How to Get Better at Chess: A Simple Weekly Routine

If you are searching for how to get better at chess, you have probably already tried the obvious thing: playing more. It feels productive, and sometimes it helps. But playing without reviewing mostly repeats the same mistakes faster.

This guide gives you a simple weekly routine built on four pieces: games, review, tactics and endgames. It also shows you how to check, after a few weeks, whether the routine is doing anything.

Start with one rule: fewer games, more review

The core idea is simple. Every game you play should leave something behind: a note, a pattern, a position to revisit. A game you never look at again teaches you very little.

So the rule is this: only play as many games as you can review. If you have time to review two games a day, play two. Not ten.

A few practical choices make this easier:

• Pick one time control and stick to it for the whole routine. Switching between bullet, blitz and rapid makes your results hard to compare.
• Prefer slower games when you train. Rapid games give you time to think, so your mistakes reflect what you know, not just how fast you click.
• Keep a simple training log: a notebook or a spreadsheet. You will need it later to check progress.

A weekly routine you can actually keep

Here is a starting template. Adjust the minutes to your schedule, but keep the balance between the four activities.

Two things matter more than the exact schedule. First, consistency: short, regular sessions are easier to sustain than one long session on the weekend. Second, the review always happens right after the games, while you still remember what you were thinking.

If you only have 20 minutes a day

Play one game every other day and review it. On the off days, do tactics or endgames. That is still the same routine, just smaller.

How to review a game without fooling yourself

Review is the step that turns a game into a lesson, and it is also where it is easiest to cheat. The trap is turning on the engine first, seeing the evaluation bar, and nodding along.

Instead, follow this order:

1. Review it yourself first, with no engine. Mark the moments where you were unsure, where the game turned, and where you spent a lot of time.
2. Write down what you were thinking at those moments. Not what you should have played, but what you actually considered.
3. Only then check with an engine. Compare its suggestions with your notes.
4. Classify each real mistake: missed tactic, hanging piece, bad plan, time trouble, endgame technique, or opening you did not know.
5. Pick one lesson from the game and write it in your log.

We go deeper into this process in our guide on how to analyze a chess game move by move. And if engines tend to take over your thinking, read how to use a chess analysis board without fooling yourself.

The classification step is the important one. After a week or two, your log will show which kind of mistake keeps coming back. That tells you what to train next.

Tactics and endgames: what to drill and how

Tactics

Puzzles are useful, but only if you solve them the way you play. Racing through dozens of puzzles with quick guesses trains guessing.

• Calculate the full line before you move, as you would in a game.
• Work by theme when your log points to a weakness: forks, pins, back-rank threats, discovered attacks.
• Redo the puzzles you missed a few days later. Repetition is what makes a pattern stick.
• Save positions from your own games where you missed a tactic. They are the most relevant puzzles you will ever find.

Endgames

Endgame study feels slow, but the patterns you learn keep reappearing in your games. Work on one theme at a time and practice it until you can play it confidently.

A sensible order to start with:

1. Basic checkmates: king and queen, king and rook against a lone king.
2. King and pawn endings: opposition and the square of the pawn.
3. Simple rook endings, a natural next step once the first two feel solid.

After studying a theme, play the position out against an engine or a friend. Knowing the idea and executing it under pressure are different skills.

How to check that the routine is working

Your rating is the obvious measure, but it moves up and down from week to week for reasons that have nothing to do with training. Use it as a long-term signal, not a weekly verdict.

Better checks come from your training log. Every Sunday, count a few things for the week:

• Games lost because of a piece left hanging or a one-move tactic.
• Games where you got into serious time trouble.
• Winning endgames you failed to convert.
• Your main mistake category from the reviews.

After about four weeks, compare the first week with the last. If your main mistake category is showing up less, the routine is working, even if your rating has not moved much yet.

If nothing has changed, do not just add more hours. Look at what you are training. One possible mismatch is drilling openings while your log says you are losing endgames. Point the next four weeks at the category that keeps appearing.

Where an automated report fits in

The hardest part of this routine is the first step: knowing which weaknesses actually cost you games. Reviewing one game at a time, patterns can take weeks to appear.

That is what Rookprint is built for. A Report analyzes up to your last 200 online games with Stockfish, then identifies your 3 recurring weaknesses with numbers, gives you 50 exercises built from your own mistakes and a 30-day plan. The report is generated by AI. It is not a live coach: it will not talk through your thinking with you, and it does not replace the self-review habit described above. It gives that habit a starting direction. You can see what one looks like on the sample page.

As a worked example, at the prices shown on the site on the day of writing: a single Report is $29. The Progress option is $49 and includes everything in Report with 100 exercises, plus a second report 30 days later that compares before and after, which lines up with the four-week check above. Coaches and clubs can get five reports for five players with the Club pack at $149. Full details are on the pricing page.