Review – February 2016
… Read more‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,
‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love
Study Plan
Review – January 2016
Following a fairly dismal second half of 2015 (especially the last quarter) I was downgraded on the ECF’s December ratings update to 103 (1473 Elo), a drop of around 37 Elo points. Not a disaster, but a hiccup in my …
Read morePlan for the new season
The new season of regular chess started last night. Despite a severe bout of rustiness (I’m sure I heard my brain squeak at one point last night) after some dormant weeks, I managed a win against a player ranked about …
Read moreSetting Goals – Why telling others may be a bad idea
“To save yourself much pain: the bigger your plans, the smaller the group of friends should share in them.”
– Theognis
It is no secret that setting goals is a good idea; this blog was born as a result of …
Read moreChess Sample Study Plan
Now that I have explained the various aspects of my chess study plan, I thought it would be worth showing an example of what this looks like in summary.
I allocate around two hours per day to chess and …
Read moreMy Chess Study Plan – Playing OTB
I have spoken about the place endgame study, tactics training, opening study and strategy play in my overall chess study plan. These aspects are aimed at preparing me to play better chess. And this may seem obvious, but …
Read moreMy Chess Study Plan – Strategy
So far I have explained how I approach the first three aspects of my chess study plan, endgame study, tactics and opening study. That brings me to the fourth aspect, strategy.
Chess strategy is somewhat of a …
Read moreMy Chess Study Plan – Opening Study
In earlier posts I introduced my chess study plan and described how I study the endgame and tactics. The next aspect of the plan is opening study.
I explained in the introductory post that I stumbled across GM Nigel …
Read moreMy Chess Study Plan – Tactics
Richard Teichmann famously declared that “Chess is 99% tactics”. Some players and authors disagree though. In a recent article on GM Nigel Davies’ site, The Chess Improver, contributor Hugh Patterson eloquently challenged the view that tactics should be studied at …
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