Challenge 2500 | 1. Let's begin.

Training methods

I'll start by going through the different training methods I consider important and that I will implement (or already have implemented) into my routine. Keep in mind that:

• This set of methods is meant to be tentative. Some of the more fundamental methods will likely remain, but when it comes to the details I'll certainly change things around, try out new methods or get rid of ones I no longer consider useful.
• I obviously can't promise that a training plan based on these methods would be anywhere near optimal for any chess player, not least because different players will have, generally speaking, different strengths and weaknesses and thus different necessities.
• This is nothing but the result of thinking about what might make sense in general and how it can be implemented into my own routine.

Solving Puzzles

Arguably, the single most important factor in becoming a better chess player is to become better at calculating. Solving puzzles improves your calculation and expands your repertoire of tactical motives.
I'll differentiate the following two sorts of puzzle solving:

• Doing shorter puzzles of easy to medium difficulty as quickly as possible while trying to get most of them correct, let's say around 80%.
• Doing hard puzzles with the intention of calculating complicated and/or deep variations carefully in order to find the right moves, no matter how much time it takes.

I consider both important, since the former trains what one might call 'sharpness', that is, being able to find simple tactical ideas quickly and intuitively, while the latter improves deep calculation and helps make better decisions in complicated positions where there is no straight-forward tactical solution.

Playing practice

An actual game of chess is not a series of puzzles. The average decision required in a game is very different from the type of decision required when solving a puzzle.
In fact, many positions won't even be complicated in a tactical sense at all, but instead will demand strategical understanding and/or practical decision making, including e.g. time management.

This is why I think it's crucial to not exclusively work on tactics but also to play training games. It seems only logical that in order to get better at playing chess, you have to play chess.
I'd hypothesise that following a training routine entirely based on tactics could potentially affect negatively one's ability to make practical decisions over the board and to manage time prudently. Both, of course, are skills that are sharpened when playing training games.
When it comes to time control, blitz with increment probably has some use, but some version of rapid seems ideal to me. It's not too fast, so that deliberate decision-making is possible, but it's not too slow either.
I'm probably not alone when I say that I neither have the patience nor the time to play training games in a classical time control (even though, technically, that might be optimal).
Eventually, I intend to find a few training partners of similar strength to regularly play rapid games against (if you, estimated reader, happen to be at a similar level and looking to play rapid training games yourself, let me know), since it's difficult to get servicable games by randomly starting challenges on Lichess. Until then though, that's precisely what I'm doing: starting random challenges on Lichess.

Visualisation

Of course, working on tactics, especially difficult ones, trains visualisation already.
I do believe that additional practice in this area can be useful though.
I think of the skill calculation as encompassing the sub-skills evaluation, intuition and visualisation.
For me personally, when I find myself struggling in my calculation, it is more often the case that my visualisation is not at the level that is demanded by complexity of the variation than that I'm misevaluating something or failing to consider the right candidate moves.
Thus, working on this weak point of mine by supplementing the regular calculation practice with methods primarily targeting visualisation makes sense.
Two viable options to train visualisation that are worth considering:

• playing blindfold chess (Lichess offers a 'invisible piece' functionality)
• doing some format of blindfold tactics (I've briefly tried out https://listudy.org/en/features/blind-tactics and it seems promising for this purpose).

Opening work

This one is quite a bit different from the other areas of training, since one doesn't really improve ones's chess playing ability per se, but instead optimise the starting conditions for playing a game of chess.
Learning openings is arguably the least interesting part of training, as it essentially consists of (at least in part) learning theoretical material by heart (at a certain level, the advice "don't learn variations by heart, just understand them!" no longer applies).
To me, looking at openings, building repertoires, finding ideas etc. is quite fun. However, the equally important part of actually learning the variations not so much. Since it's very much indispensible though, for better or for worse, the the plan should be to make it be efficient and as pleasant as possible. I don't yet have a systematic plan or work-flow to continuously improve my openings, so that is something I'll try to implement.
To sum up, these are the two aspects of opening work as I understand it:

• compiling variations into a repertoire in order to be able to learn them
• learning the variations in order to be able to play them.

For the first point, I use ChessBase (although it is very possible to build a pretty good repertoire just using Lichess studies).
To later learn the variations, I use ChessTempo's feature 'Opening Training' where it's possible to import repertoires and train those variations based on spaced repetition. There are probably other sites/apps with this exact functionality, but ChessTempo works fine for me (they also have a pretty good mobile app, so it's convenient for revising lines while on the move).

Summary

To summarise, these are currently the methods I want to utilise:

• Puzzles (easy/fast and difficult/deliberate)
• Training games (rapid if possible)
• Visualisation practice (blindfold games, puzzles)
• Opening work (compiling, studying)

Again, this is what I consider important for myself and at this point in time only.
You might notice for example that there is no mention of endgames. This is because I believe that my current endgame knowledge is decent enough to get by.
In recent years, I've rarely found myself in positions where I was missing some theoretical knowledge of an endgame that was necessary to e.g. save half a point.
To be clear though, there are definitely endgames I consider absolutely fundamental (e.g. basic pawn endgames and their principles, basic rook endgames, checkmating with B+N, defending R vs. R+B or B vs. R, just to name a few), as these do occur relatively often.
Anything beyond that is, in my opinion, not that urgent. I might add some form of endgame practice to my training at some point in the future, but for now, I'll try to optimise my training around methods that I consider to move the needle the most.

Scheduling & what I've done this week

General scheduling idea

Now that the question of 'what' and 'why' is covered, let's move to 'how' and 'for how long'.
In general, I want to define

• a daily routine I can execute no matter how busy I am otherwise (except for when actually playing a tournament, of course). This should include basics like easy-to-medium difficulty tactics and a couple of training games, maybe some extra visualisation exercise.
• a set of more difficult and/or time-consuming tasks to be executed not every day, but for example 2-3 times a week. These might include sessions of deep calculation and opening work. Let's call these k-weekly tasks, k denoting the number of times per week I want to execute that task.

Daily and k-weekly routine last week + updated

As for the daily routine, I've begun with a simple (but, as it turns out, like this blog post, slightly lengthy) daily routine that consists of two things only: solving puzzles and playing training games. These are the details:

• 2x 25 min. of tactics on ChessTempo (Problem Set: Blitz, Difficulty: Medium)
• 4 Blitz games (3+2)
• 2 Rapid games (10+0)

In total, this takes around 2h10. Given that the daily practice is supposed to be a simple and efficient routine, doable on any given day, this is clearly a bit too much. I plan to change the following:

• move the rapid games to my k-weekly routines, which I'll specify in two weeks time (this is because the next two weeks won't be regular training weeks since I have two tournament planned (yay!))
• add 20 min. visualisation practice, shorten the ChessTempo sessions to 15 min. each.

The updated routine should take around 1h30, which is a lot better. Again, I expect this to change on a weekly basis at least for a while, since I really want to try and make it perfect. After all, it's something to be done daily, so it's sensible to invest some effort into making it as good as possible. This is the updated daily routine:

• 2x 15 min. of tactics on ChessTempo (Problem Set: Blitz, Difficulty: Medium)
• 20 min. Visualisation practice using https://listudy.org/en/features/blind-tactics
• 4 Blitz games (3+2)

As for the less frequent, k-weekly tasks, I've done

• 2x: deep calculation session (puzzles here on Lichess) of 100 min. (with a break at the half-way point)
• 4x: 50 min. opening work session (mostly compiling)

Since I'll be playing two tournaments shortly, the k-weekly routine will fall a bit by the wayside for now. I'll continue once regular, tournament-free weeks resume, probably by keeping up with the deep calculation sessions and hopefully implementing some sort of systematic way of studying openings.

Outlook

As mentioned above, I have two classical tournaments coming up, one 7-round tournament from 27.12. - 30.12. and one 9-round tournament in the new year, 02.01. - 08.01.
Links for anyone interested:

• https://chess-results.com/tnr707723.aspx?lan=0&turdet=YES
• https://www.staufer-open.de/anmeldung/teilnehmerliste-a-open

This will be my first time playing tournament chess since early October, so I hope to find my form quickly.
I'll do my daily routine on non-tournament-game days and maybe keep one daily 25 min. session on ChessTempo to stay sharp during the tournaments.
Apart from that, playing and preparing will be plenty of chess.

Thanks for reading and well done if you managed to get through this one; future editions will very likely be considerably shorter (although I can't promise anything!).
I hope you found this interesting and I'd be happy to hear what you have to say on any of the topics mentioned in this post. Whether it be suggestions, criticism or input regarding your own training methods -- feel free to leave a comment in the forum!
Next Sunday, 01.01.2023, I'll review the first tournament. Until then:
Have a good one. Cheers!