@TarkusTheRock said [^](/forum/redirect/post/2rB0O5LY)
> thank you for everybody who has responded, I also wanted to maybe add a few more details: The reason I struggle to play a good QUANTITY of games in rapid is mostly due to school. I've started college, so I can't play as much as I'd like, and longer time controls, especially increment ones, sometimes frick up how I budget my time. also, @RemRus, I uh..... yeah its bad. even if I set it to "harder"....
you may need to decide at some point to shelve serious chess improvement over your education (as long as it's not something silly like 'Gender Studies' or 'Sociology'). Assuming you are either hot out of high school or somewhat entry college age (18-22 or so), you have plenty of time/age to pick it up and spend more time at it post-education. Stepping away from the game in short chunks actually helps you in the long run. It can be a real distraction trying to balance college, studies, and chess in the same basket.
I'd focus on College first until you understand the rythym of school and how much time it absorbs.
Good luck.
What are you going to major in? That makes a difference. If it's astrophysics, that's one thing. If it's basketweaving, completely different.
you can do my recommendations because it only changes as you get in the occasional game or two. You are not forced to play and you have a dynamic list of topics that slowly change based on your performance.
@ChessPriyome Mechanical Engineering. First year at college. thanks for the advice, I really appreciate it. If you were being rhetorical then you now know why engineers don't do speak good but machine great
"sometimes frick up how I budget my time"
One 15+10 rapid game is better for improvement than 5 3+2 blitz games.
'I have two vocations: chess and engineering.
If I played chess only, I believe that my success would not have been significantly greater.
I can play chess well only when I have fully convalesced from chess and when the 'hunger for chess' once more awakens within me.' - Botvinnik, Ph. D. in Engineering and World Champion of Chess
@TarkusTheRock said [^](/forum/redirect/post/n8U2O0Yn)
> @ChessPriyome Mechanical Engineering. First year at college. thanks for the advice, I really appreciate it. If you were being rhetorical then you now know why engineers don't do speak good but machine great
I'm an engineer myself - Software, Oracle, DBA for 27 years, Postgres this year (We are transitioning to that).
I feel your pain. you'll get better at communication skills. college will teach you that. It's sink or swim, baptism by fire. Listen to understand; **LCR: Listen - Consider - Respond if necessary.**
Good luck.
When you're a student and short on time, don't waste it on openings, endgames and all the other stuff. If you had eight hours a day, you could study anything you wanted, but with limited time, tactics give you by far the biggest bang for your buck, and they'll improve your rating drastically.
The catch is that you have to do your puzzles fast. If you don't, you never get enough volume to build pattern recognition, and that's the biggest mistake I see beginners make. The second problem is the tactics trainers themselves. They only show you positions where a tactic exists, so after solving a lot of them, you start thinking every move has a winning shot. Then in your own games, you see tactics that aren't really there.
I built a new, totally free trainer to fix that, and I'm still currently developing it. In the normal training, you get two choices: one is a blunder and one isn't, and when you pick the one that isn't, your rating goes up. Every so often, monsters show up and flip the board on you, so you have to solve regular puzzles too. That way it trains you to avoid blunders AND find winning moves. It's the only one that does both, and it's gamified, so it's actually fun. https://beginnerchessprinciples.com/blunderer