March Study Plan

ChessMood

The big change this month is that I signed up for ChessMood. I met with one of their GM coaches, and he gave me a plan for studying their content, which I have listed below.

The other interesting thing about March is that I have a couple of trips planned so I will likely not get as much study time in as I normally would. That will actually give me a chance to try this plan, reflect when I’m gone, and then adjust when I get back. I also think it is important to take breaks to rest and recharge. Since I just finished an OTB tournament, this seems like a perfect time to do that.

Play

Here are my goals:

  1. Play 30-Minute Games - 2-3 games per week. Playing the moves on a physical board.
  2. Analyze Every Game - Combination of reviewing the game without an engine first, then using the Chess.com Game Review feature
  3. No Blitz - I didn’t play any blitz in February, and I’m going to keep that trend in March.

I am going to try to stick to 30-minute games. However, since part of my plan for the month is starting to learn a new opening, I may play some faster games to see how I do in the opening. Still no blitz though.

Learn

This is the big change from last month because I started with ChessMood. There are many courses that I will be doing for my “learn” time. It is a wide variety. One of the benefits of this is that whatever I’m in the mood for (see what I did there) I can work on.

Here is the list I am starting with:

  1. Openings (20%): Opening Principles then the WhiteMood opening course
  2. Tactics (20%): Tactics Ninja
  3. Master Games (10%): 100 Classical Masterpieces
  4. Middle Game (20%): Happy Pieces then Speedboat Adventures (Rooks)
  5. Endgame (20%): Pawn Endgames then the other endgame courses
  6. Mating Patterns (10%): Mating Matador

Looking at this list, it already looks a bit overwhelming. But I am making a list of all the content in order, and I will work through it to see how much I actually get done. With a little more organization on my part, I think I can manage. The challenge for me will to make sure I am actively learning while watching all the videos. I will have to find a good way to take notes.

I need a bit of a break from The Soviet Chess Primer book I have been working on for the past couple of months. I just was not getting as much out of it as I was hoping. I also got to points in the book where I was not as interested in the topic, but I felt like I just needed to keep pushing through. The downside is that I didn’t learn as much from those sections, or I put of studying all together.

Solve

  1. Chessable Tactics - 10 minutes a day on Learn Chess the Right Way - Book 1: Must Know Checkmates and Book 2: Winning Material

I’m going to temporarily pause the daily Aimchess and Tactics Time 1 that I had been doing for the past few months. These have been good, but I’m not sure I’m learning much from them. I am going to focus my energy on ChessMood for now, which will already be a lot to cover.

This is much lighter on the “solve” work than previous months. However, as part of the ChessMood videos, there will be opportunities to solve, which I will take advantage of.