# rinna's chess study plan

On 13th September 2023, I started following a formal 12-week study plan
from [some website][ChessGoals] that has different study plans for
different skill levels/rating bands.
I'm just doing their plan for beginners right now.

(Note: all books rinna mentions are likely available from your
not-so-local library.)

## Overall structure

The basic structure of the study plan has me do three things each day
(four on the last day of each week, so Tuesdays for me).

Two parts are the same each day:

1. Check on my "daily"[^daily explanation] game.
   That is, a game which allows 1 or more days per move (I went with 3
   days, although so far each player has moved at least once or twice a
   day).
   Once it completes I am to analyze the game and start a new one.
2. Do 5 chess puzzles.
   I've been using lichess's ["Practice" section][lichess practice] for
   this, working my way through the basic tactics puzzles.

The third part varies from day to day and week to week between these
options:

* Play 1 rapid game with a 15+10[^time controls] time control.
* Play 4 blitz games with a 5+5[^time controls] time control.
* Study/practice basic endgames.
  I'm using the book _Silman's Complete Endgame Course_ by IM Jeremy
  Silman for this, and the endgame practice features on lichess and
  chess.com to practice endgames.
  The ones the study plan recommends studying for newbs like myself are
  those involving one or two queens or rooks (+ king) vs. a lone enemy
  king.
* Study openings for 45 minutes.
  The study plan suggests several options to use for this and I'm going
  to be reading _Winning Chess Openings_ by GM Yasser Seirawan for
  this.
  This starts from week 2 and takes place on the same day as the
  endgame practice.
* Read and play through a game from _Logical Chess: Move by Move_ by
  Irving Chernev.

After each game I play, I'm supposed to analyze the game for things I
could improve on and what went well.

## Rating Table

My rating and performance over time (on chess.com):

| Week | Blitz rating |Rapid rating | Blitz win/loss | Rapid win/loss |
|------|--------------|-------------|----------------|----------------|
|  1   | N/A          | 429         | 3-1            | 4-1            |
|  2   | 686          | 508         | 6-6            | 0-0            |
|  3   | 725          | 508         | 0-0            | 0-0            |

Notes:

* Each row represents my ratings at the beginning of each week unless
  stated otherwise.
  Game results are for games played during that week.
* I had never played any blitz games prior to starting the study plan.
* Prior to starting the study plan I had mostly been playing on lichess
  rather than chess.com, so improvements from week 1 to week 2 may just
  be my having improved since when I had last been playing on
  chess.com.

## Status report

### Week 1

I've really appreciated having a more structured plan going on.
I have done some extracurricular studying hehe, because the study plan
has helped me get even more excited about chess (also because I have
some spaced repetition stuff going on, so I'm obviously not gonna
abandon that just because I've also got this study plan).

The plan has also helped to ensure I actually play games. :)
The blitz games are helping me learn to use my time more efficiently.

My first daily game has been going really excitingly.
I've included an animated GIF below showing the game so far (up through
move 19 for both white and black).
I have the black pieces.


[![an animated display of the moves from the game][gif versus
TPTCOAT]][daily game versus TPTCOAT]

[gif versus TPTCOAT]:
  https://alicebenighted.neocities.org/misc-images/chess/vs-tptcoat.gif
[daily game versus TPTCOAT]:
  https://www.chess.com/game/daily/561280087

### Week 2

From this week on, the study plan decreases the games played a little
to make room for studying the games from _Logical Chess Move by Move_.
Which is a fun book!
It's a bit of an old book, so some of the analyses are by now
demonstrably erroneous due to further developments in the understanding
of chess (and the advent of chess engines), but it's interesting.
It goes through a bunch of historical master-level games and explains
the ideas behind (and sometimes flaws in) each move.

Yesterday I also got to get started on _Winning Chess Openings_ (okay,
that's a lie, i've been doing a bit of extracurricular reading on it
already. but i did more yesterday).
Which is also a great book.
I've reached the section of the book where it's basically giving a
whirlwind tour of every classical king's pawn opening (which is to say,
ones beginning 1. e4 e5, with both players moving the pawn in front of
their king two squares).
Next it's gonna do the same for classical queen's pawn openings (1. d4
d5), and then for modern king's/queen's pawn openings (where the second
player doesn't mirror the first's move, intending to contest or attack
their position in the center in some other way).

The games this week were all blitz games.
I went 6-6, (3-1, 2-2, and 1-3 across the different days I played
them).
Looking back I notice I went 6-1 with the white pieces and 0-5 with the
black pieces.
Huh.
(And the black games were all in the Caro-Kann, which is how I respond
to 1. e4.)
Gonna need to work on that I guess, hehe.

I won my daily game that was going really excitingly.
Played another game against the same person as well as starting a new
game.
The rematch went in my favor again, and now we're doing another (now
unrated) game.
The new daily game I got a bit reckless and tried a Qa5+ tactic (this
is moving your queen to check the opponent's king with the intention of
then capturing a different piece with the queen when they have to move
to defend; awkwardly I failed to notice that they could both block the
check and defend the piece I was going after by moving their queen)
that hasn't panned out so I had to spend several moves getting my queen
to safety.
I've managed to stabilize the situation so we'll see how that works
out. :)

[^daily explanation]:
  "Daily" is just what chess.com calls games with such a time control.
  Chess.com is very popular (and according to the data gathered by that
  site, chess.com blitz rating is most well-correlated with
  over-the-board FIDE ratings, despite the very different time
  controls), so the study plan used that terminology.
[^time controls]:
  Chess time controls (at least in the shorter range) are often written
  as N+M.
  This means that each player starts out with N minutes on their clock
  and gets M seconds added to it for each move.
  Currently I am sticking to 5+5 (5 minutes initially + 5 seconds per
  move) for blitz games and 15+10 (15 minutes initially + 10 seconds
  per move) for rapid games. 
  "Blitz" and "rapid" are just terms that refer to ranges of time
  controls shorter than the classical time controls used in
  most over-the-board tournaments.

[ChessGoals]:
  https://chessgoals.com
[lichess practice]:
  https://lichess.org/practice