Why you should only do one thing at a time! —Road to 2000 #2
I have searched and searched for the perfect training program or system, and it doesn't seem to exist! Often the question is asked:
How long time should you spend on the opening, middlegame, and endgame in percentages?
The answer might come out 15 %, 45 %, and 40 %. I have tried several times to make a scheme filling in the numbers making the time allocations fit with the right percentage of the time. It will maybe work for the first week, but then life comes in the way. So if you want to try this method, you should have a lot of time on your hands, which most adults don’t have.
The percentage method also leads to buying unnecessary training materials. You buy a new course because it will help against a specific line in the Sicilian Sveshnikov that you have been struggling against. You buy a new book because it got high praise on Twitter or Reddit. I have bought many courses and books without finishing them, and they just collect dust on the bookshelf and my digital cloud somewhere in Ireland.
Instead, I have found that it is more useful to study one book or course at a time. You will gain momentum when you finish a book.
The only reason why I finished Silman’s classic ‘How to Reassess Your Chess’ (HTRYC), a book that is over 600 pages long, was because I was on a 3 week-long camping trip without other chess materials to distract me.
The feeling of completing something raised my valuation of the book. If you have not read HTRYC it is a book worth reading cover to cover. From Silman, I got instilled a new understanding of what imbalances are and how you can think about them.
An advantage of tidying up your study program is that you will feel the progress is faster. It’s like paying off a loan, if you spread all your money out evenly it will take ages, but if you pay off the highest interest loan first you will get a snowball effect.
Another reason why focusing on less can be helpful is chess burnout. I think many adult chess improvers have lost sight of the finishing line when we pick training materials. Technology also blurs the sight by always offering another puzzle or repetition if we find the time. We make plans and try to fit everything in, but instead, we are partially engaged on several training tools while never being fully present. In the end, we might reach a burnout state because we never reach the goalline.
So instead of thinking about the perfect training program while shuffling between 5 chess sites, 3 courses, and 7 books, finish one thing at a time and be present in the process.
You might ask, how do I then practice opening, middlegame, endgame, tactics, blindfold chess, and so on? My advice would be to rotate between them when you finish one thing go to the next.
This is something I have not always mastered, but when I do I always feel that I get closer to my goal and that I enjoy studying chess more.
Now follows my republications of ‘My Chess Career’. Subscribe now and get a free pdf-chapter from my book ‘Blindfold Opening Visualization’.
My Chess Career, Part IV, by Jose R. Capablanca
GAME No. 4.
J. R. Capablanca vs. Rob. Raubitscheck1, 0-1
Link to Lichess study
Date: September 25., 1906.
Opening: Ruy Lopez.
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. O-O Nxe4 5. d4 d5 6. Nxe5 Bd7 7. Nxd7 Qxd7
8. Nc3 f5 9. Nxe4 fxe4
10. c4
If 10. Qh5+ g6 11. Bxc6 gxh5 12. Bxd7+ Kxd7 13. f3 Re8 and the game is about even. If 10. Bxc6 bxc6 11. Qh5+ Qf7 12. Qxf7+ Kxf7 13. f3 exf3 14. Rxf3+ Ke6 15. Bg5 c5 16. Re1+ Kd7 17. Rf7+ Kc6 and White has a slight advantage.
10... O-O-O 11. Bg5 Be7
12. Bxe7
If 12. cxd5 Bxg5 13. dxc6 Qxd4 and the game is even.
12... Qxe7 13. Bxc6 bxc6 14. c5 Qf6 15. Qa4 Kb8 16. Rac1 Ka8 17. b4 Rb8 18. a3 Rhe8 19. Qa6 Re6 20. a4
White sacrifices a Pawn in order to start an attack.
20... Qxd4
If 20... Rxb4 21. Rb1 wins.
21. b5 Qf6 22. Rc2 cxb5 23. c6 b4 24. Rc5 Qd4 25. Rb5 Ree8 26. Rb7 Qc5 27. h3 d4 28. Kh2 d3 29. Rc1
29… Qxf2
Black’s only chance was to play: 29... Qd4 30. Rc4 Qb6 31. Rxb6 Rxb6 32. Rxe4 (best) Rxe4 33. Qc8+ Rb8 34. Qxc7 and it would be a hard game to play.
30. Rf1 Qd4 31. Rf5 e3
Mate in three.
The Post Mortem
This concludes the third game of the book. After each game, I will collect interesting insights by collecting other resources on the games and highlight any computer insights in the annotations.
The game was a lot more uneven than Capablanca mentioned in his annotations. You can find the computer analysis here. In the game after 29. Rc1 Black blundered with 29… Qxf2. Capablanca mentions that the best move is 29… Qd4!, which is correct, but then after 30. Rc4 he gives 30… Qb6. What is the only move to reach equality for Black?
I have decoded the position with DecodeChess if you want the solution:
In the mentioned variation (29... Qd4 30. Rc4 Qb6 31. Rxb6 Rxb6 32. Rxe4) there is another error. Rxe4 is not best either, but you can give it a closer look in the study.
I hope you enjoyed this weeks newsletter.
/Martin
I agree 100%. I struggle with training plans because I always want to work on many different areas and materials at the same time but at the end of the day I buy many books and join many sites and end up finishing nothing, frustrated and with a feeling of slow progress. I tend to find it hard to commit to one thing for a certain period of time as my mind always wanders towards all the other stuff I won’t be able to see meanwhile. I wonder if there are any techniques to deal with such psychological trait.
Exactly my experience. I find it helpful to track my time instead of making plans. I am still doing several things a day, I improved the most when I did 45 days of puzzle rush for one hour a day. This was during the summer break. My coach asked me how I improved my calculation skills over the summer. My blitz rating is 1600 on lichess.