6
A standard structure for a chess training program is broken down as follows:
Use a 4-day cycle.
Divide each day's chess time into 4 time units (the total of whatever time you can afford each
day).
Activities include: - Study (S) - Solve (V) - Play (PL)
Areas of the Game include: - (O) Openings - (T) Tactics - (G) Strategy - (E) Endings
So, a time unit consists of a combination of an Activity and an Area. For example, SO means
Study Openings.
Each play unit involves a combination of games at different time controls. If you are serious,
use 1 x 15, 2 x 10, and 3 x 5 minute games. That's 50 minutes (not including any partner-seek
time). If you can spare more time, add more to the number of quick games while you're at a
lower rating, and when you get stronger, add more of the longer time control games to the
unit.
A typical 4-day cycle might start out as:
Day 1: SO2, SG1, VT1
Day 2: VE2, PL1, VT1
Day 3: SG1, VG1, PL1, VT1
Day 4: SO2, VE1, VT1
Note that Tactics are worked on every day.
After you have played a set of 20 games (however many days that takes), do a retrospective
on your performance. If you've got a chess engine, run the games through it. Ignore what your
opponents did. Look only at whether you made a mistake (and what kind of mistake it was),
and whether you caught your opponent's mistake when he made one. Keep track of the
number of mistakes in each category, figure out a way to reduce them, and introduce that into
your training.
If you lose games in the Ending more often than you win them, increase the number of units
you spend on Endings.
Never go higher than 4 units on one area in the 4-day cycle, though. Since Tactics is already
at 4, that's only going to go down if you're doing well in it, but not higher than 4.
Also, never take away from Play time to increase another area. So, for example, if you find
you need to spend more time on Endings, but your Tactics still need work too, reduce the time
you spend on Openings and increase the time on Endings.
The source I used of this training scheduling method appears on the ChessOk website.
As for what specifics to study and where to get materials, there are plenty of good resources
on the Web; I'll leave that to other sources to address.
Now to your question: Correspondence chess is excellent at helping you learn openings and
endings. These involve theory, and you need to memorize it to be able to use it in a
tournament where you're playing over-the-board (OTB). Study the theory, and then practice it
a little, and then test yourself. Test yourself immediately, then again the next day, and then
again a week later. That will reinforce the memory, and convert it from short-term to long-term
memory.
However, correspondence chess has 4 major flaws when it comes to serving as training for
OTB play:
1. It won't strengthen your board vision (your ability to see the potential combinations in a
position), because the normal way to select a move in CC is by moving pieces on a board
until you find the most promising variation.
2. It will hurt your time management ability. You will get used to thinking slowly, and to
repeating your thinking, unless you are very strict in budgeting your time and limiting
repetition in your analysis. It's very different when you have 3 days to decide on a move,
instead of 3 minutes.
3. It will not help you learn and enforce your rights as afforded by the rules. For example, in
a tournament, a player may knock over some pieces, and press his clock regardless, only
bothering to set up the displaced pieces on your time. This is illegal, and you need to
know it's illegal, and you need to act immediately to stop the clock and get a TD to
enforce a time penalty on your opponent for the infraction. Such infractions never even
occur in correspondence play.
4. It will not help you analyze variations in your head. Correspondence play allows as much
note-taking as you want. You can analyze variations to ridiculously-deep levels, if you
want. In OTB, you may only note the move, the time, and draw offers - that's it.
Unfortunately, if you try to use correspondence games to practice analyzing in your head,
you're going to get creamed by everyone else, because they're taking notes, and will
make fewer mistakes and be analyzing deeper.
This is why you should play games at regular time controls (no blitz faster than 5 minutes) in
order to strengthen your play, and you should play in an OTB tournament at least once per
month, if you want to be able to improve your OTB (or online) play at all.
If all you want is to play correspondence chess, then you're all set. I still encourage you to use
the regular time control games to improve your tactical vision, but you can survive by just
moving the pieces around a lot and stumbling on 3-move combinations you didn't actually see
at the beginning.
