Chess Goals for the Rest of 2012
As tomorrow will start the 2nd quarter of 2012, I’ve decided to do what I did 2 years ago on Chess.com, and that is to make a set of goals to (hopefully) be completed by the end of the year. As you can clearly see from my post 2 years ago, I was highly unsuccessful in my attempt to improve my chess through study and concentrated play, and so I start this year, a little more mature, and ready to really improve my chess to a more competitive level.
Listed below are my goals for this year, I didn’t just want to do 10, 15, or even 20, instead I wanted to just make as many as I thought were possible and definitely beneficial, it did however turn out to be 10, but that’s just a coincidence. To improve my chances of succeeding in this venture, I’ve decided that I’m going to do monthly updates on the end of each month, and more importantly, I’m making sure that each goal that I set is something that I can calculate and keep track and by years’ end I know that I either succeeded or failed in my attempt.
With all that being said, here is the list followed by a brief description.
1. ACHIEVE A RATING OF 1500+: Now I’ve held a rating of 1500+ before, but I want to be a solid 1500+ player, and by that I mean that I want to learn, and take the proper time to get past the 1300-1400 rating that I’ve been stuck in during my life and never see it again. My heart tells me that if I can, with my knowledge right now, be a high 1500 rated player, but that would require me to slow down, and not get timeouts. 1371 (4/1/2012)
2. GET BACK TO A 50% WINNING PERCENTAGE: This seems pretty naïve and not the most important of things, but I want to have more wins than loses, and personally I don’t want to achieve this by just playing people who’ve never played chess before. I don’t consider this to be one of the harder of goals, but it’ll require me to keep improving and challenging myself and bring back the idea of winning being the most important thing. -57 (4/1/2012) (267 W / 324 L / 13 D)
3. NO TIMEOUTS GET BACK TO 0% TIMEROUT PERCENTAGE: I don’t think I really need to describe this one in detail. Truth be told I tend to take breaks from chess when I’m going through bad spells and so my biggest goal this year is to work through the tough spells and keep trying to improve. 18% (4/1/2012)
4. NEVER HAVE MORE THAN 30+ GAMES GOING ON: Last time I really tried to dedicate time to improving chess, I got myself involved in 50+ games and it was just too much. I need to pace myself and live by the saying ‘quality over quantity’. 25 (4/1/2012)
5. GET AVERAGE TIME/MOVE DOWN TO 3 HOURS: There are some fast tournaments that I would like to be involved in, and currently the only thing holding me back in my average time/move. 3hrs 57min (4/1/2012)
6. PLAY 100 BULLET (1-2 MINUTES) LIVE CHESS GAMES: I’ve read that playing quick games can improve your thinking and improve your ‘gut feeling’ when looking at certain positions. I started with 29 so my goal will actually be 130. 29/130 (4/1/2012)
7. PLAY 100 BLITZ (3-4 MINUTES) LIVE CHESS GAMES: Basically the same though process as above, except that with this style of play, I think it’ll help me both with bullet games and just my thinking process and recognizing positions and opportunities on the board. I already have 18 games played, so my actual goal will be 118. 18/118 (4/1/2012)
8. PLAY 50 STANDARD (15+ MINUTES) LIVE CHESS GAMES: Now this is something I want to really improve, and that’s my tactics in long games. Most of the time in real tournaments this is the setting and I want to be able to improve my concentration and energy with longer games. I've already played 5, so my goal will be 55. 5/55 (4/1/2012)
9. COMPETE IN 3 ‘OVER THE BOARD’ TOURNAMENTS: I’ve only competed in a handful of these in the past, and I get absolutely slaughtered as I’m so used to see chess boards on the screen. I can’t see moves, angels, and traps as well over the board so my goal is to find a local group to play chess with, and then compete in at least 3 tournaments when I feel ready to do it. 0/3 (4/1/2012)
10. DO 100 HOURS OF TACTIC TRAINER ON CHESS.COM: This is what I believe to be one of the most important and vital goals to achieve if I’m to improve my chess ability. I did the math and with the rest of the calendar year to go, I need to average about 36-37 minutes a day on this. This is a LARGE amount of time dedicated to Chess tactics, and with my two vacations coming up where I won’t be able to dedicate as much time to chess; this feat is almost too much. But I’ve thought about doing it during my lunches at work (1 hour), plus 30 minutes most every night, and dedicated an hour or so to it on the weekends. Yes it seems like a lot, but that’s because it is, but I truly believe this to be something that I can accomplish by years’ end. I've already completed 2 hours, but I'm going to still shoot for 100. 2/100 (4/1/2012)
*When I start to complete some of my goals, I plan to change the color from red to green*
