I have a 10 years old nephew, who have been playing chess for one year now. In a few months to come he will play in a chess tournament with an age bracket of 7 to 12. I am not that familiar yet on a good process in preparing a kid for a chess competition. So my question is how long should I let him solve chess puzzles in a day? Is it a good practice to let him solve chess puzzles for 1 hour or maybe 2 hours?

Great question!

Kids obviously have more energy, greater stamina than we do. I say make it challenging, and when they are done they will let you know.....

As long as he wants to.

I would say try to keep in fun and entertaining because if a little kid doesn't have fun playing chess he probably won't want to keep playing.

Fun and entertaining denotes a "Positive Attitude". This will certainly help the child in everything they do in life IMO.

I agree to keep it fun and entertaining. He has to want to study and put real mental effort into it, otherwise he won't get much out of it.

Besides some tactics puzzles, I would try to build up his stamina and time management for an individual game. I see lots of kids that rush and can't maintain concentration to use their time to their advantage. Find what time control the tournament will be using and shoot for being able to concentrate on a single game for that time, twice a week. Learning to string together several games is a skill he will learn at tournaments, as it's not practical to play, for example, 4 one hour games every day as a training exercise.

Think of his first tournament as an experiment. You have to find the tricks that support his unique needs. Some kids seem to need to burn off energy between games, while others wilt if they get hot and sweaty. We avoid caffeine drinks and sugary snacks at tournaments (though I keep a few packs of gummy treats to console a kid when they need it.)

Celebrate his first tournament unconditionally as a huge accomplishment, no matter what the win/loss outcome.

Hi ryan_c!
Try my new book "Treatise of forced mate". I wrote this book for beginners where one uses "only checks" to reach the checkmate.

Please go to Treatise of Forced Mate / Tratado ... - Google Buchsuche
and tell him to solve the problems in this preview.

Please tell me what you and your nephew. I need feedback and opinions.
Thank you.

Regards,
Mel

PS. My new method will show people that chess is no hard to learn.

If the combinations are all checks, it is clearly designed for the beginner.

Sounds like a great place to start!