Smithy’s Training Plan

 I’ve written a lot on chess training, but it has all been theoretical: how to train and what to train, but not what I am actually doing right now. In truth, I have not been training. I’ve simply been treading water, staying connected with chess but not actively putting in work. Because I’m balancing a new career with other competing priorities, this was fine, but I’m now preparing to dive in.

Therefore, what follows is my training plan: what I intend to do, why I will do it, how I will do it and when I will get it done. All chess players are unique, so the details of the plan likely won’t help you, but hopefully seeing how I set it out and what I intend to do will give you an example on how you can structure your own plan.

Also, frankly, writing this gives me accountability. I will write monthly updates and rely on readers to keep me on track if I start slacking. Well, without further ado, let’s go.

A Line is Not a Line: An Analysis of Chessable Course Sizes

Chessable is the current market-leader in digital opening repertoires, and it markets its courses on the number of "trainable lines."  This roughly equals one variation, so 500 trainable lines should mean 500 variations.  Looking at this, you would think that a 250 line course would be half the size ... and you would be wrong.  You see, a line is not always a line.

Like apples and oranges, you cannot easily compare different lines from different courses.  Some authors, like my fav GM Shankland, tend to use many short lines; others use fewer but longer lines.  Multiple this across several chapters and the difference adds up.

In a recent article, I argued that smaller courses are superior to larger courses for most students.  This discrepancy with line sizes, though, poses a problem, as it is not easy to tell if a given course is big or small based on line size alone.  Fortunately, I can offer a solution.

Because I'm slightly insane, I've spent a long time transcribing courses from Chessable into my own personal databases.  As a result, I can calculate the exact number of unique moves inside a given repertoire.  That is, five lines of two moves is the same as one line of 10 moves.  It's the same workload, just spread out differently. 

I have included my own notes and have extended or shortened some variations, so these numbers aren't exact, but they are very close and fine for our general purposes. I have also converted all the annoying "clickables", so this shows the "true" size of these courses.

Inside, I will compare several different repertoires and show just how much similar-sized courses can differ in their moves.

Does Size Matter? Different Types (and Lengths) of Chess Material

 As a kid, I loved videogames.  RPGs were my favourite.  I put in literally hundreds of hours into Final Fantasy X, and other games have similar numbers.  At one point, I scoffed at short games.  Why pay $30 for a 15hr game when I can spend $50 for one that lasts for 40+ hours?  It's just math.

And this is only for the PC version.

Fast forward a decade or so and things have changed.  I rarely buy videogames now, and when I do, I don't even entertain those massive 40+ hour ones.  It will take me a year to finish it.  I don't have the time.  A small game I can complete is better than a large one that I can't.  It's just math.

Unsurprisingly, this same analysis applies to chess.  My personal library includes small pamphlets of barely 30pgs to tomes of 600+ pages; a GM YouTube video might last 5min, whereas some Chessable courses last 50+ hours.  Our first instinct is that bigger is better, but we have to be careful that the extra length doesn't switch from benefit to burden.  We've all sat through movies that drag on too long; the same applies here.

I've concluded that, for most people most of the time, shorter is probably better.  Here's why.

The Trap of Consumpton: I Own Too Much Stuff

I own a lot of chess stuff.  I could just list it, but a picture is worth a thousand words:

Unfortunately, that's not all of it.  I likely have more books strewn around, and I've given away a good chunk.  Don't forget my hardrive, packed full of digital content, not to mention digital books on Kindle and Forward Chess, random products from random sites, and then my most recent money pit, Chessable.

I recently went through my library and counted the stuff I wanted to study but haven't gotten around to yet.  I hit 81.  That's 81 books, courses or products that I bought, eager to dive in ... and then never did more than an hour, and certainly never after the first week.  And this is only the stuff I want to study; there's a large pile, probably equal in size, which I've accepted are a lost cause. 

Today will be a quick post.  In my chess education materials, I focus on how find the best move, on the right way of thinking.  Well, I will share how I made the wrong moves when it came to buying stuff.  Learn from my mistakes so that you, too, don't end up with a backlog you have little hope of clearing.

Are You Working Out? Or Are You Training?

If you spend time on the fitness-side of the Internet, you may have run into Jeff Cavaliere.  He is a physiotherapist with an absolutely shredded physique.  He creates workout programs on his site, AthleanX, and has an excellent YouTube channel.  Definitely worth checking out.

For our purposes, Jeff frequently draws on a distinction between "workout out" and "training."  Imagine two people go to the gym.  One shows up and does whatever he feels like doing: maybe some benchpress and curls one day, maybe some deadlifts the next day.  The other guy comes in with a plan: specific exercises in a specific order for a specific purpose.  Both guys are putting the time in, but one is far more likely to get where he wants to go.

So, the question becomes: when we study chess, are we training?  Or are we just working out?

Hard Skills vs Soft Skills

 

My last few posts have discussed "chess skills" or the component parts that make up your chess ability.  I really like this idea, and over the weeks I've been thinking about it more and more.  I now think that I was way too conservative, and there are lots of different chess skills, much more than I first wrote about.

An example will help.  I'm a young lawyer (I know, I know...).  Honestly, I'm just starting out and learning the tools of the trade.  Many of these are obvious and taught in law school: forming arguments, statutory interpretation and oral advocacy all jump out.  I would call these a lawyer's "hard skills", the stuff you absolutely need to do your job.  When we think of what lawyers do, though, it's actually missing quite a lot: interpersonal skills, networking, delegation, time management, all of these matter.

I could have all the hard skills in the world, but if I don't develop these soft skills, I'm a pretty bad lawyer.  Of course, no one likes lawyers, so let's bring it back to chess.  When we seek to improve, we tend to focus on the obvious "hard" skills, but I bet our "soft" skills play a surprisingly big role as well.  Let's take a look.

Smithy's Chess Goals

I've written a lot about having clearly defined (chess) goals, about having a plan, and about how consuming chess material isn't the same as developing chess skill.  I've also given advice on how to implement these ideas ... but I haven't mentioned what I, personally, intend to do.  Do I follow my own advice, or am I just being a hypocrite?

In all honestly, I don't have a current training plan, but I do have a defined set of goals.  These have remained fairly constant for a while now; I haven't done much about them because law school took most of my time and energy, but they are still there.

Today, I figured I would list my own personal goals and define what I hope to achieve in chess.  I'll be specific, I'll explain why I desire these goals, and I'll include my initial thoughts on how I'll get there.  Soon I'll outline my detailed training plan, but for today, let's look at my end goal.