New to the course! Excited and working hard.

Hello folks! I started the course this past week, with a bulk of study time on the weekend, and likely will continue that way.

I have the first 5 months purchased. Now I'm "invested" which is a motivator for me (need every ounce of that once the newness wears off, right?).

I am printing everything out, and putting it in a large binder (only have month 1 printed at the moment), and going over all the games and positions on a real tournament chess set, like in real life.

I respond really well to structured learning, and plan on putting in at least 10 hours a week of study for this course alone!



I am an adult 30 something now, but I used to play a lot as a kid (no rated events though, but I did go through *all* of MCO and many other books). So getting back into it. Much of the openings are positions are familiar but still getting into the swing of things and learning how to think properly from this course.

My current chess club members are really strong at USCF 1750-2200, so it is very difficult to win against them, but the best part is that every game is an education for me!

Thanks to BorgQueen for inviting me here and I'm on chess.com as "bladesclawsfangs", too.


I try to do at least an hour of tactics every day, and the bulk of coursework will be done on weekends where I can spend 3-4 hours at a time on it with good concentration.

Welcome BCF :-)

If you keep to your plan here, I have every confidence that you will succeed!! Brilliantly!

In a few months, I hope to hear of you finding more and more victories against club members who you found too hard to beat in the beginning ;-)

I recommend repeating ANY area you don't fully get or struggle with... just to reinforce the content.

Good luck with your journey.

Years gone by, and I still prefer to work through the volumes of printed course materials from time to time.

Be sure to check back at the ICS website every so often, I see they continue to do updates now and again. Recently they added transcripts to the first couple of videos, hopefully they will continue and provide transcripts for all of the videos.