Playing and study time time allocation

Hi everyone,

I'm just looking for some advice.

I've been playing for around 8 months now and I want to starting taking Chess a bit more seriously. 

I know a handful of basic openings and general principals already but I largely just play games and hope for the best but I've stagnated with my progression.

I plan on committing six hours a week (3 x 2 hour sessions) to chess and my questions are as follows;

- For the two hour session what would be an optimal time split been learning theory i.e openings, endings, middle game and lines etc and playing actual games

- When playing games which time style would be best suited for optimal learning - I currently play 10 minute rapid games mainly

- Is 6 hours a week of productive playing and study enough to get to a decent standard of Chess? I'm currently hovering between 800-900 rank.

I appreciate its a broad question but interested on thoughts! Thanks.

Do you do chess puzzles anywhere other than chess.com? Your profile shows only 4 puzzles attempted. Daily chess puzzles is almost always a must. At least, so they say.

Yeah I haven't really touched those. I will include them in my time slots. In my head I just don't see the correlation between puzzles and actually playing but I know that's just wrong.

I know what you mean. Although, the better you get the more valuable that puzzle ability will become. When the positions become tough and there doesn't seem to be a good obvious move, I've found it's the tactics that decide what move you will or should make. Although I've been mostly playing daily games in recent weeks I've noticed my calculation ability seem much better. I can see that little bit deeper and broader into positions now than I could a couple months ago. That could also just be experience but my money is on the puzzle solving. Of all the chess advice I've seen and have read (for players around our rating and significantly higher too) what is consistently said is tactics, tactics, tactics! Get them puzzles in on the daily would be my advice. You don't need to solve many but you need to solve them before you move a piece once. You will not always get it right and sometimes you do move because you just can't see the solution, but you will get there. I just managed to break 1800 in puzzles earlier today, which was nice

 

I’d recommend the Perpetual Chess podcast. Lots of great advice for adult improvers. Paul_Rees is right: most experts and adult improvers interviewed in the podcast recommend tactics before anything else. Also, longer games whenever possible. Look up the Dan Heisman Learning Center here in chess.com for useful advice.

#1
"- For the two hour session what would be an optimal time split been learning theory i.e openings, endings, middle game and lines etc and playing actual games" ++
playing games: 50%
analysing lost games: 20%
analysing grandmaster games: 20%
tactics puzzles: 10%
openings: 0%

"- When playing games which time style would be best suited for optimal learning - I currently play 10 minute rapid games mainly"
++ 10|0 is good, but 15|10 is better

"- Is 6 hours a week of productive playing and study enough to get to a decent standard of Chess? I'm currently hovering between 800-900 rank."
++ 900 is a sign of frequent blunders. always check your intended move is no blunder before you play it. That alone gets you to 1500. As long as you blunder all other study is useless.

Ouch! As a 900 player, I hear you. I think that examining my games (I have not spent time really analyzing them) and training tactics have helped me blunder less, but I still hang pieces...

#7
Tactics training is good, but if you hang pieces, then that is not a matter of tactics training, it is then a matter of mental discipline. Think about your move, then always check your intended move is no blunder before you play it. With no study or analysis this alone makes you so much stronger and it is also more fun, while nobody likes to lose from a blunder. Sit on your hands.

That's a good point!

 

The ironic thing is about a blunder, in many cases the computer might tell you its a blunder and it's not as obvious as hanging a piece

 

I think if you don't hang pieces out to dry and keep it simple ...

Try daily chess. No excuses for being rushed. You can play 4 or 5 games at a time etc.

Hi! My name is Lauren Goodkind and I’m a respected  chess coach and chess YouTuber based in California: 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP5SPSG_sWSYPjqJYMNwL_Q

 

Here are my thoughts: 

I believe that everybody has their own unique learning style and everybody goes at their own pace to learn chess.  Therefore, you need to figure out what works and doesn't work for you.  

When you play chess, make sure you are playing with a slow time control, such as G/30 or longer so you have time to think.  

It seems like you are very serious about improving.  If that is the case, then I suggest hiring a coach to help you get better.  

At the lower levels playing is far more important than study because each game you train so much in different areas, and if you review them they will point to where you need to study more on. As you progress the training and studying increases and the playing gets honed on quality not quantity.

Everyone should focus a lot of their study time to tactics, especially us who are below master level. The correlation between tactic puzzle and gameplay is simple- if you can’t find tactics that you know are there, you likely will miss them in positions you don’t know. If you solve puzzles with effort properly, you train your brain to break positions down and then uncover the key idea-the tactic- to solve that position. This over time will translate into your own games.