Here is part of my dashboard that shows how I am doing on my goals
January Review
I did a good job following my January 2023 Study Plan. I kept up with my ToDo list, which kept me on-track for what I was working on.
The biggest accomplishment in January was playing in an OTB tournament, the 2023 Winter Open. I finished 2.5 / 5, which was pretty good, but I could have done better. Even though I don’t want to care about my rating, it did go up from 840 to 898. I’m hoping to play another tournament in a couple of weeks.
I finished the “plus” book for Chess Steps Level 2. I completed the book with an average of 81% accuracy. I had a goal to solve 40-80% of the puzzles. I had the most trouble with some of the opening tactics, which is a place I could spend some more time. My plan was to move on to the Endgame Workbook for Kids, which I started, but then found out that there were 2 more Chess Steps workbooks. I picked both of them up and started on the “thinking ahead” workbook. It is more challenging, which is good.
I also finished going through all the games in “Logical Chess: Move by Move.” It was good to get into the habit of looking at master games. I don’t spend a ton of time on each game, mostly just playing through them and trying to pick up some major themes. I started “The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played” as the next game collection.
I also finished “500 Chess Questions Answered” and started “The Tao of Chess.” I wasn’t really that into that book so I stopped reading it and started “Chess Duels,” which is so far pretty entertaining.
I also started a list of Prose Chess Books from some great feedback on Twitter.
Chessable Year in Review
In January I got my Chessable Year in Review. Here are some of my stats:
3.3 Million XP (top 2%)
365 days in 2022 (top 1%) - Every day. My streak is currently around 550
200 hours (top 2%)
3226 variations (top 1%) - 120,105 moves (top 1%)
97% accuracy
I’ve mostly used Chessable for tactics, specifically the “Learn Chess the Right Way” series. I finished book 4 of that series and started the last book, book 5.
Goal Update
At the beginning of the year I set some 2023 Goals. Check out the image at the top of this post. Here is where I stand on each of them:
| Title | Goal | Progress |
|---|---|---|
| Tournament Games | Play 10 Games by the end of February | I played 5 games in the 2023 Winter Open and I’m hoping to play one more tournament in February. |
| Tactics: Learn Chess The Right Way | Finish the 700 remaining tactics in books 4 and 5 (Chessable) by June 1 | I finished the 200 tactics in book 4 and started on book 5. I am on track to completing this by June having added 231 new puzzles in January. |
| Finish Workbooks | Finish Chess Steps 2 and Chess Endgame Workbook by end of February | I stopped the endgame workbook and picked up another Chess Steps workbook instead. I’m going to try to finish that one by the end of February, which might be a bit of a stretch. I will need to do about 2 pages a day. |
| Review Games | Play through 75 annotated master games by the end of March | I finished Logical Chess and started Most Instructive Games of Chess. I am through 28 games so far this year, right on track. |
January Time Spent
I still feel like this is a good balance. About 1/3 of my time is spent on tactics/puzzles. These are mostly from daily reviews and new puzzles in the Learn Chess the Right Way series on Chessable and Chess Steps workbooks.
Another 1/3 is playing online rapid games, where I played around 22 games. I’m not entirely sure because Chess.com has been having problems the last couple of weeks so some games were interrupted and I played a couple on Lichess that I didn’t count.
This month a tournament took up a big chunk of time, which is great.
February Study Plan
Here is my plan for February. These are the “must-do” things I focus on every day.
Play in 1 more OTB tournament.
Keep pushing through the “Learn Chess The Right Way” books on Chessable. I need to add 5 new puzzles a day, in addition to reviewing any open puzzles, to meet my goal of finishing by June.
Work through “Chess Steps 2: Thinking Ahead.” I need to do at least 1-2 pages a day. These are a step-up in difficulty from the “Chess Steps 2: Plus” book, which is a good challenge.
Keep reviewing games from “The Most Instructive Games of Chess”. I am aiming for 1 every day
After I have completed the list above, there are a few more things that I work on:
Playing rapid games: I still need experience playing games.
Puzzle Rush Survival: I started trying to get a minimum of 15 in a row with no mistakes on survival. That was not too hard so I’m going to bump that up to 17 in a row and then slowly increase that number every week or so. Another idea I could do would be to do a certain number of 5-minute runs every day.
One other project I would like to do is consolidate all of my opening lines into one file in Chessbase. They are a bit scattered around now in Lichess studies, Chessable, and random PGN files. I just want them all in one place. I’m honestly considering switching my white opening, but I’m not quite there yet.