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Week 14 Plan

This week marked the 14th week of my year-long chess improvement journey, and I continued to follow my 1/3 rule—dividing my time equally between learning, tactics, and playing. My main focus lately has been on improving my positional understanding, though I’m not diving too deep into any one concept. I don’t believe positional knowledge is the main reason I win or lose games, but it’s an area I’d like to feel more comfortable in.

This week, I focused specifically on handling closed positions. I tend to feel a bit uneasy when the board locks up, and my usual plans don’t work as smoothly. To address this, I went through lessons on Chess.com called Breaking Down Closed Positions. While I wouldn’t call myself an expert at closed positions yet, I definitely feel like I have more tools to work with when I find myself in these structures.

Tactics remain a staple in my training, and I’m still working through Chess Tactics for Champions. I spend about 30 minutes a day solving problems from the book, writing my answers down before checking them. While online puzzle trainers are convenient, I’ve found that writing down my solutions forces me to slow down and calculate more carefully. I’m now about two-thirds of the way through the book, so I need to decide what to tackle next—most likely, I’ll go back to the Chess Steps series.

To round out my training, I’ve kept up with my daily review of openings using Chessbook (see Chessbook - A Game-Changer for Adult Chess Improvers), along with spending about 10 minutes a day on Silman’s Endgame Course on Chessable. These shorter sessions help reinforce patterns without feeling overwhelming.

My Chess Improvement Score

Read about Noël Studer’s scoring system here

My score this week was: 1.4

What * How * Time = 1.0 * 0.7 * 6.2 = 4.3

Reflections

Overall, it’s been a solid week of training, and I’m looking forward to seeing how these improvements show up in my games.

Next Week

I’m going to spend 1 more week on some basic positional concepts. After that it will be on to more strategic ideas.