The Art of Chess Training (how you should spend precious study time)

GM Noël Studer has a training system at NextLevelChess that looks ok, but I didn't want to just hawk a paid training program. He has a 61-page intro document explaining how to train that might be helpful to people all by itself... This page is a brief synopsis, and I've linked to my copy here: The Art of Chess Training.pdf (I sign up for and read these things so you don't have to, lol)

The crux of this system is not unique, but I think many people really haven't internalized it. As an example, he has a student that spends 20 hours / week on chess as follows:

• 5 hrs/week watching chess streamers
• 5 hrs playing blitz/bullet
• 5 hrs watching chess videos on YouTube
• 5 hrs of Puzzle Rush

His conclusion is that this student Does Not Study Chess AT ALL!!

He puts chess activities into two broad buckets: Chess enjoyment and chess training. All of the activities listed above fall into enjoyment - they're fine but you shouldn't expect improvement as a result.

Training (not enjoyment) has to be active, not passive. Watching videos (for 99% of us - are you following along on a board, and pausing to check Danya's analysis until you understand it? Really??) is just passive entertainment. Playing blitz and doing puzzle rush is fun, no doubt, but that's not where training happens. You should play, but then you need to analyze EVERY GAME you play. If you don't have time to analyze, you don't have time for a training game. You should study tactics, but not under time pressure of Puzzle Rush, and actually review the ones you miss until you understand them.

He also states that you should focus on things that matter. For non-titled players, this means focusing primarily on tactics, not openings or endgame study, because 90% of your games are decided tactically. This is hard - there are so many magic opening courses - ignore them and work through the Woodpecker again :)

He suggests writing down a 3 hour / week plan (as 6 x 1/2 hour study sessions) split into three sections (you can do more if you have time, but keep this ratio between sections if you can):

• 1/3 tactics
• 1/3 play and analyze games (playing without analyzing is not training)
• 1/3 strategy, endgame and opening training

Of course, he notes that a paid trainer (which he conveniently is) is a great option to accelerate learning, and he's probably right.  Each of us have to make that value calculation.

There's more detail in the PDF, and I think most of us who claim to want to improve would benefit from taking a critical look at how we "chess" and how much of it is really entertainment, not training.

I've been informally doing something close to this, but this doc helped clarify what I'm doing well and what I'm not.  Would love to hear what you think!!


John D