I did 18 hours and 50 minutes of chess study this week, exceeding my 12 hour target.  Unfortunately that didn’t include playing at the British Universities’ Chess Association team championships, as Durham had to pull out at the last minute because of transport problems.  Here’s the breakdown:

Monday: 20 minutes CT-Art, 20 minutes playing Chess960 with WGM Merula on ICC

Tuesday: nothing recorded

Wednesday: 2 hours group lesson with FM David Eggleston, 1 hour 10 minutes opening work

Thursday: 3 hours 40 minutes opening work, 15 minutes preparation for the evening’s game, 1 hour 25 minutes playing a local league game

Friday: 1 hour 20 minutes opening work, 1 hour 15 minutes preparation for and 2 hours 30 minutes playing a Team 45 45 league game

Saturday: ~3 hours playing and analysing with a similar-strength player at and after Durham Uni Chess Society

Sunday: 40 minutes opening work, 65 minutes playing 15-minute games on PlayChess

A lot of time recently has been spent on this mysterious ‘opening work’.  Some of this is concrete work on openings and variations I am committed to playing, but most is a general investigation of lines which I might want to take up.  It’s not the most satisfactory use of time in general, but there are a number of gaps or problems with my opening repertoire as it stands which I feel I need to fix as soon as possible.  I’ll write about this in more detail soon.