How Best To Budget Time With ICS

Hello,

I signed on with the program, both the main and opening ones, at the end of December. The first month went smoothly and I finished it in good time.

When I hit the second month, I really got stuck. Like many other posters on this forum, I am now behind about 2 1/2 months. I read some comments here and decided to start over from the beginning. It is true that the more times one goes over the material, the better they know it.

Anyway, I just read the latest post on the original advertisement for the program and then read that blog article. I have a question for you folks.

Let's say I can devote the 6 hours a week. How should I split up my 6 hours of study time? From the advertisement/blog article he says to do minimum of 2 hour segments. In that article he talks of strategy, simple tactics, complex tactics, openings and endings taking up the study time.

What do you fellows find when studying this course?

Also, what about an 8 or 10 hour a week schedule?

Ron Suarez

I think the problem is not much to split the time you have between tasks but more to devote that much time to chess study on the long term.

I started ICS course when i was in job seek and had plenty of time, and it was already tough to get really concentrated on ICS course let say 1 hour a day (6h/ week).
Of course it got worse when i worked again, and there are entire weeks i only play and not study.

I noticed it is quite ok to follow the theory schedule, but it's hard to do all the exercise in time. So if you really want to make a planning for yourself, just find time to do the exercises...

Whatever you decide, I'd now see it is OK to do things in a way that seems superficial, because they get back to most of it in later months, and you can always go back. Once you get behind, though, it is very hard to get out of the rut.