How I Train and How I Think All Beginners Should Too

The Plan Itself

Sunday - Play

Plan

• 5-minute meditation
• Chess.com puzzles
• 3-4 10+5 games
  • Play until 45 minutes are up

What went notably well today?

What did I learn from training today?

What distracted me? How can I prevent this from distracting me in the future?

Monday - Play

Plan

• 5-minute meditation
• Blunder analysis
• Play through each and every move of the game, looking for threats, possible tactics, and blunders
• Puzzles
  • Solve until 45 minutes are up in the following order of priority:
    • Chess.com Puzzles
    • Forks and hanging pieces
    • Tactics Ninja
      • Go through, chapter-by-chapter, and take the quizzes, writing down the score.
    • Choose what chapters to watch the videos on.
    • (Mon-Wed) Chess.com daily puzzle
    • Lichess puzzles

What went notably well today?

What did I learn from training today?

What distracted me? How can I prevent this from distracting me in the future?

Wednesday - Play

Plan

• 5-minute meditation

• Chess.com puzzles

• 3-4 10+5 games

  #### What went notably well today?

What did I learn from training today?

What distracted me? How can I prevent this from distracting me in the future?

Thursday - Tactics

Plan

• 5-minute meditation
• Blunder analysis
• Choose one, alternating weekly to prevent addiction
  • ChessDojo Checkmate Puzzles
  • Lichess Puzzle Streak
  • Puzzle Rush Survival
• Puzzles

What went notably well today?

What did I learn from training today?

What distracted me? How can I prevent this from distracting me in the future?

Friday - Study

Plan

• 5-minute meditation
• Chess.com Puzzles
• Spaced repetition review of courses
• ChessMood/Chessable/Chess.com Course/Lesson
  • Possible resources:
    • The Rise of Champions
    • Endgames You Must Know
      • Take pawn endgame quiz and determine what to study
    • Basic Endgames Chapter 2
    • ChessDojo sparring
• Make next week’s training plan

What went notably well today?

What did I learn from training today?

What distracted me? How can I prevent this from distracting me in the future?

Saturday - Play

Plan

• 5-minute meditation
• Chess.com puzzles
• 3-4 10+5 games

What went notably well today?

What did I learn from training today?

What distracted me? How can I prevent this from distracting me in the future?

Every Other Weekend

Saturday - Play

Plan

• Chess.com Puzzles
• 30-minute Game
• Begin game analysis
  • Opening: Look for the first opening move where you were unsure* and decide what to do in similar positions in the future.
  • Tactics: Play through the game slowly and look for tactics.
    • Ask “Why did I play this move?” for blunders and “How did I miss this tactic?” for misses.*
    • Find the 3 most instructive blunders.
    • Find the best alternative to each blunder.
    • Come up with takeaways from it.
  • Endgame (if applicable): If you lost due to endgame mistakes or were unsure*, write down what endgame it was so you can study this endgame in the future.
  • Strategy and Theory: Update the bold/unbold list. Every time you think of something, remove one edit.
  • *Prioritize this on Saturday.

What went notably well today?

What did I learn from training today?

What distracted me? How can I prevent this from distracting me in the future?

Sunday - Analyze

Plan

• Finish analysis
• Chess.com puzzles (if time permits)

What went notably well today?

What did I learn from training today?

What distracted me? How can I prevent this from distracting me in the future?

What about Tuesday?

One of the points made in The Art of Chess Training was to take weekly breaks. Tuesday is my break day.
On the most chaotic of days, I may be unable to train, but I should never miss two days in a row.

The Formula

I follow a 1/2-1/3-1/6 Formula for chess training that I came up with. I spend 50% of my time playing/analyzing, 33% solving tactics, and 17% studying endgames/strategy. It's simple because I have a 6-day training week, and it's level-appropriate i.e. it focuses heavily on playing, with less strategy/endgames than tactics.

Weekly Focus

After reading a blog post a while back by a National Master, I began specifying my weekly focus for strategy/endgames instead of studying randomly, which I used to do. It's been pawn promotion for a while now, but there's a lot of material out there. I've already realized that I'm studying way more than I need to, but I have no way of knowing beforehand what parts I'll need and what I won't. As I'm writing, I've realized that what I should do is study pawn promotion enough to last me several hundred rating points; whatever I learn that I don't need can be reviewed and used later. This is similar to advice I found on a Lichess blog saying to study endgames for a few years, then strategy, then openings. I do want to be well-rounded, but based on what I've already said, studying a specific aspect of something enough for a while, taking a few months, is a good plan.

5-Minute Meditation

Every day, before training, I spend 5 minutes trying to be a "neutral observer." If I have any thought, I should not become engaged with it and form a "thought train." Instead, I should let is pass by. I try to focus in my breathing and a mental image of a blank screen. This has been proven to improve focus. I've recently made the switch, so I can't tell if it's helping me personally yet, but it probably is.
However, I still struggle with this, as I have a thought that leads to a longer chain of thought without me even realizing I am thinking.

Playing Days

Puzzle Warm-up

Every day, I like to start with the 3 free Chess.com puzzles available to warm myself up for the games. It allows me to shift into a chess-playing mindset while also practicing tactics.

3-4 Games

I say "3-4" because my goal is to get as close to 45 minutes of training, including puzzle time, and that could take any number of games, although my estimate is generally 3-4.

Tactics Days

Blunder Analysis

This is a process that is similar to "blundergames" recommended by ChessDojo. In their method, you play a Rapid game, then go back through and try to find one blunder. I find this too little, so I go through and find every single blunder and possible tactic there is. If I find that I missed a blunder for my opponent or myself, or missed calculating a variation that could have been a tactic, either in-game or when going back through, I add it to a tally table. I initially did it to see where my biggest weaknesses lay, but I soon realized that Hanging Pieces had a significant lead, with Forks also being pretty prominent. When I stopped doing this, the quality of analysis deteriorated, so now I still tally because it improves the quality of my analysis.
During this process, I always play through the game slowly, one move at a time. I look the the threats of that move, as well as any possible blunders.
Since I play more than I analyze, over time, the number of games I have to analyze builds up more and more.
I plan to do 2 games per day, but this month, in order to have more time for Tactics Ninja, I'll do only 1.

Tactics Ninja

This is one ChessMood's only tactics courses, along with a checkmate pattern course. It is divided into multiple chapters that each focus on one theme, followed by several miscellaneous chapters. Although it is recommended for players rated between 1035 and 2135 Chess.com Rapid, I'm very close to that level, I'm still going to try it out.
I came up with a logical way to go through it without having to go over the full course as that takes time, and all courses are only unlocked for free till the end of June. I'll take the "Quiz" for each chapter and note down my score. At the end, I'll go through the full chapter on chapters where my scores were lower. Finally, I'll do that miscellaneous sections at the end if I have time because it teaches how to find tactics and has a mix section too. I have not yet decided how much Tactics Ninja to work on each day, but I'll decide that when I make the next week's training plan on Fridays. I do need to get it all done in a few weeks. Next week, I think I'll only do one game of blunder analysis per day so that I have more time for Tactics Ninja.

"Fun Puzzle Training"

Lichess Puzzle Streak, Puzzle Rush Survival, and ChessDojo Checkmate Puzzles are three different puzzle trainers that can easily become addicting due to their rewarding nature. You immediately gain rating for ChessDojo Puzzles, just like all trainers. But the way it's designed immediately seems to release a lot of dopamine (don't quote me on this) when you gain rating, unlike Chess.com where the rating is small and at the bottom of the page. Lichess Puzzle Streak and PR Survival immediately give you a quantifiable score, which also releases dopamine. To combat all of this, I only do each of these things once every 3 weeks on an alternating schedule.

Forks and Hanging Pieces

As I've already mentioned, these are the two most common themes that I miss. Lichess's "Hanging Pieces" puzzles are not that good, so I use Chess.com's Custom Puzzles feature to get three free puzzles between the rating of 1750 and 1800 (just like me) on forks and hanging pieces.

Daily Puzzle

I have determined that the only Daily Puzzles that are within my skill level are from Monday through Wednesday. Therefore every Monday, I do the puzzle for that day, as well as the Tuesday and Wednesday before it.

ChessTempo Puzzles

ChessTempo is a large, free puzzle database that's often recommended as the best. There are two problems with Lichess (too hard puzzles and positional moves) that make me gravitate more toward ChessTempo's higher quality puzzles. I do these in whatever time I have remaining after all other types of puzzle training are done.

Study Days

Tactics Warmup

I like to start every day with 3 Chess.com Puzzles, even though this is a day ti study strategy or endgames because tactics are more important.

Spaced Rep. Review

Both Chess.com and Chessable have courses with spaced repetition review features, and I actively use these to practice pawn endgames with three free courses. I'll talk about one below, but the other two are short and free, made by Chess.com. I like to review them once a week.

ChessDojo Sparring

ChessDojo is a website that provides a training plan for its members based on skill level. One of the types of tasks is sparring. There are multiple positions to spar for each skill level, whether they are win conversions (a winning position that you must convert) or algorithms (specific patterns for won positions). There other types as well, but none at my skill level. I have found a training partner who is open everyday at the time I study chess. We've arranged to spar every Friday.

Make Next Week's Training Plan

There are several things I need to specify for the next week's training. I also make any adjustments that are necessitated by the reflection questions.

• what to do in Tactics Ninja
• what courses/lessons to do and how to study them
• how many blundergames to do analyze each day
• which one of the three fun puzzle training options I should choose (it's a regularly rotating pattern, but I like to be specific)

Courses/Lessons

I usually choose between a Chess.com course or lesson. Chessable also exists, but it has the same courses as Chess.com. However, ChessMood is also and option out there.

ChessMood Courses

For the month of June, like I've already said, ChessMood once again unlocks their courses for free. Thank you to @SleepyOldOwl for telling us that, although I'm not sure if that's their Lichess username.
The Rise of Champions
This is ChessMood's introductory course for absolute beginners. I've already done it once, but it'd be nice to refresh my memory. I haven't deiced exactly what I'm going to study, or even if I'm going to worry about that right now with my pawn endgame stuff going on too.
Endgames You Must Know
Once I'm done with Basic Endgames Chapter 2, I can take the quiz on all pawn endgames in the first, free chapter of this course. If there's any part that I make mistakes on, I can go back and look at that on ChessMood.

Basic Endgames Chapter 2

This is the chapter of Chessable's amazing free endgame course that focuses on pawn endgames. I'm only worried about the attacking lines and not the defending ones right now.

Reflection Questions

One thing said in The Art of Chess Training was that you should reflect on your training at the end of each week. I do just that, but each day. The questions I came up with are based on the weekly questions GM Studer recommend.

Daily Wins

Pointing out everything that I did well in a day is supposed to make me happy and motivate me to keep going.

Things I Learned

This coudl be a useful chess insight, but so far, it's only been a way to improve training. I can also use ti to note down new resoures I've discovered.

Distractions

This serves to improve my training. When I point out a distraction, I also think of a way to fix it, improving the quality of my training because even tiny distractions can be severely detrimental to focus.

Classical Weekends

Classical chess is real chess, in my opinion. Even if you want to be a good Blitz player, you still need to play Classical. For these reasons, I pay one Classical game and analyze it every weekend. I play too much Rapid to analyze each one individually, but Classical is my highest-quality chess. Every once in a while, I go to a national federation OTB tournament. I count that as my "Saturday" because I do play Classical and they're almost always on a Saturday. I could analyze all 4 (sometimes 5) games, but I've decided that I simply do not have the patience or the resistance to boredom to sit and analyze a game 4 days in a row. This also messes up my regular schedule anyway, and just analyzing and not doing other things isn't good for you. For all of these reasons, I never analyze all 4 games.

Consistency Is Key

Another thing The Art of Chess Training said was that on more chaotic days, I should still train so that chess becomes a habit. I resolved to do 3 Chess.com puzzles every day, no matter what.

The Differences In My Old Plan

I'm going to list down all of the differences between my current plan, which I've switched to this week after reading The Art of Chess Training, and the plan I've been suing before this all year. Keep in mind that my week used to be chaotic; as such, on some days, I chose to play for only 30 minutes, while I chose 1 hour on others and chose not to play at all on the most busy days. Thus, I trained on different days each week.

• At the end of every week, I would make the next week's plan. My only rule was to alternate between a 30-minute segment of playing and a 30-minute segment of studying (mainly tactics). Each week's plan was initially completely separate from the last, the only similarity being the rule I followed. I still had the rule of playing Classical and analyzing every other weekends.
  • Later on, I realized that I only had to change a few things on each week's plan to convert it into the next week's plan, such as the day (because my schedule was so chaotic) and certain study resources.
    • I should've made this official.
  • Another error with my training was not doing a little something to make training a habit on the more chaotic days. When my work resumes, I believe that it will be less chaotic, but I'll still get less time on Mondays, so that's going to be my break day. Other than that, no matter how much I have to do, I should still make training a habit.
• I've experimented with two different analysis methods, each of which failed. I may talk about those more in my analysis method post.
• I used to play 10-minute games until I realized that was too slow for me.
  • I sometimes played in a "trance-like" state where I relied heavily on my intuition, which I do for Blitz, even though I haven't played in a while.
• Instead of 3 specific reflection questions, I had a "notes" section. I was answering the second two questions, even though the blog post that recommended something similar to the "notes" section wanted me to answer the first, along with noting where I left off. I initially did answer the first reflection question in the "notes," but I didn't think it was benefitting me and gave up. I forgot about noting where I left off until much later.
  • The more specific and structured, the better.
• I did not meditate.
  • Like I already said, meditation has been proven to improve focus, and I do other things in a day that require focus. Initially, when I added it, it was part of my daily to-do list, but because the list originally didn't have it, I was in a habit of not doing it; therefore, I added it to my training plan.

Perfection Over Progress Trap

I spent a long time trying to perfect my training plan. Then, GM Noel Studer explained that I should focus my efforts in training well enough, rather than perfecting my training plan without actually training. While I was still training for the same amount of time each day, on days where I had extra time, I's research ways to make my training plan better. When I read about this, I decided to stop after reading The Art of Chess Training. I haven't gotten to it until recently, and now I've realized that I can make small improvements based on the last two reflection questions, but I should no longer worry about researching the best way to train.
Please don't fall into this trap.

Outro

What did you think of my writing style? Are there some things I can improve?
What do you think of the way I've trained? Is there anything that seems injustifiable? ow do you train differently? Please let me know if you have any thoughts on these questions or anything else I've discussed in the comments.