Level 5 · 4 min
A practice plan that works
Ten minutes a day. Slow games. Review your losses.
- 1Ten minutes a day, not two hours on Sunday.
- 2Play slower games, so you can think before each move.
- 3Review your losses weekly and practise the mistake you find twice.
The longer explanation
Little and often. Ten minutes a day beats two hours on a Sunday. Do the daily six puzzles, and add one lesson when you are ready for something new.
Play slower games. Play games of ten minutes or more for each side, so you have time to run the four questions before every move. Very fast games teach you to move before you look.
Review your losses. Once a week, paste your last few losses into Checkmate Central. Look for the same mistake twice: a piece left hanging, a mate missed. That is the thing to practise next.
Be patient. At this level, improvement mostly comes from not making the same few mistakes. It is not glamorous, but it is where the gains are, and it is how you stop losing games you should have won.