I exceeded the 10 hour target by a large margin this week, doing about 16 hours 50 minutes. Most of the time was spent playing games; in the British Rapidplay at the weekend and the local Durham league on Thursday. Here’s the breakdown:
Monday 15th: 15 minutes ICC TrainingBot, 15 minutes Chess Tempo problems, 30 minutes playing 5 0 games online
Tuesday 16th: 15 minutes PlayChess tactics training + 5 minutes reviewing mistakes
Wednesday 17th: 20 minutes TrainingBot, 2 hours group lesson with FM David Eggleston (with two other students of similar strength to me)
Thursday 18th: 20 minutes Chess Tempo, 3 hours playing a local league game
Friday 19th: 15 minutes PlayChess tactics training + 5 minutes reviewing mistakes, ~30 minutes checking some lines in the King’s Indian Defense (Sämisch and Four Pawns Attack)
Saturday 20th: 30 minutes watching Maurice Ashley’s ‘The Secret To Chess’, 4 hours playing rapid (30 minutes each) games
Sunday 21st: 4 hours playing rapid games, 30 minutes looking at Fighting the Anti-King’s Indians
I expect it to be difficult to make the ten hour target this week, as I have a few bits of uni work due in. What chess training I manage is likely to be focused on reviewing my games from the past week.
Don’t give too many hints about what you do, now it’s easy for your opponents to prepare against you 😉 “Ok he worked the KI Saemisch, very well, I’ll play the Bird opening instead of my usual 1d4” or “Ok he cannot stand physical stress too well, let’s exhaust him with a 60-move game”.
You make a good point. One disadvantage of this site is that it makes it much easier for people to prepare against me, but it’s hard to get round that unless I completely stop posting games. My hope is that in the long term it won’t really make a difference, as once I play more FIDE-rated games they will be in databases anyway. I’m also trying to create a fully sound and high-level opening repertoire – not a collection of dubious traps and gambits – so I hope that some people knowing roughly what to expect before the game won’t be as much of an issue.