I participated in the #100daysofchess on twitter not because I wouldn’t spend time on chess every day otherwise, but because I wanted to try to be more accountable for my study. The timing also worked out perfectly since I started just before my summer break, so I had a lot of time on my hands. So here is how I spent my chess time for the last 100 days.
Study
Calculation and tactical play was always the weakest part of my chess game, so I focused on this aspect in my study. I started with the woodpecker method a couple of weeks before the 100 days to improve my pattern recognition. This helped me immensely and improved my play a lot, because I blundered simple tactics much less frequently.
After that, I read Excelling At Chess Calculation to learn more about the theory of calculation. I enjoyed the book and especially the exercises at the end. I finished my intense calculation study (for now) with solving problems, most of them coming from Imagination in Chess.
After my focus on calculation, I started reading Dvoretsky’s Recognizing Your Opponents Resources. I really enjoyed the book and spent a lot of time on solving problems from it, although I only did about half of them, because they got too difficult for me.
But the best thing I did was solving at least one endgame study almost every morning. This is a great habit and I would suggest that everyone should pick this up. I have supplemented the ‘serious’ study with going through a games from a game collection and obviously with playing actual chess games.
Playing
I played quite a bit online during that time and had good results. I mostly played blitz before, but cut down on it while I studied chess more seriously. Nevertheless my rating went from 2060 to a peak of 2165. I also played many rapid games, but I was and still am underrated in rapid.
I got most of my more serious games from the Lichess4545 leagues where I had 2 games a week most of the time. These leagues are very well run and I think that playing serious long time control games is important for improvement. OTB games are better for most people, but these leagues are a great substitute.
At the end of the 100 days, I participated in my first OTB tournament. I really enjoyed the experience and I got 3rd in the U1850 sections (more about that in a blog post next week).
What the future holds
University starts again next week, so I won’t have as much time for chess and I won’t post daily updates. However, I will certainly continue studying chess seriously and I will also try to play more OTB. As for writing about my progress, I will look into different options and find a way to keep you up to date.