What went well?

  • About 50 days ago I started doing 25 tactics a day on Chess.com. I set the rating range for the custom puzzles to all themes and 1100-1500. In those 7 weeks, I did 1200+ tactic puzzles. Did it help? My puzzle rating hit new highs, but I’m not sure it really helped my game. See below for what’s next.
  • I finished reading Chess Opening Names by Nathan Rose and started on 500 Chess Questions Answered by Andrew Soltis.
  • Partly because of Thanksgiving, and partly because I was overdoing it with games, I only played 4 games this week. I won 3 of the 4.
  • I got a good reminder that chess is a long-term goal, and that I should not be so focused on short-term gains/losses from Neal Bruce on the Chess Journeys Podcast.

What could have gone better?

  • This isn’t really a bad thing, but I did not play any chess for a few days straight. I would have liked to play a bit more, but taking a break was also good.

What will I try next?

  • I came across this blog by Alex Crompton about how he studies tactics. I am going to try this method instead of my 25 puzzles a day. I bought the Chessable courses Learn Chess The Right Way Book 1 and Tactics Time and configured my settings. I am planning to do 10 minutes a day on each course. I am still doing Aimchess every day, so this will be about 30 minutes of tactics every day.

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