Summary
I continued to do chess everyday for the past 3 months. It has not always gone well, but I still love it. I feel like I lose a lot more games than I win, though I did win 48% of my games. I feel like I should be winning more.
My Chessable streak is up to 518 and every day I have been adding new tactics from the Learn Chess The Right Way series. I finished book 3 and started on book 4, which I am 60% done with. I try to add at least 5 new puzzles every day. I also started working on the Keep It Simple course for Black. I just learned the quick starter lines against 1. e4 and 1. d4 and then have been adding in a few other lines as I encounter them. I review them every day and I’m finally starting to get a bit more comfortable with them.
I didn’t play in any OTB tournaments in the past 3 months. There were a couple I could have done, but I felt like I was not any better than my last tournament. That’s not a great mindset, so I’m hoping to do some more tournaments early in 2023.
I started tracking my time using the SayChess Accountability Group. You can read how much time I spent in November here. I’ve kept with it and will have to review my time spent in December as well. One big improvement is that I started to keep a list of daily chess priorities alongside my other todo list. This helps keep me accountable and make sure I am doing the work I want to be doing.
I stopped taking lessons because it was a bit too much for me. I was doing 90 minutes a week, but I did not feel like I was getting a whole ton out of every lesson. Since it was in the middle of my workday, it was hard to justify continuing at this time. I may look for a coach again in 2023, especially if I am playing more OTB.
In the beginning of December I spent a week Blitzing a week of Blitz. Not great for chess improvement, but it was a fun break.
Study Plans
Here were the study plans I created for each month:
By The Numbers
These are the numbers from October 1 to December 31, 2022:
| Site | Category | Result |
|---|---|---|
| USCF | Regular | 840 |
| USCF | Quick | 909 (P15) |
| USCF | Online Regular | 879 (P21) |
| USCF | Online Quick | 1127 |
| USCF | Online Blitz | 799 (P16) |
| USCF | Correspondence Rating | 2037 |
| Chess.com | Rapid rating | 1396 to 1467 (1473 high) |
| Chess.com | Number of rapid games | 143 |
| Chess.com | Daily rating | 1358 |
| Chess.com | Number of daily games | 0 |
| Chess.com | Blitz rating | 776 to 682 (812 high) |
| Chess.com | Number of blitz games | 194 |
| Chess.com | Puzzle rating | 2302 to 2153 (2302 high) |
| Chess.com | Puzzle rush best score | 33 (Surv) - 26 (5-min) |
Books Studied
Puzzle Books
Chess Steps - Level 2 - Plus - 80% complete
Annotated Game Collections
Chess History
Psychology
Chessable
Learn Chess the Right Way - Book 3: Mastering Defensive Technique
Learn Chess the Right Way - Book 4: Sacrifice to Win! - 60% Complete