See all of my Year of Study posts

Week 3 Plan

This week I was focused on tactics again, like in Year of Study Week 1. Specifically:

  • Clearance

  • Interference

  • Trapped Pieces

  • Zugzwang

For each one I did a Chess.com lesson followed by 20 Lichess puzzles on that theme. The lessons were from the Every Chess Tactic Explained series by WIM Fiona Steil-Antoni.

I also still am working through Tactics Time 2 on Chessable. I’ve gone through 780 out of 1000 puzzles so far. I started this long before my Year of Study plan, but I think these are important to do every day. Each day I review any that are up for review, and if I have time I add 20 more puzzles at a time.

I am also keeping up on any reviews needed from the first two parts of Silman’s Endgame Course on Chessable. These are pretty easy and I will keep adding chapters in future weeks.

I continued to play and analyze rapid games. This week I played 3 rapid games.

Reflections

I spent about 30 minutes per day this week, which was done from 40-50 minutes the previous 2 weeks. However, it was Thanksgiving so I purposely planned to do less on Thursday and Friday while I was spending time with family.

I could really see a difference this week with tactics and playing when I was focused vs. “less focused.” Having the holiday and breaking my routine had an effect. But that is part of the reason I focused on something like tactics this week… because I figured I did not need 100% focus all week.

Next Week

Next week I’m going to focus on improving my “analyze your game” skills because even though I’ve been trying to do this, I still feel like I’m not learning very much.