I have around 300 hours, but probably less, to efficiently use.
I think there's generally three main area of focus: opening, tactics and endgame.
I just think the opening is a must, it naturally leads into middlegame with an associated plan. Playing black especially is important to know the critical variations because it's alot less forgiving than being white (who alot of the times, is punished by an equal game when playing a suboptimal moves).
A few things I learnt from doing the Volume 3 is that inputting side variations into your PGN is an insane hassle and
it is best to be selective to decide what to put if at all. Unless it is highly forcing lines such as the sharpest variations of the sicilian dragon/nadjorf, you can get away with no knowing the 10th move alternative to some rarely played lines. Especially with English, the lines aren't forcing anyway.
Furthermore, it's best to focus on responses the opponent is likely to play. Expecting them to play some weird critical line that involves a sacrifice or weird moves with non standard ideas (Na6, Qd7, g5 in some of the lines I studied in 1. c4 c5) is probably NOT worth the time to going over, especially you are likely to never meet them in your life, at least not against sub 2400s. Most players, including strong GMs will tend to play natural moves or the moves that makes most sense to a plan (they are rarely gonna do something like ...e6 then suddenly change plan with ...g6, weakening their dark squares).
In terms, of my white repertoire, I'm going through Volume 2 of the Marin English book which I think is the most relevant. Volume 3 is abit less useful (I've spent like 30 days on that!
) because it deals with 1. c4 c5 which is pretty rare to begin with. In volume 2, I will quickly go through
Anti Slav lines (chapter 2-11), Anti QG and QGD line (12-25) and theres one chapter addressing each the other bigs (Grunfield, KID, Dutch, Owen). Volume 1 (1. c4 e5) I'll do after because some of the lines involve either the Botvinnik system or lines that are unlikely to be played. I did however, once lost a theoretical 1. c4 e5 game against a strong player that I was prepared for (cuz tactics lol, which brings me to my next section)Once I've done everything, I will go back to summarising the Volume 3 (1. c4 c5) lines.
My black repertoire is
alot more memorisation but with my trusted associates overseas inputting the PGN for me, I should do fine and hopefully be done memorising before new years. I would expect a number of people would wonder into the Botvinnik variation or the Meran variation. The same goes with the classical lines of the Caro Khan. I'M USING A NOTEBOOK TO NOTE DOWN THE LINES I END UP LEARNING IN MY OPENING STUDYING TO KEEP TRACK WHAT I'VE GOT DONE.
Now this brings me to tactics. Which is just a matter of putting in hours on
chesstempo (way better than chess.com tactics trainer) to keep myself sharp and endgame studies on
CT-ART as well as the problems in the book, Forcing Chess is keep myself aware of the creative options that might suddenly arise. I aspect to spend maybe 1-2 per day for this, which include time while travelling to work etc.).
Endgame is a whole different beast and is something I expect to spend maybe every night looking through
Muellers Videos. I will do this along with studying ICS strategy sections as a whole because the whole topic is quite strategic and intuitive in nature. The technical side is addressed by the Dovretsky's books but those are prob not that useful for me atm.