what.. holy hell..
I like the general idea of this article, although I do not agree with each detail.
I do strongly agree to focus more on the process than the outcome. But that might not be enough.
Let's take myself as an example:
- I do have 1 or 2 training sessions per week, depending on how much time I can spend that week. At least one of them is at least 2h long.
- I analyze maybe 95% of my games. Intensity depends on the time format. (For example for many blitz games I just take a brief look if I see anything interesting which I think I could learn something from. Classic OTB games I analyze repeatedly, with and without engine, sometimes spending longer for the analysis than the game itself.)
- I do solve a lot of positions that are difficult to me.
In addition I do a lot of "non-serious training", which also involves easy tactics and spaced repetition to train my pattern recognition.
Based on your metrics, I'm more than fine. But still: My online ratings are stagnating for some time. OTB I'm not sure, because I only just got my first rating half a year ago.
So I would like to have some other kind of metric, some output-oriented metric to show me if I'm progressing or not. Am I playing better chess than a year ago?
Maybe I am and ratings will follow in the long run. Or I might be at my personal peak and shouldn't worry about getting better anymore. But also it's completely possible that I do something horribly wrong in my training. To answer that question it would be nice to have some form of output-oriented metric. But apart from ratings this is very difficult.
For this year I am considering to write down more carefully which topics I actually worked on. So in the end I have an overview of what I "should know" by now and I can test myself every once in a while and see exactly how much of it I have really internalized.
So the topic of which training metric to choose is very interesting. Thanks for bringing it up. I just think, that this article is still not really the final answer.
I do strongly agree to focus more on the process than the outcome. But that might not be enough.
Let's take myself as an example:
- I do have 1 or 2 training sessions per week, depending on how much time I can spend that week. At least one of them is at least 2h long.
- I analyze maybe 95% of my games. Intensity depends on the time format. (For example for many blitz games I just take a brief look if I see anything interesting which I think I could learn something from. Classic OTB games I analyze repeatedly, with and without engine, sometimes spending longer for the analysis than the game itself.)
- I do solve a lot of positions that are difficult to me.
In addition I do a lot of "non-serious training", which also involves easy tactics and spaced repetition to train my pattern recognition.
Based on your metrics, I'm more than fine. But still: My online ratings are stagnating for some time. OTB I'm not sure, because I only just got my first rating half a year ago.
So I would like to have some other kind of metric, some output-oriented metric to show me if I'm progressing or not. Am I playing better chess than a year ago?
Maybe I am and ratings will follow in the long run. Or I might be at my personal peak and shouldn't worry about getting better anymore. But also it's completely possible that I do something horribly wrong in my training. To answer that question it would be nice to have some form of output-oriented metric. But apart from ratings this is very difficult.
For this year I am considering to write down more carefully which topics I actually worked on. So in the end I have an overview of what I "should know" by now and I can test myself every once in a while and see exactly how much of it I have really internalized.
So the topic of which training metric to choose is very interesting. Thanks for bringing it up. I just think, that this article is still not really the final answer.
I greatly appreciate all of your articles, thank you! I recently heard you on a podcast, I can't remember which one, I am not a regular listener of any podcast, but you were clear and concise. But after reading this article, I once again tried to analyze and annotate my games and as somewhat of a beginner, it is extremely difficult to do so, at least for me. I reviewed your past articles, thanks to your user-friendly links, but even with the engine on, it can be quite difficult, especially when I have so many questions. I can follow each line over 7 moves and try to see what the heck I was supposed to do. And then, if I put it in a study and see what I'm "supposed" to do, to learn it, it will never make any sense, did that make sense? HA! Probably not, like me trying to understand inaccuracies.
I would add blunder rate if you are under 2000
@RookE1moretime said in #4:
> But after reading this article, I once again tried to analyze and annotate my games and as somewhat of a beginner, it is extremely difficult to do so
My hot take is analyzing your own games is overrated for beginners and even some advanced beginners getting into the intermediate range. It can be even more difficult than playing and even more psychologically difficult. Analyze your games enough to instill a requisite self-consciousness and maybe try to understand 1 or 2 positions from your game better. You don't need to do deep meditations on the whole thing, rather do anything with chess you enjoy more such as playing another game.
> But after reading this article, I once again tried to analyze and annotate my games and as somewhat of a beginner, it is extremely difficult to do so
My hot take is analyzing your own games is overrated for beginners and even some advanced beginners getting into the intermediate range. It can be even more difficult than playing and even more psychologically difficult. Analyze your games enough to instill a requisite self-consciousness and maybe try to understand 1 or 2 positions from your game better. You don't need to do deep meditations on the whole thing, rather do anything with chess you enjoy more such as playing another game.
привет очень красиво
@fixedmindset said in #6:
> My hot take is analyzing your own games is overrated for beginners and even some advanced beginners getting into the intermediate range. It can be even more difficult than playing and even more psychologically difficult. Analyze your games enough to instill a requisite self-consciousness and maybe try to understand 1 or 2 positions from your game better. You don't need to do deep meditations on the whole thing, rather do anything with chess you enjoy more such as playing another game.
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I think analyzing your games at any level, and all of them will help. However the amount of analysis could be different depending on the level. A beginner can spend 10 min on a game and identify a problem to work on. And that beginner doesn't have to focus on more than a few things at a time. They can pick out one or two things to focus on and integrate it into their thinking process. When I was in the 1400-1800 range I would focus only on tactics. My main focus was to see how people would "react" to certain tactical operations. I would try to piece together why they worked and why they didn't. They key in that is you are looking for the truth as to why something works rather than just trying to make it work. And I still have to work out tactical understanding!! Also.. There is nothing wrong with taking a master game and trying to understand it at any level. Even if you get one thing away from the master game, you have more than you did before the master game was assessed.
> My hot take is analyzing your own games is overrated for beginners and even some advanced beginners getting into the intermediate range. It can be even more difficult than playing and even more psychologically difficult. Analyze your games enough to instill a requisite self-consciousness and maybe try to understand 1 or 2 positions from your game better. You don't need to do deep meditations on the whole thing, rather do anything with chess you enjoy more such as playing another game.
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I think analyzing your games at any level, and all of them will help. However the amount of analysis could be different depending on the level. A beginner can spend 10 min on a game and identify a problem to work on. And that beginner doesn't have to focus on more than a few things at a time. They can pick out one or two things to focus on and integrate it into their thinking process. When I was in the 1400-1800 range I would focus only on tactics. My main focus was to see how people would "react" to certain tactical operations. I would try to piece together why they worked and why they didn't. They key in that is you are looking for the truth as to why something works rather than just trying to make it work. And I still have to work out tactical understanding!! Also.. There is nothing wrong with taking a master game and trying to understand it at any level. Even if you get one thing away from the master game, you have more than you did before the master game was assessed.