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Fromper · 04-30-2008, 10:00 PM

Ok, so I survived and did acceptably well in the last big tournament without doing much prep in the last month or so. My life will continue to be fairly hectic for the next week, but after next Tuesday, I should have more free time to spend on chess than I've had in a while. Time to get focused again.

My next big tourney is mid-June, so that gives me six weeks to prepare. This one is divided into sections, but not by 200 point ranges. There's an U1800 section with a prize for best performance by a player under 1600, but not a separate U1600 section. This works well for me, since I'm on the border between wanting to play in U1600 and U1800 sections, anyway.

So now I have to decide what study to focus on between now and then.

Based on my games in the last tournament, it's obvious that my primary focus needs to be tactics. I'm doing pretty well with endgames right now, though I still want to continue studying them to improve, but it's not a top priority right now. There are a couple of opening lines I want to learn more about, too.

The one other thing I want to do for opening study is that I bought one of those Foxy Openings DVD's last weekend at the tourney just to see if that type of study would work for me. Someone suggested that after watching it once all the way through, I can just play it in the background over and over while doing other things at home (making dinner, getting ready for work, etc), and just glance at the board positions on the TV every so often, and I'd end up memorizing the whole thing and learning the opening with very little real effort. So I decided to give it a shot with IM Andrew Martin's DVD on the Smith-Morra Gambit Declined. If it works, I might buy more of those in the future.

So I know I need to focus on tactics, but I'm not sure which tactics puzzles to do. I own too many tactics puzzle books, and I've been jumping around from book to book doing a few puzzles here and there for the last couple of months. And I've even been including Pandolfini's Endgame Course in the mix of those puzzle books.

I'm thinking I should go through the two puzzle books I used to know really well as a refresher before diving into the harder stuff. It's been too long since I've done focused tactics study, so that should be a good warmup, and it should only take a week or two if I spend at least 20-30 minutes per day on it. So I think I'll start with that, then move on to Reinfeld's 1001 puzzle books, which I haven't been through in their entirety yet. And maybe I'll keep going through Pandolfini's Endgame Course over and over as part of this, too.

So I guess that's the plan:

1. Play at least 3-5 practice games per week. Review them afterwards.
2. Look over a few of the opening lines in books that I want to learn more about.
3. Go through the tactics puzzles that I already know really well as a refresher course.
4. Watch the opening DVD over and over.
5. Once I'm done with that tactics refresher, dive into Reinfeld's 1001 puzzle books again, to complete those and go through them over and over until I know them all on sight like I do with the easier books.

--Fromper

04-30-2008, 10:00 PM	#81 (permalink)
Fromper Forum King Posts: 1,322 Thanked 77 Times in 75 Posts Chess Profile	Ok, so I survived and did acceptably well in the last big tournament without doing much prep in the last month or so. My life will continue to be fairly hectic for the next week, but after next Tuesday, I should have more free time to spend on chess than I've had in a while. Time to get focused again. My next big tourney is mid-June, so that gives me six weeks to prepare. This one is divided into sections, but not by 200 point ranges. There's an U1800 section with a prize for best performance by a player under 1600, but not a separate U1600 section. This works well for me, since I'm on the border between wanting to play in U1600 and U1800 sections, anyway. So now I have to decide what study to focus on between now and then. Based on my games in the last tournament, it's obvious that my primary focus needs to be tactics. I'm doing pretty well with endgames right now, though I still want to continue studying them to improve, but it's not a top priority right now. There are a couple of opening lines I want to learn more about, too. The one other thing I want to do for opening study is that I bought one of those Foxy Openings DVD's last weekend at the tourney just to see if that type of study would work for me. Someone suggested that after watching it once all the way through, I can just play it in the background over and over while doing other things at home (making dinner, getting ready for work, etc), and just glance at the board positions on the TV every so often, and I'd end up memorizing the whole thing and learning the opening with very little real effort. So I decided to give it a shot with IM Andrew Martin's DVD on the Smith-Morra Gambit Declined. If it works, I might buy more of those in the future. So I know I need to focus on tactics, but I'm not sure which tactics puzzles to do. I own too many tactics puzzle books, and I've been jumping around from book to book doing a few puzzles here and there for the last couple of months. And I've even been including Pandolfini's Endgame Course in the mix of those puzzle books. I'm thinking I should go through the two puzzle books I used to know really well as a refresher before diving into the harder stuff. It's been too long since I've done focused tactics study, so that should be a good warmup, and it should only take a week or two if I spend at least 20-30 minutes per day on it. So I think I'll start with that, then move on to Reinfeld's 1001 puzzle books, which I haven't been through in their entirety yet. And maybe I'll keep going through Pandolfini's Endgame Course over and over as part of this, too. So I guess that's the plan: 1. Play at least 3-5 practice games per week. Review them afterwards. 2. Look over a few of the opening lines in books that I want to learn more about. 3. Go through the tactics puzzles that I already know really well as a refresher course. 4. Watch the opening DVD over and over. 5. Once I'm done with that tactics refresher, dive into Reinfeld's 1001 puzzle books again, to complete those and go through them over and over until I know them all on sight like I do with the easier books. --Fromper __________________ Current study plan: 1. Play at least 2 slow USCF rated games per week. 2. Play at least 3 other games per week. 3. Study my own games - All of them!!! 4. Do at least 50 tactics puzzles per week. 5. Read at least one chapter of a Chess book every week. 6. Play through at least 3 master games per week. "Don't be afraid of ghosts! Always play the moves you want to play unless you see a genuine tactical drawback." --Grandmaster Neil McDonald