Check out last month’s update: February 2023 Recap and March Study Plan
March Recap
The first week of March I spent on vacation. I stopped most of my regular chess study, and the only chess-related thing I did was start reading Life & Games of Mikhail Tal. It was good to have some time to reset. It took me a few days to catch up on all my Chessable reviews when I got back, but it was worth it.
I also started the next round of my USCF correspondence tournament. I completed the first round back in the fall of 2021 and was even featured in the US Chess electronic newsletter. I won of few of those games which was enough to give me a ridiculously high 2037 correspondence rating and also qualify me for the semi-finals. I’m now playing 6 games with a time control of 10 moves per 30 days. I big part of it is organization, and I’ve started using Chessbase for all the games since that has correspondence tools built in.
I started working on GM Noël Struder’s “Next Level Training” course. So far it has been pretty valuable for me. It feels like a series of lessons from a coach.
One of the things I learned in that course, is to focus on one thing at a time. With that in mind I stopped working on the earlier books in the Learn Chess The Right Way Series. I’m still working through Book 5. I started Book 1 about 16 months ago, and have been doing these tactics pretty much every day. It is time to move on to some new content!
April Plan / Goals
Next Level Training: I will finish up this course this month. I am trying to apply the principles I learn as I learn them.
Chess Steps: I finished Step 2 Thinking Ahead and started Step 2 Mix, but found them to be pretty easy to solve. I was getting 70-80% correct. Now I am going to move on to Step 3 and see how that goes.
Learn Chess The Right Way: I’m going to keep working on Book 5. I have a goal to finish that in the next 2 months. Since I stopped working on the other books, I may push myself to get this done sooner.
OTB: While there are no tournaments around me this time of year (mostly Scholastic stuff happening), I am going to try to go to the chess club at least once in April.