I did about ten and a quarter hours of chess study this week, meeting the term-time target of ten hours. The next three weeks will be fairly busy with university work, but after that I hope to be able to increase the number of hours per week somewhat. Here’s the breakdown:

Monday: 15 minutes CT-Art 4.0 (which is finally working, and seems very good!)

Tuesday: 20 minutes CT-Art

Wednesday: ~2 hours researching and playing moves in a series of correspondence games with a friend, designed to target important areas in both of our opening repertoires (this time was spread throughout the week to an extent, but was mostly on Wednesday)

Thursday: 15 minutes CT-Art, ~2 hours analysing and annotating games from the London Classic

Friday: 15 minutes CT-Art

Saturday: 5 hours 10 minutes of opening preparation (watching Jan Gustafsson’s new DVD – not the most balanced day’s training, perhaps, but once I had started watching I was quite unable to stop)

Sunday: Some time watching the games from Wijk aan Zee with live commentary, but I’m not counting that towards my total.

I have no events planned for January (apart from a club game or two), but in February I will be playing for Cheddleton 2 in the 4NCL and for Durham University in the British Universities’ Chess Association Championships.