Why this plan
At 1300 rapid on Chess.com, games are decided by blunders, missed tactics and lost endgames. Opening theory rarely comes into it. If you spend hours on 15-move lines of the Nimzo-Indian, that time is wasted: your opponent will avoid those lines or go wrong by move 8, and you are left with an ordinary middlegame.
This plan is for the 1300–1700 range. It covers how to split your time between tactics, game review, endgames and openings, and what you can leave for later.
Time allocation: 50/25/15/10
Split your chess time like this:
- 50% on tactics. They pay off most at this level: you can know your opening well and still lose the game to one fork.
- 25% on reviewing your own games. Go through every serious game on your own first, then check it with an engine. Look for the moves where you blundered and for the reason behind each one.
- 15% on endgames. King and pawn against king, opposition, the rule of the square, basic rook endings, mate with two bishops. Without them you will keep letting won positions slip.
- 10% on openings. That is enough for a minimal repertoire, and at this level you need nothing more.
If 80% of your time now goes to openings and 5% to tactics, swap them.
Weekly plan (5 hours a week)
With 5 hours a week, spend them like this:
- 2.5 hours of tactics. That is 20–30 minutes a day: a little every day does more than three hours on Sunday.
- 1 hour of game review. Enough for two or three of your own games if you go through them carefully.
- 45 minutes of endgames. Work from Silman’s endgame book or a Chess.com course.
- 45 minutes of openings. Go over your minimal repertoire.
With ten hours, scale everything up in proportion. With only two, keep tactics and game review, and expect slower progress.
Tactics: every day
Solve puzzles every day, for at least 20–30 minutes. A goal such as “solve 1,000 puzzles” is of little use. Keep to three rules:
- Themes matter more than volume. Solve 50 fork puzzles in a week and you will start seeing forks in your own games. In 350 random puzzles each motif comes up too rarely to stick.
- Solve slowly. Timed puzzles, such as Puzzle Rush on Chess.com, are fine once a week as a warm-up. The main work is puzzles on one theme that you calculate to the end without looking at the answer.
- Motifs first, then calculation. Learn the standard motifs: fork, pin, deflection, interference. After that, practice calculating long forcing lines.
More on this in How to train tactics so it transfers to your games.
Puzzles by theme on chess.rodeo: forks, pins, skewers, discovered attacks, mate in 2.
Review your own games
After tactics, this is the second most important habit. The games to review are your own: Carlsen’s games and textbook games do not contain your mistakes.
Do it in this order:
- Right after the game, play through it yourself with no engine and mark where you lost the thread.
- Turn the engine on. On chess.rodeo that is free Stockfish analysis with no daily limit.
- Find the moves where the evaluation drops sharply: blunders, mistakes and misses.
- For each of them, ask yourself what you saw at the board and what you missed.
- Write down in one phrase what kind of mistake it was: “didn’t notice my bishop was attacked”, “calculated two lines and missed the third”. You do not need to record the move itself.
More: how to analyze your own games, what the accuracy percentage means, which mistakes are typical at each level.
Endgames: seven basic positions
In the endgame a lot comes down to knowing exact positions. A player who does not know the opposition will let a won pawn ending slip and not understand why.
The minimum up to 1700:
- Opposition and the rule of the square.
- King and pawn against king: the key squares.
- The Lucena position.
- The Philidor position.
- Basic rook endings: the rook belongs behind a passed pawn, yours or your opponent’s.
- Mate with two bishops.
- Mate with bishop and knight. It is rare, and knowing the idea is enough.
Each one is covered in the article on seven endgames for club players.
Puzzles by theme: pawn endgames, rook endgames, zugzwang.
Openings: a minimal repertoire
At 1300 rapid the ideas of an opening and its first 6–8 moves are enough. The smaller the repertoire the better: one system as White and one defense each against 1.e4 and 1.d4 as Black.
Play positions you understand. If you have memorized 12 moves of theory and do not know what to do on move 13, the time was wasted.
How to put such a repertoire together is described in the article on building a minimal opening repertoire. Two ready-made ones:
- As White: the London System, one setup against any Black defense.
- As Black: a minimal repertoire with the Caro-Kann against 1.e4 and the Slav against 1.d4.
What not to do
- Leave long lines of the Nimzo-Indian, the Catalan and the Grünfeld for later: games at 1300 do not get that far.
- Do not buy 40-hour courses of the “complete White repertoire” kind. People watch them to the end and forget them, and their play stays the same. Those hours are better spent on tactics.
- Do not play only blitz: it reinforces the mistakes you already make. Play most of your rated games at rapid, 10+0 and longer, so that you have time to think about a move.
- Opening traps such as the Lasker Trap teach nothing: all they offer is the hope that your opponent blunders.
Psychology and time trouble
Tilt after a loss, time trouble and resigning too early cost rating, and puzzles do not fix them. The Game Insights page on chess.rodeo shows your Tilt Rate (how often you lose again right after a loss), your Recovery Rate (how often you win right after one) and your Timeout Rate (how many games you lose on time). Look at it once a week.
How to read these numbers is covered in the article on tilt, time trouble and streaks.
Tracking your progress on chess.rodeo
- Coach. With Pro, it builds a weekly plan from your analyzed games. The plan names your top three weaknesses for the period, for example pieces left undefended, missed forks or endgame blunders, and your weakest opening. You choose the period, for example the last 7, 30 or 90 days. The plan needs at least five analyzed games in that period. On a free account this page shows a report on your games.
- Puzzles. The section has more than 60 themes. If the coach names forks as a weakness, open the Fork theme.
- Game analysis. Run every serious game through Stockfish. There is no daily limit.
What to expect from the plan
No one can tell you in advance how long it will take. The pace depends on how many hours a week you train, how many rated rapid games you play and whether you review your losses. Rating also grows unevenly and can stand still for a month.
So once a week, look at what changes before the rating does: how many blunders you average per game, how often you miss forks and pins, whether you win endgames with an extra pawn, how many games you lose on time.
Closer to 1700 the plan will have to change: a minimal repertoire will no longer be enough, and you will need more theory and more strategy.