Anyone have any advice on how to go about training for a tournament? This would be my first tournament and it would be great to get tips on how to go about preparing for it. The tournament is 1 month away and this would be my first experience in tournament play.
A couple of questions I have are:
Any advice would be appreciated.
After a few days using the Generic Training Schedule, I have a few minor modifications to adapt it to better fit the needs of the club level chess player. The original ChessOK article was geared towards 2000+ level players who have different needs than beginners. One major difference between experts and amateurs is the importance of opening preparation at the expert class, and this focus can be seen throughout the original GTS plan. Another feature of this new version of the schedule is that the play time is spaced in such a way as to allow you to try out new ideas and openings that were covered on previous days.
In this new adaptation I have halved the opening study time and focused on endgame and tactical study time which will better address the needs of amateurs.
The end result would look something like this:
Day 1
Study Openings 1U
Solve Tactics 1U
Study Endings 1U
Study Strategy 1U
Day 2
Study Endings 1U
Solve Tactics 1U
Play 1U
Study Strategy 1U
Day 3
Study Strategy 1U
Solve Tactics 1U
Solve Endings 1U
Study Openings 1U
Day 4
Solve Tactics 1U
Study Endings 1U
Study Strategy 1U
Play 1U
In my quest for chess improvement, I have stumbled upon Markgravitygood’s excellent chess improvement blog. I recommend that you checkout his post on the generic training schedule, which is based on an article by chess trainer GM Irina Mikhailova on chessOk.
Mark’s post is exactly what I was looking for when I wrote my post on ‘My Chess Education’. I was so impressed by this training schedule, that I am going adopt it as part of my chess study routine.
Since I only have at most 2 hours per day to dedicate to chess, here is my adaptation of the schedule. If I cannot complete the daily curriculum,any topic not covered will be tackled on the next day:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4