This week I failed to fullfil my plan. First half of the week went OK, but then I got discouraged with my schedule. I played many games, though (mainly classical and rapid, but also some blitz).

This was my first failure, so maybe it’s a good time to summarise all my efforts and progress since the beginning.

Summary of all my efforts since December 2018

I’ve been solving tactics for ~60 hours:

• ~60% chesstempo standard
• ~15% chesstempo blitz
• ~15% lichess
• ~10% chesstempo custom sets

I spent ~15 hours on studying chess books (Irving Chernev’s Logical Chess: Move by Move and Jeremy Silman’s The Amateur’s Mind).

I played a number of games and tried to analyse them afterwards.

My progress since December 2018

Blitz

I think that I became noticeably better at solving simple tactics. I consider this to be the main reason behind my improvement in blitz chess – I went from 1500~ (with occasional 1650 peaks) to 1700~ (1739 at this point, but it might be somewhat inflated).

Rapid and classical

I don’t see a progress in rapid / classical time control, though. Let’s think about possible reasons:

1. An ability to immediately see simple tactics is valuable in blitz and bullet, but it doesn’t matter that much in classical – even opponent with poor tactical vision will eventually see everything, just by carefully checking / calculating everything.
2. 15 hours of studying chess books isn’t long enough.
3. It’s hard for me to make a practical use of the information I read in books.
4. I don’t know how to analyze my games properly, therefore I don’t learn from my mistakes.
5. I’m not focused enough.
6. I don’t calculate too much and I often don’t think deeply / try to use my theoretical knowledge.

Tactics

I can see a vast improvement in solving simple tactics, but when it comes to ratings on tactics solving sites, my progress is much slower than expected.

What am I going to do next?

I don’t know yet, I will post 5th week plans soon.

Rating summary

Playing

• lichess blitz: 1739 (+44)
• lichess rapid: 1791 (+50)
• lichess classical: 1731 (-8)

Training

• lichess tactics: 1981 (-26)
• Chesstempo standard tactics: 1644 (-6)
• Chesstempo blitz tactics: 1620 (-13)