Before I start sharing embarrassing games and questionable thought processes, it's probably worth explaining how I'm actually trying to get better. This is the plan. It will almost certainly change, evolve, and occasionally be abandoned for a week while I convince myself that watching GothamChess recaps counts as training. But for now, this is what I'm doing.
The daily habit: Cognitive Chess
Every day I do five exercises from the Cognitive Chess book. The twist is you do them without a board, no pieces in front of you, no app open, just the position described in notation and your brain trying to hold it all together. The goal is to build visualisation and calculation. It's genuinely hard.
But it's the kind of hard that feels like it's doing something. If I can train my brain to hold positions without seeing them, the theory is that everything else, tactics, planning, endgames, gets easier because the board is clearer in my head.
The book: The Amateur's Mind
I'm working through Jeremy Silman's The Amateur's Mind. It's built around the idea that club players don't lose because they can't calculate, they lose because they don't know what to think about. The book takes real amateur games and shows where their thinking went wrong, which is both useful and personally offensive. I see myself in every example.
Puzzles: the notepad method
I do puzzles in three different contexts, but always the same way.
Once a week, Puzzle Rush Survival on Chess.com. I try to beat my high score, but the score isn't really the point. The point is the notepad and deep thinking for sustained periods.
When I'm away from home, CT-Art 4 on my phone. I aim for 5–10 puzzles per session.
Before every game, 5–10 warm-up puzzles as a pre-game routine.
For all of these, I write down the lines in a physical notepad before I make a move. Not just the answer, the lines I expect, any sidelines I can see, and my reasoning. If I get it wrong, I write down what I missed and why. It's slow. It's the opposite of speed-solving. But it forces me to actually calculate instead of pattern-matching and hoping.
Playing games: 15+10 on the Chessnut Move
I'm playing 15+10 rapid on Lichess using a Chessnut Move e-board. The time control gives me enough space to actually think without the game dragging on for an hour. I'm aiming for at least five rated rapid games per week, enough to get regular practice without burning out or tilt-queuing into oblivion at midnight.
Before each session I warm up with those 5–10 puzzles using the notepad method. It's a small thing but it puts my brain into calculation mode before the game starts rather than spending the first ten moves waking up.
Reviewing the games afterwards
After each 15+10 game I run it through Lichess computer analysis or Chess.com's Game Review. I don't spend forever on this, I'm not sat there for an hour agonising over every single move. Instead I do two passes.
First, I look at the opening and review the first inaccuaracy I made and why. Not every inaccuracy, just the first real mistake, I do this to try and learn somethingfrom every opening.
Second, I go through the rest of the game looking for the biggest moments, the misses and the blunders. For each one, back into the notepad it goes. I write down what I was actually thinking at the time and why I made the move I did, then I work through the engine's line and figure out how I missed it, how I hung my queen, or walked past a mate in one, or ignored a threat that was sitting there in plain sight.
It's the same notepad principle as the puzzles, the value isn't in seeing the right answer, it's in understanding the gap between what I saw and what was actually there. That gap is where the real lessons live.
Courses I'm working through
Chess Tactics for Kids, don't let the name fool you. It's a solid tactics primer and at my level the shoe fits perfectly.
Silman's Endgame Course, because I've discovered that knowing how to convert a winning position is actually important. Revolutionary insight, I know.
Opening Short and Sweet repertoires, just enough opening knowledge to not be lost by move five, without falling down the theory rabbit hole.
The philosophy: process over rating
It would be very easy to stare at my rating after every game and let a number dictate whether I'm having a good week. I'm trying not to do that. The goal on the horizon is NM, but the daily goal is just to show up, do the work, and let the rating take care of itself.
It's also very easy to get carried away with resources. There's always another course, another YouTube series, another app, another book someone on Reddit says changed their life. I've been there. I've had six tabs open, three apps downloaded, and a feeling of productivity while actually learning nothing. So I'm trying to stick with what I've got and go deep rather than wide.
That's the plan. Simple, repeatable, and boring enough that it might actually work. I'll update this as things evolve, when something stops working, when I add something new, or when I inevitably break my own rules and download another app.