For roughly 30 years, I have advocated on my chess lesson website that people should study tactics for 30 minutes per day. I've always qualified this by saying that if someone doesn't have time for 30 minutes, then 10 to 20 minutes is still beneficial—consistency is the most important factor.
At first, I was very good at following my own advice. Studying 30 minutes per day worked very well for me. I seemed to reach my peak chess strength around 2003, when I was 43. During that time, I drew against Igor Ivanov in a Nevada tournament and finished second, ahead of four Experts.
However, after that event, I went through a 20-year period where I was very inconsistent with tactics study. As I got older, I increasingly felt that I was past my peak. I began to think that I was no longer Expert strength, but rather a strong Class A player.
A little over 13 months ago, I lost four out of five games to a member of my chess club rated around 2000. I didn't think I should lose by that margin, so I decided to do something about it. Since then, I have been averaging about an hour of tactics study per day. Because I am retired, I have the luxury of starting each day with an hour of tactics and a large cup of coffee. Since beginning this recent push, I have consistently won the majority of games against that same player, sometimes by a large margin.
The reason I am doing 60 minutes instead of 30 is that I am older now. I feel like I am fighting entropy. When I was younger, 30 minutes was enough.
So I have completed roughly 400 hours of tactics study in a little over 13 months. What has this accomplished? Have I improved? It is very difficult to improve at chess, and some players struggle for years without seeing results. However, it seems to me that my chess vision has improved—I more easily recognize patterns on the board. I feel like I have greater awareness, especially over the last month.
Although I am very happy with my recent play, I haven't been tested against higher-rated competition, so I can't say for certain that I have improved. Still, my intuition tells me that I am playing somewhat better.
I expected a larger improvement. Then again, getting better at chess is hard. I believe it is easier for lower-rated players. For me, it appears that 400 hours of tactics study has resulted in roughly a 50-point improvement. I suspect that younger and lower-rated players could achieve similar results with just 30 minutes per day.
There are a couple of different approaches to studying tactics:
1. Use websites where most problems are new and unseen before. This is not my approach, so I can't fully evaluate its effectiveness. It is likely very good for improving calculation ability, but perhaps less effective for building pattern recognition—though I could be wrong.
2. Use the Woodpecker Method, where one studies the same 1,000 or more problems repeatedly. I have advocated this approach on my website for 30 years. I have thousands of chess problems that I have created, along with links to over 2,700 problems from Chess.com, all of which I review repeatedly.
My goal with this approach is to improve pattern recognition. It seems to have worked well with the one-, two-, and three-move problems on my website, because I believe I make very few simple mistakes.
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Best wishes,
John Coffey
My Chess Lessons
At first, I was very good at following my own advice. Studying 30 minutes per day worked very well for me. I seemed to reach my peak chess strength around 2003, when I was 43. During that time, I drew against Igor Ivanov in a Nevada tournament and finished second, ahead of four Experts.
However, after that event, I went through a 20-year period where I was very inconsistent with tactics study. As I got older, I increasingly felt that I was past my peak. I began to think that I was no longer Expert strength, but rather a strong Class A player.
A little over 13 months ago, I lost four out of five games to a member of my chess club rated around 2000. I didn't think I should lose by that margin, so I decided to do something about it. Since then, I have been averaging about an hour of tactics study per day. Because I am retired, I have the luxury of starting each day with an hour of tactics and a large cup of coffee. Since beginning this recent push, I have consistently won the majority of games against that same player, sometimes by a large margin.
The reason I am doing 60 minutes instead of 30 is that I am older now. I feel like I am fighting entropy. When I was younger, 30 minutes was enough.
So I have completed roughly 400 hours of tactics study in a little over 13 months. What has this accomplished? Have I improved? It is very difficult to improve at chess, and some players struggle for years without seeing results. However, it seems to me that my chess vision has improved—I more easily recognize patterns on the board. I feel like I have greater awareness, especially over the last month.
Although I am very happy with my recent play, I haven't been tested against higher-rated competition, so I can't say for certain that I have improved. Still, my intuition tells me that I am playing somewhat better.
I expected a larger improvement. Then again, getting better at chess is hard. I believe it is easier for lower-rated players. For me, it appears that 400 hours of tactics study has resulted in roughly a 50-point improvement. I suspect that younger and lower-rated players could achieve similar results with just 30 minutes per day.
There are a couple of different approaches to studying tactics:
1. Use websites where most problems are new and unseen before. This is not my approach, so I can't fully evaluate its effectiveness. It is likely very good for improving calculation ability, but perhaps less effective for building pattern recognition—though I could be wrong.
2. Use the Woodpecker Method, where one studies the same 1,000 or more problems repeatedly. I have advocated this approach on my website for 30 years. I have thousands of chess problems that I have created, along with links to over 2,700 problems from Chess.com, all of which I review repeatedly.
My goal with this approach is to improve pattern recognition. It seems to have worked well with the one-, two-, and three-move problems on my website, because I believe I make very few simple mistakes.
--
Best wishes,
John Coffey
My Chess Lessons
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