boosts morale. I feel that this is greatly under-appreciated. Books also often have an impressive-sounding number of puzzles. The numbers 1001 and 5334 will always be seared into my mind. Apps are usually endless. You'll always immediately be fed another puzzle and you'll never accomplish something in quite the same way you would with a book.

Chess Culture

You can start to absorb some chess history and culture because books often use real-game examples and famous puzzles. They will usually give the context: the player's names, the tournament and year. The Woodpecker Method sources all their puzzles from games of the world champions. It's how I began learning the names of the champions and their respective time periods, and it's how I first learned about the split titles in the 90s and 00s. You might also learn famous games or moves like the Opera game, Anderssen's Evergreen game, Nigel Shorts' King Walk, and Carlsen's tactic to beat Karjakin to retain the WCC title. That Carlsen tactic is among the last in the Easy section of Woodpecker. I recall seeing the names and year underneath the puzzle in the book, and so I googled that game and I was able to find video footage of the exact tactic being played in the World Championship! Very cool to see a piece of chess history, however recent, being played out on my screen and the same tactic is in the book I was holding.

Notation

Books help practice with notation. Writing down your solutions and reading the solutions back is a great way to get comfortable with chess notation for the beginner player.

Pros of tactics trainers

Clearly there is a lot of benefit to tactics trainers so it should be obvious that a combination of apps and very good tactics books is probably the best approach. I'll list a few important positive aspects of apps since I can't just bash on them the whole time. They are, after all, better than books in many ways. 

• If the app/online trainer allows you to filter tactics by difficulty or type/theme then that can be hugely beneficial for the beginner player for targeted practice. You'll probably never find a book titled 500 Removing the Defender Puzzles at the 1500-2000 Rating but a similar problem set can be made with a chess.com or chesstempo membership and a few clicks.
• Puzzle Rush Survival Mode is great. I'll never stop saying that. There's something to be said about the simplicity of climbing the tactics-rating ladder in a matter of twenty or thirty minutes, going from simple hanging pieces and mate-in-ones all the way to advanced tactics.
• The classic (obvious) reasons: apps are often free, they're always with you assuming you have your phone, they automatically track some of your progress as you solve.

Gaining Confidence

As I continue studying tactics pretty hard and steadily climbing the ladder, I'm learning two key things I need to work on at this intermediate level: 1) build a full opening repertoire to achieve positions I understand and 2) to play with confidence. The second point is the topic of this post.

I think an overlooked part of getting past the early-intermediate stage is the moment you start gaining confidence--or at least playing moves with confidence that they're the right moves. This includes confidence in your tactical awareness, confidence that you're making the right call that there is no tactic available so it's correct to play a positional move, confidence when your opponent plays an unexpected move, confidence to acknowledge you've messed up but it's still fix-able. You can fake it of course, but you're still not a grandmaster so you're missing things and your confidence is often misplaced, but at some point you might have to start faking it and trusting your training. I believe I'm at the stage where I need to be trusting my abilities more than I do and playing with that trust.

It can be helpful to train your instincts to say "I didn't expect my opponent to play that move, so it must be garbage, why is it bad?" instead of scared-y cat instincts. Likewise, if your first instincts say "this looks tactically bad for white" then go down that path. Don't shut ideas down in your head without a good reason.

You've practiced thousands of tactics, you know positional principles. You've presumably done the work, so honor that work and start playing with confidence that you're seeing things as they are. If you almost see a tactic in your game but you don't think it quite works, you have to learn to trust that instinct and play a solid move instead.

You train and study for a reason: to apply those things you've learned in games. When you do so, and the moves work out and they're the correct moves, it is positive reinforcement. When they are bad moves, you know to re-assess why you thought it was the right idea. To make these moves, you need to display the trust in your evaluations of the moves so that analyzing them afterwards will be the same as assessing if your training is being applied properly during game-situations. 

Have trust and confidence that you're getting better and that you're seeing better moves, then play those moves.