I hate to start another one of these threads, but I can't resist. Apologies in advance.

Brief background: ~2000 USCF, been on a plateau for about 2 years now. My wife had our first child about 6 months ago, and since then my chess study time has been basically nothing.

What would y'all recommend as far as a study plan goes for someone looking to make that final push from 2000 to 2200? The reason I'm starting this thread, and the major caveat, is that I only have probably 30 mins to 1 hour per day max, if I'm lucky. What would be best for maximizing those few minutes?

I thought about the standard advice of doing tactics problems, but I'm not really sure if tactics are the main thing holding me back right now. Would a detailed study of GM games be better (aka solitaire chess, basically playing the game as if it was my own)? A G/30 online every now and then?

Thanks in advance for the help.

I would have some sort of rota of different study activities. Anything that involves thinking is good. So a random list maybe something along the lines of
1.tactic puzzles
2.positional puzzles
3.playing a G/30
4.analysing a G/30
5.GM game, guessing the moves for one player
6.endgame study (there's not that many endgame specific puzzle resources, true.If you don't have Dvoretsky's endgame manual, get it. One idea is to input the blue positions in a database, and use training mode to guess the moves. Aim: know all blue positions off by heart)
7.more tactics puzzles ldo

Hey, that's seven days = a week

That sounds like a great plan. I should have posted this on your thread, I totally forgot about that. My apologies

But yeah, I think your quote about "anything that involves thinking is good" is right on the money. Doesn't matter so much what it is, just that I'm really applying myself. I would think 30 mins of focused studying would be much more helpful than 2 hours of mindless blitz.

What types of mistakes cost you points?

The whole "chess" part

It's tough to pinpoint exactly (and tough to analyze your own strengths/weaknesses), but I'd probably boil it down to three main things.

1) Not very good at playing in calm, equal positions. If I have a decent advantage, I often find good continuations. But I'm very poor playing in positions which are roughly equal and neither side has a clear plan. I always try too hard to force play, lash out, and end up creating weaknesses which cause me to lose.

2) Tunnel vision - Not sure what exact term to use, but I don't do a very good job of examining enough candidate moves. I'll often calculate/analyze the first one or two moves that come to mind and just go with one of those. After the game, a stronger player will point out a move (not even a deep or brilliant move, something that should be within my ability to see) that I didn't even consider because I was too focused on calculating the couple of candidate moves I first saw.

3) Incorrect evaluation of positions - not giving proper weight and attention to certain imbalances, underestimating opponent's initiative, that kind of thing. This is tough to specify because it seems to occur at all levels and is essentially what separates players of varying strengths.

I forgot one thing that's worth adding. I'm pretty bad when it comes to a 'fear of ghosts'. I often spend too much time analyzing pointless moves from my opponent, or playing too many cautious, unnecessary moves, because I'm worried I might be missing something in nearly every move the opponent makes. Very over-reactive, I think.

Not sure about you, but when you start teaching your kid make sure it's gambits and attacking chess and not positional and pawns are worth 1 and knights are worth 3 and rooks are worth 5 chess.

That's my fault for being so lazy and never updating it

I suggest you re-read your Alekhine and Keres game collections.

Question for the masses: when y'all are studying GM games (currently going through Zurich 1953 and Alekhine's stuff), do you play through the games and annotations, or do you treat the game as if it's your own (I've heard it called "solitaire chess")? I can see benefits of both. Treating the game as your own gets you really deeply involved in it, but playing through the games and reading the annotations would get more games/experience in the same amount of time.

What do y'all do?

I like both. Regular playthroughs are more useful, afaik, but solitaire chess is good for spice.

Dvoretsky recommends keeping a journal of instructive positions. Mine is full of categorized entries like this one: