So I went to the Saturday club today and lost to the top player, who I seem to play as black every single tournament. I was getting bored with playing the Tarrasch against him the last three times, and I'm up to the Stonewall chapter in the book on the Dutch, so I tried playing that in this game. He did a good job of taking advantage of the typical weaknesses in the Stonewall (black's bad bishop, hole on e5, etc) and stopped my king side attack from going anywhere. This is why the guy is rated almost 400 points above me.
But I also think the Stonewall isn't really my style. I'm looking forward to reading more on the Classical and Leningrad, as those might suit me better. That's really why I bought the book.
In my second game, I beat a guy rated just slightly below me, so I scored 50% and should gain a few rating points from these games. The final two rounds of this tourney will be next Saturday. Not many people showed up this time, so I can guess who I might play, and there really are no easy opponents for me. Everyone in the tournament is at least 1500!
So Abba did a good job in his 2009 goals thread of breaking down specific goals besides just one rating number, and also breaking down what he's doing to get there. I've decided to do something similar.
My goals for the year:
1. 1800 USCF rating. Preferably in time for the Miami Open in September, as stated in the first post in this thread. This is the ambitious long term goal. The rest will be more realistic and shorter term, I think.
2. Win or draw against someone over 1900. Obviously, this will happen if I come anywhere close to that first goal. I've gotten 4 wins and 2 draws in my life against opponents in the 1800's, but I've lost every game against opponents over 1900. It's about time to break that trend.
3. Improve my time management. I just re-read one of Dan Heisman's Novice Nook columns about this. I thought about time management more during my games today than usual, and I think it helped. The key for me is that I spend too much time thinking on non-critical moves. Cutting that out should really help me avoid getting into time trouble in the endgame.
Hmm... there are so many specific areas of the game that I want to improve on that I'm not sure if I should keep going with goals this way. I could be here all day. So instead, let's move on to study goals that will be used to achieve these goals.
At the start of this thread, I did what I usually do - listed various things I want to work on in order to improve. I've tried setting specific study goals in the past ("I must do this many tactical puzzles, this much reading, and play this many games every week"), and it always falls apart due to lack of realism. But the more general "I should study more" method that I've been using isn't quite strict enough to motivate me. So this time, I'm trying a cross between the two.
Basically, I'm listing what my ideal study for any week would be, while knowing that there are going to be very few weeks when I'll actually follow this plan perfectly. Why have the plan then? Because on weeks when I do a decent amount of play and study, this will remind me to balance what areas I'm focusing on, instead of just spending a ton of time on one thing that week. But on the other hand, I know that this is just a guideline, not a strict plan, so I'm not going to get frustrated and give up if I can't stick with it. Knowing my own personality, I think this "half and half" attitude is probably the key to realistically sticking with a study plan.
That said, here's what I'd ideally like to do every week to improve my chess:
1. Play at least 2 slow USCF rated games per week. I actually played 83 total games last year, so I averaged almost that much. But there are two additional weekly clubs that I should be able to go to regularly now that I'm at my new job. So between the 3 clubs, I could play 3-4 games every week if I actually make it to them all, plus additional games on weekends with big tournaments. Also note that by "slow", I mean G/70 or slower. I wish the clubs had all G/120 or slower, but I have to go with what's available.
2. Play at least 3 other games per week. This includes internet games, blitz, etc. I just think that the more I play, the more I'll improve, and a good balance of slow, serious games with some faster, casual games will help.
3. Study my own games - All of them!!! Ok, maybe not skittles games at the club where we're not keeping score, but all the tournament and internet games, anyway. This is where I think the most real learning comes from in Chess.
4. Do at least 50 tactics puzzles per week. Obviously, if I'm doing really tough ones, that number will go down, and if I'm doing easy ones, the number will go up. I think having a number to shoot for instead of saying how much time I'll spend will motivate me better.
5. Read at least one chapter of a Chess book every week. Right now, that's the book on the Dutch, along with the two endgame books that I'm studying. It'll change as I go. But just making sure to stop saying "I should read some of these books" and actually doing it will certainly help.
6. Play through at least 3 master games per week. If the chapter that I read for goal #5 happens to include 3 master games, that does count.
7. "Other" study. I've got that deep calculation exercise I'd like to try a couple of times, but it's time consuming, so it'll be once in a while as I have time. As I mentioned, I'm also considering hiring a coach, which will probably be too expensive to be every week. So having an "other" category in my study plan to cover these sorts of things seems like a good idea.
Speaking of hiring a coach, anyone have recommendations? I don't know of any locally who are close enough to be really convenient. I know NM Dan Heisman coaches via the phone/internet, and I like his teaching style from reading his columns, so I was thinking of contacting him. Anyone have other recommendations for people who coach remotely? How much should I expect to pay?
--Fromper