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Week 16-17 Plan

These past two weeks have been a continuation of my year-long chess improvement journey, and I wrapped up one study theme and kicked off the next. I also made steady progress in tactics, endgames, and openings, while keeping up my regular playing schedule. It’s been a good stretch—nothing flashy, but consistent and satisfying.

Strategy: Wrapping Up Positional Themes with Space

To close out my month-long focus on positional ideas, I watched a series of YouTube videos centered on space advantages. These videos typically featured annotated games where the player with more space used it to limit their opponent’s options and build up pressure. I’m starting to recognize more of these patterns in my own games, especially the downside of giving your opponent too much room to maneuver. Seeing the ideas play out in real games helped solidify the concepts in a more intuitive way.

Here are the videos I watched:

Strategy: Starting Candidate Moves

With positional play on pause for now, I’ve moved into a new theme: planning and strategy. I kicked this off by completing Kostya Kavutskiy’s Candidate Moves course on Chess.com. This course did a great job of emphasizing how important it is to slow down and consider all reasonable options before jumping into calculation. I liked the structured approach to thinking and plan to rewatch a few of the key examples in the future.

Playing Rapid Games: Weekly Rhythm

I’ve kept up my usual cadence of playing three 15|10 rapid games each week. This rhythm feels sustainable and gives me just enough practical play to apply what I’m studying. I haven’t had any breakthrough wins or crushing losses lately, but the consistency is helping me feel more comfortable in a wide range of positions.

Endgames: Daily Reviews from Silman

I’m still doing my daily Chessable reviews from Silman’s Complete Endgame Course. The number of reviews is usually pretty manageable—just a handful each day—but I’ve kept my streak alive (currently at 1333 days). It feels like part of my chess hygiene at this point, and I’m definitely seeing improvements in how I handle simplified positions in my games.

Openings: Short Daily Reps with Chessbook

Openings haven’t been a big focus lately, but I still run through my daily reviews using Chessbook. It usually takes 5–10 minutes to go over 20–30 moves, which is enough to keep things fresh without requiring a major time investment. I appreciate how easy it is to stay sharp with this routine, and I haven’t felt caught off guard in the opening phase of my recent games.

Tactics: Finishing One Book, Starting Another

I finished Chess Tactics for Champions by Susan Polgar this past week, and I really enjoyed it. It’s a solid book, and I’m a fan of pretty much anything the Polgars have put out. The mix of difficulty levels and the clarity of explanations made it a great resource.

Now I’ve started Forcing Chess Moves by Charles Hertan (Amazon link). I tried this book a few years ago and found it completely overwhelming—even the Chessable version didn’t help much. This time around, it feels more accessible. I can actually visualize the examples and follow the ideas, which is a good reminder that improvement sometimes shows up in quiet ways. It’s still hard, but now it’s the fun kind of hard.

My Chess Improvement Score

Read about Noël Studer’s scoring system here

Week 16: 4.3

Week 17: 3.9 - Slightly lower because I spent less time on Chess as I was working on other projects and busy time at work.