As predicted in WPR 40, my girlfriend was a highly disruptive influence last week, so I only managed about 13 hours.  This week will be largely about getting a few repertoire tweaks in some sort of working order in time for the Major Open which starts next week.  Hic naufragii (yes, I know that’s wrong):

Monday: 30 minutes CT-Art 4.0, 30 minutes opening work

Tuesday: 2 hours 25 minutes (car journey) opening work

Wednesday: 1 hour lesson with GM Damian Lemos

Thursday: Nowt

Friday: 3 hours playing, analysing and discussing ways to train with an old friend from junior tournaments

Saturday/Sunday: A considerable amount of time reading about and thinking about the optimal way to train.  I’ll guess at 6 hours.

As can be seen above, I’m currently having a minor crisis about how to train, but I intend to set this aside, at least to an extent, until after my two upcoming tournaments (which can be seen on the calendar page).

I’ve had a good week, managing 40 hours and 20 minutes of study.  This has been split between tactics problems (CT-Art 4.0), opening study (various top-secret sources), middlegame study (How To Reassess Your Chess, 4th edition), endgame study (Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual) and a few online 15-minute games.  I’ve also restarted lessons after a break with GM Damian Lemos.  Hier ist die Aufteilung:

Monday: 60 minutes solving CT-Art 4.0 tactics problems, 3 hours 5 minutes reading Silman’s ‘How To Reassess Your Chess’, 30 minutes opening work, 30 minutes playing an ICC 15-minute game and 40 minutes analysing it

Tuesday: 35 minutes CT-Art, 1 hour 20 minutes studying Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual, 1 hour 40 minutes Reassessing My Chess, 70 minutes lesson with GM Damian Lemos, 40 minutes reviewing lesson material, 50 minutes opening work, 50 minutes playing & analysing an ICC 15-minute game

Wednesday: 60 minutes CT-Art, 1 hour 25 minutes Silman, 1 hour 40 minutes opening work, 10 minutes PlayChess tactics training

Thursday: 65 minutes CT-Art, 1 hour 30 minutes Dvoretsky, 2 hours 10 minutes opening work, 20 minutes playing an ICC 15-minute game, 15 minutes playing a couple of training games with chessdi

Friday: 30 minutes CT-Art, 50 minutes Dvoretsky, 1 hour 45 minutes listening to Chess Talk with Levon Aronian (not wholly instructional, but did include a nice annotated game), 55 minutes playing & analysing an ICC 15-minute game, ~40 minutes opening work

Saturday: 50 minutes CT-Art, 1 hour 40 minutes Silman, 1 hour 30 minutes opening work, 1 hour 5 minutes playing an ICC 15-minute game and reviewing the opening

Sunday: 1 hour 30 minutes CT-Art, 2 hours 30 minutes Dvoretsky, 2 hours Silman, 2 hours 20 minutes opening work, 40 minutes playing and analysing a few ICC and PlayChess games

I won’t be able to manage 40 hours this week, as my girlfriend’s visiting.  See you next week.

Hello and welcome to another weekly round-up.  I do intend to do these on Monday, but a casual observer would be forgiven for assuming that I used a random number generator to decide on which day of the week to write them.  The bad news is that, as predicted in WPR #38, last week wasn’t particularly productive; I only managed 4 hours 55 minutes.  The good news is that I’m now in an excellent routine, and am on course to manage 40 hours this week.  Voici la répartition:

Monday: Nowt

Tuesday: 1 hour 5 minutes working through Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual

Wednesday: 1 hour reading Gallagher’s Starting Out: The King’s Indian, 15 minutes ICC TrainingBot

Thursday: 30 minutes finishing off Gallagher’s book (which I found to be a useful refresher even though I’ve played the King’s Indian for years), 10 minutes playing an ICC 15-minute game, 50 minutes Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual

Friday: 1 hour 10 minutes starting to read Silman’s (recently rewritten) classic ‘How To Reassess Your Chess’

Saturday: 5 minutes PlayChess tactics training

Sunday: 40 minutes Reassess Your Chess

The second piece of bad news is that I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t afford to play tournaments in Europe this summer.  The corresponding piece of good news is that I will be active on the British tournament circuit, and so far have entered the British Major Open and the e2e4 Sunningdale International.  Both are FIDE-rated, and both should offer a relatively strong and uniform field (in particular the latter, which is a round robin).

I managed 12 hours 50 minutes of chess over the past week, which is ok for the last week of term.  Here’s the breakdown:

Monday: ~1 hour 40 minutes working through Joe Gallagher’s ‘Starting Out: The King’s Indian’, 15 minutes watching Bazna end-of-round videos

Wednesday: ~3 hours at the City club analysing Bazna and other games and playing a 15-minute game

Friday: ~1 and a half hours playing and analysing with a uni friend

Saturday: ~2 hours 10 minutes working through the Gallagher book, 35 minutes playing 2x 15-minute games on ICC

Sunday: ~2 hours 50 minutes on the Gallagher book, 50 minutes studying Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual

I’m at home now and am finding myself a little distracted by Wimbledon, a Roger Waters gig and meeting old school friends, so I’m unlikely to manage the 40 hour target this week.  I’m still undecided about which tournaments to play this summer; my first will probably be either the British Major Open or the Czech Open.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been on holiday to Turkey and have been otherwise fairly busy with end-of-term stuff, so I’ve only managed about 6 hours over the last fortnight.  I’ve also been following the tournament in Bazna, but haven’t included time going over those games in my report.  Here’s the breakdown:

1st week

Monday: 15 minutes CT-Art

Tuesday: 30 minutes analysing games with derfel

Wednesday: 15 minutes CT-Art, ~2 hours at Durham City Club watching FM David Eggleston go over one of his games and playing 15-minute games with a strong player

Thursday: ~1 hour reading ‘My Great Predecessors’

2nd week

Thursday: ~an hour and a half reading ‘My Great Predecessors’ (on the flight home)

Friday: 10 minutes PlayChess tactics training

Saturday: 10 minutes PlayChess tactics training and 10 minutes reviewing mistakes

I don’t expect to get a great deal done this week, but after that I will be home and starting my 40 hour weekly target.

I did about 15 hours 40 minutes this week:

Tuesday (31st): 10 minutes ICC TrainingBot, ~45 minutes playing 3-minute games with derfel(GM), ~1 hour 40 minutes analysing past games with derfel, 30 minutes playing and analysing a 15-minute game

Friday: ~40 minutes preparation for a game with a friend, ~4 hours playing and analysing with said friend, ~4 hours playing ICC Open qualifiers, ~30 minutes analysing ICC Open games

Saturday: ~3 and a half hours playing ICC Open qualifiers (best result was 6.5/11, which may or may not be enough for a rating prize, and I beat a GM but also lost some games to lower-rated players)

From tomorrow until the following Thursday I’m going to Turkey for a week with friends, so this will probably be the last report until I get back.  Following comments on my last post I’m now seriously considering spending the summer playing European rather than British tournaments.

Lack-of-progress report might be a better title for this post, as I’ve done very little chess (~7 hours 10 minutes) over the university exam period.  The good news is that my exams are now over, and I have at least three months to dedicate largely to chess.  Here’s what I’ve done:

Monday 18th of April: 10 minutes playing on ChessCube, 70 minutes playing a 90 30 game

Tuesday 19th: 60 minutes lesson with Blitz-King

Wednesday 20th: 15 minutes playing on ChessCube

Thursday 21st: 10 minutes playing on ICC, 10 minutes playing on PlayChess

Friday 22nd: 20 minutes playing on ChessCube

Saturday 30th: 10 minutes playing and analysing on ICC

Wednesday 4th of May: 20 minutes preparing for the final round of the Durham City Club Championships, ~2 hours 30 minutes playing and analysing the game

Sunday 8th: 25 minutes playing on ICC (15 minutes with derfel)

Saturday 28th: 15 minutes playing on ChessCube

Sunday 29th: 25 minutes playing on ChessCube

This Friday and Saturday I intend to play in the 1st ICC Open.  Another post will follow soon about plans for the summer.

I did 6 hours 20 minutes this week.  There’s no target until after exams, which finish at the end of May.  Here’s the breakdown:

Monday: 5 minutes playing a game on Playchess, 10 minutes studying an opening from a Teignmouth game, 40 minutes Grivas self-analysis

Tuesday: 30 minutes Grivas self-analysis (it’s going to take a long time to complete), 1 hour lesson with GM Damian Lemos

Wednesday: 40 minutes Grivas self-analysis, 10 minutes playing on PlayChess

Thursday: 1 hour watching PlayChess’s ‘Ask the Experts’ session with Kasimdzhanov

Friday: 10 minutes PlayChess tactics training, 35 minutes playing games on PlayChess

Saturday: 50 minutes playing games on various servers

Sunday: 30 minutes playing on PlayChess

There were two noteworthy items this week: the Grivas-style analysis, which is detailed in an article linked to above, and the ‘Ask the Experts’ session, which was very interesting and definitely worth attending for the next one.