chess improvement plan
How to Analyse and Annotate your Chess Games
A common thread runs through the answers given to beginners asking how they can improve at chess. This thread is threefold: practice tactics, play slow games and review your games. The first two are easy. There are many resources to …
Read moreHow to improve your chess visualisation skills
I suspect every ambitious chess player at some point imagined themselves playing a simultaneous blindfold exhibition. You sit in your comfortable leatherback chair, the black, silk blindfold blocking out all light. The crowd gasp in awe and your opponents are flabbergasted as …
Read moreThere is no shortcut to success
Not a day goes by without someone asking on one of the many chess forums what it takes to become a GM, or how many rating points they could gain in a year, or whether their 1100 online rating really …
Read moreChess Opening Principles
Chess opening study is a minefield. It doesn’t need to be, if you play a simple opening repertoire based on themes and positions, rather than deep technical lines and variations.
However, even the simplest repertoire still requires some memorisation 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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