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I'm looking to create a structured chess practice routine. So far I have been solving some puzzles, played some games and watched some lessons every day. I emphasize some because it has not been very structured, which is what I want to change

I'm planning to practice 30 minutes each weekday and an hour every day in the weekend. What exactly I should do in those minutes is what I am wondering about.

How do you recommend I structure my chess practice?

Thanks

Edit: My blitz rating on chess.com where I play the most is 936.

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    What is your rating please? Commented Mar 3, 2020 at 20:04
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    Do not close. This question is similar, but it focuses on how much time to spend, and is different from the "How to study chess?" question, even if the answers are similar, as they naturally would be. Besides closing questions on new people is not helpful to the site. Commented Mar 3, 2020 at 20:27
  • 2
    @PhishMaster Could we please be a bit nicer to new users?, On closing new users' questions
    – Ellie
    Commented Mar 3, 2020 at 20:56
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    @PhishMaster Thanks for asking. I updated the question.
    – fossegrim
    Commented Mar 3, 2020 at 20:59
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    The core of this question is how to allocate study time, (not what to study!), none of the answers to the question marked as duplicate address that.
    – Akavall
    Commented Mar 3, 2020 at 22:00

1 Answer 1

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For now, I am going to assume that you are a somewhat weaker player.

If that is the case, virtually 90% of your time should be spent on tactics for now, but you want to find them grouped by category, so you are constantly solving similar problems. Try to do 50 per day, spending no more than two minutes per problem.

In addition to that, you want to find a good endgame course, like "Silman's Complete Endgame Course". At times, when you want a break from the tactics, start reading through that book page by page. Frankly, do not try to deeply study it at first. You should prefer to just see many, many, examples played out, and try to absorb as much as you can by osmosis, rather than deeply studying at first. There are a few things that need to be memorized, like how to draw K+P vs. K when your lone king is in front of the pawn, or the Lucena position to win certain rook endgames, or Philidor's position to draw certain rook endgames.

Lastly, you can also spend some time with opening pawn structure books, like Soltis' "Pawn Structure Chess". There are analysis mistakes in it galore, but the overall ideas are sound, and will teach you HOW to play chess rather than trying to memorize opening theory.

Spend most of your time on the tactics, but take breaks, and dabble in the other two. As you get stronger, things will change.

You can also read my answer here for more advice.

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