The Plan for May...

Well, for April I had a three point plan.  Those three points were:

• Strong Opening Prep
• Tactics Work
• Rook Endings

How did I do?  Well, I did some light opening prep.  I vacillated between whether or not to play the Open Sicilian as White.  Or go back to the Alapin.  Or continue learning the Grand Prix.  The result was that I didn't focus on any one thing.  Big mistake.

I did some work on Rook Endings.  I watched some Karsten Muller rook ending DVD clips and I worked through some Dvoretsky & Yusupov articles.  But not enough.  And not practical enough.  I talked about learning specific techniques and then setting them up and playing them against Fritz.  But I only did so once.  And only one shot, not repeated effort to make sure I got it.

I am pleased with my tactical work.  Although I didn't do as much as I would like I was more consistent last month with making sure that I did some work every day.  Even if it was just doing a few puzzles on my phone each day.

So with last month's achievements and failures listed, let's move on to this month's plan...

For the month of May I am going to do the following...

• Learn to mate with two bishops.
• Strong Opening Prep on One White Opening and One Black Opening
• Rook Endings
• Continued Tactical Work

Learning to mate with two bishops.  It's true, I can't do it.  I mean, I kind of know the basic idea, but unlike K+R vs K where I can methodically get to the fastest mate, if I had to mate with two bishops I'm not 100% sure I could do it in less than 50 moves.

So I plan on changing that.  The hope is that by doing so I will also get a good feel for how to better use the bishop pair in general.

Strong opening prep on one White and one Black opening.  OK, let's face it, I set myself up to fail last month.  Saying you need strong opening prep is too broad a statement.  You can't prep everything well in one month.  But you can learn one White and one Black opening in a month.  So I will choose one of each and work hard on them.  I have an idea of what I want to work on.  I think I want to work on the White side of the Worrall and the Black side of the 1...e5 English.

Rook endings.  Last month I said I'd work on John Emms' Survival Guide to Rook Endings.  I didn't.  This month I will.  I own it, I should use it.

Continued tactical work.  I will just continue as is.  Which is to say that I'll grab a tactics book and work on some puzzles.  Or do some online.  Or on my phone.  At some point I want to work through Karsten Muller & Claus Dieter Meyer's excellent work, The Magic of Chess Tactics.  Again, I own it, so I should use it.  Although I feel like before I work seriously with that book I should continue to develop my basic tactics skills for a bit.

So that's it...that's the plan for May.