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   1 # rinna's chess study plan
   2
   3 On 13th September 2023, I started following a formal 12-week study plan
   4 from [some website][ChessGoals] that has different study plans for
   5 different skill levels/rating bands.
   6 I'm just doing their plan for beginners right now.
   7
   8 (Note: all books rinna mentions are likely available from your
   9 not-so-local library.)
  10
  11 ## Overall structure
  12
  13 The basic structure of the study plan has me do three things each day
  14 (four on the last day of each week, so Tuesdays for me).
  15
  16 Two parts are the same each day:
  17
  18 1. Check on my "daily"[^daily explanation] game.
  19    That is, a game which allows 1 or more days per move (I went with 3
  20    days, although so far each player has moved at least once or twice a
  21    day).
  22    Once it completes I am to analyze the game and start a new one.
  23 2. Do 5 chess puzzles.
  24    I've been using lichess's ["Practice" section][lichess practice] for
  25    this, working my way through the basic tactics puzzles.
  26
  27 The third part varies from day to day and week to week between these
  28 options:
  29
  30 * Play 1 rapid game with a 15+10[^time controls] time control.
  31 * Play 4 blitz games with a 5+5[^time controls] time control.
  32 * Study/practice basic endgames.
  33   I'm using the book _Silman's Complete Endgame Course_ by IM Jeremy
  34   Silman for this, and the endgame practice features on lichess and
  35   chess.com to practice endgames.
  36   The ones the study plan recommends studying for newbs like myself are
  37   those involving one or two queens or rooks (+ king) vs. a lone enemy
  38   king.
  39 * Study openings for 45 minutes.
  40   The study plan suggests several options to use for this and I'm going
  41   to be reading _Winning Chess Openings_ by GM Yasser Seirawan for
  42   this.
  43   This starts from week 2 and takes place on the same day as the
  44   endgame practice.
  45 * Read and play through a game from _Logical Chess: Move by Move_ by
  46   Irving Chernev.
  47
  48 After each game I play, I'm supposed to analyze the game for things I
  49 could improve on and what went well.
  50
  51 ## Rating Table
  52
  53 My rating and performance over time (on chess.com):
  54
  55 | Week | Blitz rating |Rapid rating | Blitz win/loss | Rapid win/loss |
  56 |------|--------------|-------------|----------------|----------------|
  57 |  1   | N/A          | 429         | 3-1            | 4-1            |
  58 |  2   | 686          | 508         | 6-6            | 0-0            |
  59 |  3   | 725          | 508         | 0-0            | 0-0            |
  60
  61 Notes:
  62
  63 * Each row represents my ratings at the beginning of each week unless
  64   stated otherwise.
  65   Game results are for games played during that week.
  66 * I had never played any blitz games prior to starting the study plan.
  67 * Prior to starting the study plan I had mostly been playing on lichess
  68   rather than chess.com, so improvements from week 1 to week 2 may just
  69   be my having improved since when I had last been playing on
  70   chess.com.
  71
  72 ## Status report
  73
  74 ### Week 1
  75
  76 I've really appreciated having a more structured plan going on.
  77 I have done some extracurricular studying hehe, because the study plan
  78 has helped me get even more excited about chess (also because I have
  79 some spaced repetition stuff going on, so I'm obviously not gonna
  80 abandon that just because I've also got this study plan).
  81
  82 The plan has also helped to ensure I actually play games. :)
  83 The blitz games are helping me learn to use my time more efficiently.
  84
  85 My first daily game has been going really excitingly.
  86 I've included an animated GIF below showing the game so far (up through
  87 move 19 for both white and black).
  88 I have the black pieces.
  89
  90
  91 [![an animated display of the moves from the game][gif versus
  92 TPTCOAT]][daily game versus TPTCOAT]
  93
  94 [gif versus TPTCOAT]:
  95   https://alicebenighted.neocities.org/misc-images/chess/vs-tptcoat.gif
  96 [daily game versus TPTCOAT]:
  97   https://www.chess.com/game/daily/561280087
  98
  99 ### Week 2
 100
 101 From this week on, the study plan decreases the games played a little
 102 to make room for studying the games from _Logical Chess Move by Move_.
 103 Which is a fun book!
 104 It's a bit of an old book, so some of the analyses are by now
 105 demonstrably erroneous due to further developments in the understanding
 106 of chess (and the advent of chess engines), but it's interesting.
 107 It goes through a bunch of historical master-level games and explains
 108 the ideas behind (and sometimes flaws in) each move.
 109
 110 Yesterday I also got to get started on _Winning Chess Openings_ (okay,
 111 that's a lie, i've been doing a bit of extracurricular reading on it
 112 already. but i did more yesterday).
 113 Which is also a great book.
 114 I've reached the section of the book where it's basically giving a
 115 whirlwind tour of every classical king's pawn opening (which is to say,
 116 ones beginning 1. e4 e5, with both players moving the pawn in front of
 117 their king two squares).
 118 Next it's gonna do the same for classical queen's pawn openings (1. d4
 119 d5), and then for modern king's/queen's pawn openings (where the second
 120 player doesn't mirror the first's move, intending to contest or attack
 121 their position in the center in some other way).
 122
 123 The games this week were all blitz games.
 124 I went 6-6, (3-1, 2-2, and 1-3 across the different days I played
 125 them).
 126 Looking back I notice I went 6-1 with the white pieces and 0-5 with the
 127 black pieces.
 128 Huh.
 129 (And the black games were all in the Caro-Kann, which is how I respond
 130 to 1. e4.)
 131 Gonna need to work on that I guess, hehe.
 132
 133 I won my daily game that was going really excitingly.
 134 Played another game against the same person as well as starting a new
 135 game.
 136 The rematch went in my favor again, and now we're doing another (now
 137 unrated) game.
 138 The new daily game I got a bit reckless and tried a Qa5+ tactic (this
 139 is moving your queen to check the opponent's king with the intention of
 140 then capturing a different piece with the queen when they have to move
 141 to defend; awkwardly I failed to notice that they could both block the
 142 check and defend the piece I was going after by moving their queen)
 143 that hasn't panned out so I had to spend several moves getting my queen
 144 to safety.
 145 I've managed to stabilize the situation so we'll see how that works
 146 out. :)
 147
 148 [^daily explanation]:
 149   "Daily" is just what chess.com calls games with such a time control.
 150   Chess.com is very popular (and according to the data gathered by that
 151   site, chess.com blitz rating is most well-correlated with
 152   over-the-board FIDE ratings, despite the very different time
 153   controls), so the study plan used that terminology.
 154 [^time controls]:
 155   Chess time controls (at least in the shorter range) are often written
 156   as N+M.
 157   This means that each player starts out with N minutes on their clock
 158   and gets M seconds added to it for each move.
 159   Currently I am sticking to 5+5 (5 minutes initially + 5 seconds per
 160   move) for blitz games and 15+10 (15 minutes initially + 10 seconds
 161   per move) for rapid games.
 162   "Blitz" and "rapid" are just terms that refer to ranges of time
 163   controls shorter than the classical time controls used in
 164   most over-the-board tournaments.
 165
 166 [ChessGoals]:
 167   https://chessgoals.com
 168 [lichess practice]:
 169   https://lichess.org/practice