Andrea
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Training plan: what do you think? - 2008/09/04 08:41
Dear all,
I would like to share my training plan with you, and get your feedback about it.
My general objective is to improve my game in long time control tournaments (with the dream of getting to Candidate Master level, but I would be already happy with much less than this).
Background: I started playing chess many years ago, I then stopped for many years, and I very recently restarted. I am 37 years old, and I do not have an exceptional amount of time to dedicate to chess: realistically, I would say no more than 1 to 1.5 hour per day as average. My current level is between 1300 and 1400 ELO, and my main defect is that I blunder too much and too often.
My current study plan is the following:
OPENING:
At my current level and given the limited time I have available, I don’t believe that I should invest huge amount of times on openings. I am using the Torre Attack when playing White, and the Scandinavian Defense when playing Back against 1.e4. I believe they both lead to solid positions, very good for me. I have one book per opening, and I regularly study the games there and the main lines and variations.
TACTICS:
This is where I am currently investing most of my time, because I think that, at my level, most games turn around tactics. I do about 30/45 minutes a day of Chessimo (www.chessimo.com, something very similar to ChessTempo, but with more of a didactic twist), then another 15/30 minutes with ChessTempo, which I use to “track my progress”. I also review (using Fritz) all my online games, to find tactics my opponent or I have missed.
STRATEGY:
Here, again, I am not spending too much time with theory. I know the basics and general concepts, and the only study I do is going through annotated games of strong players and read the comments, trying to understand the why of each move from a strategic perspective. I have several books for this, all very nice and well written.
ENDINGS:
Here I have a pretty pragmatic approach. I use the endings module of Chessimo, which is based on “learn by doing and repetition”, I read about the key concepts, and I practice by taking some random positions from ChessTempo (the ones non ending up in mate), and playing them until the mate (one thing I have to learn is how to win a won game – if this makes any sense to you).
GAMES:
Finally, I try to play as much as I can, because of course you can study and practice as much as you want, but playing remains the key thing – and it’s also where the most fun is! 
I play online with three cadences: 5/5 (to practice openings and replies to them), 15/0 and 45/15 (to get closer to tournament time).
Whenever possible, I try and play regular OTB, because I realize that there is a huge difference between playing on screen and over the board.
That’s basically it. I would really appreciate your comments about this plan, so that I can tune and improve it.
Thanks in advance,
Andrea
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Playing on Playchess.com as AndreaCoda.
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Of course, if someone more experienced than us will comment, it is likely that we will both learn something! 
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