Train — The Six Skills 篤行之
The Method tells you how to practise. The Ladder tells you what to prioritise at your level. These six pages are the material itself — what to actually work on, in what order, with what drill.
Read this before picking a page
You are not meant to work through all six at once. That is the failure mode this whole site is built against. Find your rung on the Ladder, do the one job it names, and use these pages as the reference for that job only. Everything here will still be here in a year. The temptation to broaden is the temptation to make no progress on anything.
1 · Tactics
The motif curriculum. Which patterns to learn, in what order, and the visual cue that fires each one in a real game. Why puzzle rating and game rating diverge, why grinding more puzzles does not close the gap, and why nobody can tell you how many repetitions a pattern needs.
every rungmost important under 1400
2 · Calculation
The thinking process. The safety check in full, Counting with a worked example, candidate moves and the seventy-year argument about them, how deep is deep enough, the blunder check, and visualisation drills. The skill that separates rating bands more than knowledge does — and the area where confident advice and actual evidence are furthest apart.
every rungthe core skill
3 · Endgames
A precise, small curriculum. Around twenty-five positions between 600 and 1800, in order, described in words with the drill for each. Deliberately short — the usual advice sends improvers to a 500-page book they will not finish.
basic mates under 900contested — both sides on the page
4 · Strategy
Where plans come from. Seven pawn structures as plan generators, piece activity, weak squares, when to trade, and a five-step procedure for "what do I do here." Close to irrelevant below about 1150, and then suddenly not — the page argues that boundary rather than assuming it.
from 1150
5 · Analyse Your Games
A full worked example. One constructed improver game — stated as constructed on the page, and engine-checked move by move — taken through the engine-off protocol, so you can see exactly what the fifteen minutes looks like. The single highest-leverage habit on this site, and the one most often done wrong.
start here if you only do one thing
6 · Mindset
Tilt, plateaus, time trouble and quitting. The adult-improver problems that no amount of study fixes: rating obsession, the flat year, playing scared, restarting, and when stopping is the right answer. Under-served everywhere else — and the page with the worst evidence base on the site, which it says on every claim rather than once at the bottom.
every rung
How the six relate
They are not equal, and they are not independent.
- Calculation is the spine. Tactics give you the patterns; calculation is what applies them under a clock, and it is where nearly all rating below 1800 is won or lost.
- Analysis is the feedback loop. Without it the other five are unguided. It is the only activity that tells you which of them you actually need.
- Tactics and endgames are knowledge. They can be studied and accumulate reliably.
- Strategy is knowledge that only becomes useful once your games stop being decided by errors. That is the reason it waits.
- Mindset is the multiplier on all of it, and the reason most improvement plans fail is not that they were wrong but that they were abandoned.