Best way to study?

Hi there, I dedicate around 2 hours a day to chess and I want to get the best out of it, I was up to two days ago doing this:

Plan 1

Go through an annotated game (by Irving Chernev) and try and guess each move, recording the moves guessed and those not guessed. I do not go through Chernev's annotations until I've gone through all the game alone.

After a week of doing plan 1, it became boring, there was this game were I was guessing very little and I just flipped.

I am now thinking of the following plan:

Plan 2

Play a 15 minute game on chess.com, analise it on the engine, log down all mistakes. This takes an hour, the remaining time is spent doing plan 1 above, I was thinking of timing the time I take to guess the moves

So what is your opinion on the above? Feel free to come up with a completely different plan.

Thanks!

You'll see much more improvement by creating a ChessTempo.com account and solving Tactics for an hour then picking up an endgame book and reading that for the next hour. I'm not being sarcastic or joking- you'll improve by a lot within a month or two.

There are a lot of ways to improve. You can do tactical puzzles, read books, or simply analyze the games of strong players or engines. Both of your methods will yield improvement. The important thing is that you are working to improve--you don't really become a better chess player just by playing more games, you only improve from analysis, especially from games you lose (find out specifically why you lost).

I really think there's a lot to learn by analyzing grandmaster games. Find one who's style you would like to emulate, who's play makes good sense to you. For me it's Capablanca or Karpov, and observe their games--don't memorize moves, but ask yourself why they played what they did. Ask yourself always which squares are affected and where pressure is being applied.

I don't seriously practice with tactics because I just don't like to, same with endgame, though endgame technique is probably the absolute fastest and best way to improve at your level. For me, it's not worth studying things which bore me; gaining strength is not a big concern for me, I sort of hit a roadblock around 1300 and now that I'm over 1400 I feel that I have hit another one, so my study is mostly regarding openings and I just do it for fun.

Having a human player actually coach you is the fastest way to improve, as long as they are at least somewhat stronger than you. If you want, we can play a few unrated games at Standard speed. Undoubtedly I can point out some tips that would improve your play in a post-mortem analysis.

Hi Windmill, thanks for answering, I suspect your nickname comes from a famous tactic :) I actually have an iphone application for tactics from lockwood productions, forgot to mention that I use it sometimes, I used to spend a lot of time on tactics, in fact I am quite good at them while I am weak at endgames, so at the moment I am studying Chernev's 60 games of Capablanca with the method described above. Going through a  game in full, guessing the move still makes me train tactics in a way

Hi Dunk12, amazing, it's like you read my mind! I am weak at endgames, and the book from Chernev I'm studying as mentioned in my earlier post is Capablanca's best 60 endgames! I agree that Capablanca has the most logical style that there is and he is the one I try to emulkate. It would be great if we could play unrated games, will send you a friend request

Playing master games and guessing the moves--"solitaire chess,"  is of course, a good way to improve but many people do find it to be boring. Also many of the positions and situations that arise during a master game are may not always be the same positions and situations that arise during games played by us patzers. Lately I've been playing games on the internet and whenever I lose a game I go over it using Lucas Chess. Lucas Chess can be downloaded freely and there are videos on YouTube explainiing how to use it and how to analyze games with it. My rating seems to be improving as a result of doing this and I don't find it as boring as playing solitaire chess or using the tactics trainer. 

Study and training is often boring. If your desire to improve is strong enough, you will find the motivation to work through the boredom.

true!

I usually use an engine but will give this a shot

The "guessing game" is a very good way to improve, if you do it correctly. Your goal is to figure out how you can arrive at the same move as the master. You try to identify why you chose your move, and compare your thinking process to that of the master. If you do it right, you learn to think like the master. Your goal should also be to understand the game completely, why one side won, and the other lost. It's a lot of work to do it correctly.

With that said, you will see the best results with something that you stick to. That usually means either something that interests you, or something that provides you consistently improving results.

To really improve is very hard work. Some people enjoy the work, it's like solving puzzles to them, so they improve rapidly and we talk about how talented those people are. If you don't enjoy trying to find the truth in any position, trying to solve the riddle, then just stick with what interests you, and be content knowing you will improve slowly.

A coach is also the fastest way to improve. But again, hard work is required and you may have to work on things that are boring to you.

I might add that I've gone through all of Chernev's Logical Chess about a year ago. I didn't play guess the move, but did something similar to what you describe. I found a database of all the games that is unannotated. I played through each game several times, identifying where I thought the critical errors were made. Then, I played through each game while reading Chernev's commentary.

A very strong player that works with me gave me this guide for a weekly study plan based on 2 hours a day for 4 days.  Obviously, you could use whatever "sources" you want, but the ones listed are good examples.

That's some pretty organised material, really good!

I agree.  One of the barriers, I've found, to really getting busy with the studying, is that I didn't always know what/how/how much to study.  With this chart, it's simple.  I don't have to think about that.  Just look at it, grab the resource, and off you go.

How is using Lucas Chess different than sending the game to analysis by the chess.com system?

Also, isn't there a way to analyze games by going to MORE and selecting GAME EDITOR?

I find that the "Study Plans" on this site, if you have a diamond membership (only $3.50 per week) is good, coupled with some book reading (maybe Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess to start -- it starts off easy and gets more difficult -- for beginners). I don't know whether CT is better than what is on this site. Thoughts?

Lucas chess gives a more detailed move by move analysis but the analysis engine on this site is ok also. 

Will Lucas Chess allow you to set up a problem, and then play through it for you showing analysis and possible alternate lines of play? Sort of like what is done for the daily puzzles.

How is your studying plan going? Have you seen improvement?