Suggestions on a beginner practice routine to improve (very low ELO)

Sorry if this has been posted several times, I just notice that the chess community here is wildly helpful and was hoping for a few pointer in the right direction.

Recently, I've backed off of comp. FPS games and wanted to learn chess properly as I'm a dad now and it's such a beautiful game.

I thought I was going to do well and boy was I wrong haha.

Anyway, I'm trying to piece together a solid study/practice routine to learn the game and hopefully one day climb to maybe some small title, likely not GM but something would be cool in the coming years. 

 I have 2-3 solid hours a day to study and limited funding at the moment. Any suggestions are welcome and please ask any questions if I didn't give enough info here. 

Hopefully in the future I can even get a coach my money stabilizes  thank you to anyone that chips in here!

Get a good chess primer like, play chess like a boss, complete chess player, journey to the chess kingdom. Read the book until the pages are falling out. Study chess tactics, day and night. Study every chess tactics book you can get your hands on. Learn a opening repertoire for white and black. They have some good basic ones on chessable for free. Learn your endgames, once again they have some free courses on chessable Go over and review every game that you play.

If you are on the main site as opposed to the app., at the bottom of the Learn section there is a link to "study plans" at different levels. I have been getting a lot out of videos, especially Simon Williams' videos on the London system.

Lots of helpful, instructive resources, including chess book recommendations, to discover in my Chess.com blog...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell

Play and have fun.

#1
"I'm trying to piece together a solid study/practice routine to learn the game"
++ Study "Chess Fundamentals" - Capablanca. It contains all you need to know. It is only 60 pages. Its copyright has expired, so it is available for free as a PDF.

Practice. Solve 4 tactics puzzles as a warm-up. Play a 15|10 game and use all your time. If you lost, then analyse it thoroughly, else study an annotated grandmaster game.

Awesome, I'll consider all of this advice! 

This is my schedule thus so far-

My routine:
1. Study and solve tactics 60min
2. Openings 30min
3. Chessable book of different topics 30min
4. Play long games and analysis 50min
5. Study Classics 10min

@NervesofButter

Thanks for taking the time.

#3 Here are my selection of chessable books of which I'm working on the first 2 ATM:

1. Smithy's Opening Fundamentals (reading)

2. Chess Basics (reading)
3. The Tournament Starter Kit (not started)
4. Basic Chess Patterns (not started)
5. Basic Endgames (not started)

#4 When I analyze my games, I use the analysis tool and look specifically for blunders as I average 2-3 per game (was 5-6 lol) and the best moves I missed. But I also try to disagree with the computer and objectively prove it wrong, which rarely happens, but it does help me remember better and understand why.

Also, I very much agree with the old masters part. I hate the idea that creativity has been replaced with AI moves. That would really ruin my passion of learning the game for me.

Hi! My name is Lauren Goodkind and I’m a respected  chess coach and chess YouTuber who helps beginners out : 

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

Send me one of your games and I'll be happy to analyze the game for free on my YouTube channel on Sunday livestream from 1-2PM PST.  Ask me questions in real time!  

 This is a great way to improve!

Here’s more  ideas to help you get better.  

-I recommend two books for you: “50 Poison Pieces”   and “Queen For A Day: The Girl’s Guide To Chess Mastery.”  Both books are available on Amazon.com.  Both books are endorsed by chess masters!  

-If you are serious about chess, I highly recommend you hiring a chess coach to help you.  

-Also consider all checks and captures on your side and also your opponent’s side. Always as, “If I move here, where is my opponent going to move?”. Do this for every single move!  

-Play with a slow time control, such as G/30 so you have plenty of time to think before every move. 

Dear FoxDPS,

I am a certified, full-time chess coach, so I hope I can help you.  Everybody is different, so that's why there isn't only one general way to learn. First of all, you have to discover your biggest weaknesses in the game and start working on them. The most effective way for that is analyzing your own games. Of course, if you are a beginner, you can't do it efficiently because you don't know too much about the game yet. There is a built-in engine on chess.com which can show you if a move is good or bad but the only problem is that it can't explain to you the plans, ideas behind the moves, so you won't know why it is so good or bad.

You can learn from books or Youtube channels as well, and maybe you can find a lot of useful information there but these sources are mostly general things and not personalized at all. That's why you need a good coach sooner or later if you really want to be better at chess. A good coach can help you with identifying your biggest weaknesses and explain everything, so you can leave your mistakes behind you. Of course, you won't apply everything immediately, this is a learning process (like learning languages), but if you are persistent and enthusiastic, you will achieve your goals. 

In my opinion, chess has 4 main territories (openings, strategies, tactics/combinations and endgames). If you want to improve efficiently, you should improve all of these skills almost at the same time. That's what my training program is based on. My students really like it because the lessons are not boring (because we talk about more than one areas within one lesson) and they feel the improvement on the longer run. Of course, there are always ups and downs but this is completely normal in everyone's career. 

I hope this is helpful for you.  Good luck with your games!  

#8
1. Study and solve tactics 60min ++ Make this 15 min. Soccer is not penalty kicks.
2. Openings 30min ++ Make this 0 min, it is a waste of time & effort and will not help you
3. Chessable book of different topics 30min ++ 30 min is OK provided the topic is endgames
4. Play long games and analysis 50min ++ Make this 90 min, it is most important
5. Study Classics 10min ++ Make this 45 min, learn from the best

1. Smithy's Opening Fundamentals (reading) ++ Not useful
2. Chess Basics (reading) ++ Not useful
3. The Tournament Starter Kit (not started) ++ Not useful
4. Basic Chess Patterns (not started) ++ Not useful
5. Basic Endgames (not started) ++ Better start this and stop the others

Eh, you already got a lot of advice, and this is already 4 days old but...

For very low Elo people's advice is often too advanced.

GM Finegold did a mini rant about it in one of his videos where he showed a position like this (below) with the question:

            "how many different moves does black have to check the white king?"

He said there is a 100% chance a beginner will get this puzzle wrong, (and even a pretty good chance for people as high as 1600). How many do you count?

The answer is below, so give it a try first.

-

-

The answer is 10.

Why is a puzzle like this useful? Well, often in a real game your opponent has a threat, and it's useful to look for ALL the ways you can defend it (or you want to make a threat and need to look for all the ways the opponent can defend). The best check of the 10 is Qe4 because it's also checkmate.

In the position below after Qf3 white threatens checkmate. How many moves does black have to avoid mate in 1?

The answer is, somewhat surprisingly, 10.
I initially counted only 7, but the engine reminded me that Ke7, Qg5, and Qh4 also avoid mate in 1 (even though they're terrible moves).

In any case, many beginners may defend against the threat with the first move they see, for example a move like f6, which is not a good move. It's better to defend and develop a piece at the same time, so black should defend against this checkmate by playing Nf6. (Nh6 also developed the knight and defends, but it's better to develop towards the center.)

---

Unfortunately I don't know of any puzzle collection that does this, but you may get approximately the same training from very simple puzzles. In simple puzzles you're typically trying to find all the ways you can play a capture or give a check. Nearly 100% of the time a capture or check is correct, so you look for them all and pick the one that wins something. When puzzles are a little harder the first move may be a threat... but those are the 3 types of forcing moves: checks, captures, and threats.

I guess this is mostly to say... don't get overwhelmed if people's advice seems too advanced... because it probably is. You can make a lot of improvement when you're new by getting used to how the pieces move, and increasing your awareness of the options both players have. As the old saying goes "when you see a good move, stop, and look for a better one."

Anyway good luck.

@nMsALpg Thanks, I've been learning things like this, but that was a great puzzle and advice. I got 8 BTW lol