Practical Chess , Essentials?

Hello All,

I am in my late 30's and have been a hobby player. I self taught myself and brought myself to a rating of approximately 2000 ELO from 1000 ELO. I am only estimating my rating and it seems to be a reasonable estimate.
I learned chess by reading books , some on tactics , some on opening , basic endgames. Majority of my learning came from following top GM games. Hence my learning has never been structured and my knowledge is half baked in every area of the game. I also noticed I make tons of mistakes in evaluating the positions and cant figure out for sure when I am worse and when I am better.

Off late I found a sudden urge in me to improve my game and take it to the next level. After checking a lot of online options and books, I decided to go for ICS as it seemed a give learning a structure. I intend to learn chess from scratch over the course of the next few years.
I bought the Core Course (to improve understanding) and the Opening Repertoire Course (to rebuild my repertoire) . However many of the material in the Core Course seems to be very tough.
I explored the Practical Chess Course and it states to have the essentials. Can some one please clarify what this Practical Course is about? Does it lay the foundation for the Core Course, is it a stand alone course or is it something meant to be done after the Core Course?

Regards,
Kramnikstudent

Update:
I e-mailed the Chess School asking for an advice and they came back stating that one needs to focus more on the Core Course. The rest are to be considered as extra training.

Regards,
Kramnikstudent

Hi Kramnikstudent,

What inputs are you using to determine that you are now 2000 strength?

Yes the core course is tough--my understanding is that it is designed for approx. 2000+ level players. You may want to study something like Silman's Reassess Your Chess or Chess Praxis + My System before tackling the core course, if you think it is too difficult. Also try going through a couple of master game collections such as New Your 1924 and Zurich 1953.

My Elo is just a guesstimate. I play games online and sometimes I end up playing the top moves of the computer.
Also when I play rated players online
a) I lose without a fight against 2400 players
b) Give a tough fight to players rated 2000- 2100.
c) I also played a few tournaments long back where I played players rated 2100 and I did reasonably well against them.
On the down side I can easily hang a piece , get into a fork and blunder badly to lose the
Based on this I am assuming I must be somewhere close to 2000 but play can fall down to 1800-1600 as well

To be 2000 you need to consistently beat other 2000 rated players. If you are dropping pieces--ever--you are probably not playing at at 2000 level yet.

If you play "live" chess on chess.com or ICC you should be able to get a reasonable approximation. Play 25 or so G/15's on chess.com and whatever chess.com rating you end up with, added about 100 points and that will be a rough approximation of what your ELO would be (at least for US players--each federation has slightly different rating pools).

My chess.com rating is 1916 (Peak 1954)
Chess24 is 2114

Ok, excellent. That's much more convincing evidence than your initial few posts.

Chess.com ratings are a bit high, especially the 3 days per move ones. I am rated 2200 in that but I am rated circa 1900 ACF in standard games and circa 2000 in rapid games.

The core course is tough, but that's chess. It's not a simple game. Persevere through it is my advice my friend, persevere! Ask questions if you need to to get help.

Yes I agree with Borg Queen the online ratings are not an actual representative of the ELO Rating. The actual ELO must be 100-150 points lower compared to the online rating.
What I meant when saying "I am assuming I must be somewhere close to 2000 but play can fall down to 1800-1600 as well" was if I manage to concentrate well I can play at 2000- 2100 ELO. I hang pieces when I am not focused which I think is true for most of us.

I have to agree. I am trying hard to hit the 2000 ACF rating and still, on a bad day, I will still blunder pieces away.

On good days though, I won't blunder away such significant material. Losing a piece at around the 2000 mark is usually, and typically followed by a resignation shortly thereafter.

Just to be 100% sure, you guys do mean the Grandmaster Package by 'the core course', right?

Yes we are referring to the Core Course

lol beats me, I joined when there was only one product with one option!

I have no idea what it is called now!