So the first quarter of 2006 is just about history. I thought I’d see how I’m doing on my goals for the year.
Slow games: I’ve played 30 slow games so far. This almost equals my total for all of last year, and it’s already half-way to my goal of 60 for 2006. 11 are USCF-rated tournament games; 4 are online games in the STC Open; and 15 are online correspondence games.
My performance rating in the 11 USCF games was around 1500. My rating has climbed 85 points since the beginning of the year, to 1477.
Tactics: Not good. The additional time I’ve spent playing slow games has come straight out of my study time. I did a few dozen problems early in January, but basically nothing since then.
Strategy: Not good. I finished the minor pieces chapter in Pachman, and I’m most of the way through the rook chapter. Again, not much study time.
Annotated games: Not good. I’ve played through a few Marshall games.
Unplanned study: I went through the Chess Exam book by Khmelnitsky during January and February. I wrote about this earlier.
Looking ahead: I have three correspondence games still going on GameKnot. When I finish these, I won’t add any more for a while. I hope to free up some time to get back to tactics study during the next couple of months.
2 Comments
Why don’t you limit your study to just one of the above mentioned subjects, and play turn-based (or cc games as you like to call em) games on the side? let’s say you’ve got you’ve got 2 hours to spend on chess each day. Then spend one hour on studying a specific subject for a period of time, and spend one hour on making moves in your games. Eventually you will move on to another subject to study
Just an idea
That way you can keep doin’ both… Because practice (as in playing) should not be put aside.