13.5 Hours of "The Woodpecker Method"

Week 1 Update

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Partly inspired by

Kostya Kavutskiy

’s training logbook on his Substack (which I highly recommend reading through!), I wanted to begin keeping a weekly update of the chess training I’ve been doing myself. Hopefully readers find this interesting!

Starting this past Monday on October 28th, I began to go through “The Woodpecker Method” course on Chessable for the first time. I had previously solved a few of the puzzles in the book but had never tried the actual “method”. This method consists of solving all the puzzles in the book (1,128 total) in a first cycle spanning multiple days, then solving all the puzzles again in half the time it took for me to solve them in the first cycle. This is then followed by continuing to cut the cycles in half until the final cycle where I will solve all 1,128 puzzles in one day. The goal of the Woodpecker Method training program is to build up your pattern recognition by seeing and solving a large number of tactical positions repeatedly. The idea is that since you are seeing all the puzzles multiple times, after the first cycle you are pretty much “solving” them from a pattern recognition standpoint or memorizing them. The more patterns you are aware of, the more likely you will be to see and implement them in your games.

There is a fair amount of anecdotal evidence that this method works but it is a highly debated training method among coaches and improvers.

Nate Solon

has a good article about the positives and negatives of the method which you can check out here:

The Woodpecker Method, Revisited

Since I had never actually done the full-blown method myself (and because my calculation could use some work!) I decided that I would go through the book (in my case, I’m using the Chessable course version) and see how it goes. I can’t really recommend (or discourage) the method to a student in good faith until I have experienced it myself!

With that said, let’s get to the details of week 1 (October 28-November 1). I decided to livestream myself solving the puzzles on my YouTube channel each day (stream recordings can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/@DaltonPerrine/streams).

Day 1: Worked through the first 200 puzzles (easy chapter) in 189 minutes
Day 2: Worked through the next 100 puzzles (intermediate section) in 143 minutes
Day 3: Worked through another 100 puzzles (intermediate section) in 132 minutes
Day 4: Worked through 126 puzzles (intermediate section) in 207 minutes
Day 5: Worked through another 100 puzzles (intermediate section) in 142 minutes

So far I have solved 626 puzzles within 13.55 hours. In addition to this tactic/calculation practice, I have also drilled openings on Chessable and played blitz games on Chess.com (not sure if that qualifies as training though). It could just be a coincidence considering the small sample size, but within the past 5 days I have been able to raise my anonymous account’s blitz rating from 2530 to 2625 (at the time of writing):

On October 28 I was rated 2530

During the past 5 days I’ve also found some nice tactics in my blitz games quicker than I may have been able to find them in the past. If you want to try solving the positions below just make sure you don’t read the captions first:

I found 1. Qxd5 (back rank tactic) in 10 seconds which is a bit slow

I found 1. Rfb1 Qa6 2. Bb7 (winning the c4-bishop) in 6 seconds

I found 1. Bh3 (trapping the rook) in 4 seconds

I found 1. g4 Nh6 2. exf6 Bxf6 3. g5 (forking two pieces) in 3 seconds

I found 1…Bxe4 2. Bxe4 Nxh2 (idea is …Qh4) in 7 seconds

I found 1…Ng4 (winning the f2-pawn) in 4 seconds

I found 1…Nde5 2. Bxe5 Nxe5 (if Rxe5 then …Qd4+) in 9 seconds

I found 1…Re2 2. Rf2 Qe3 (White loses material due to the pins) in 6 seconds

So far, I’d say the first week of the Woodpecker training has been good. I’m looking forward to continuing it in week 2! If you want to solve along with me during the livestreams, I will be doing them each weekday (Monday through Friday) starting at 10am Eastern Time: https://www.youtube.com/@DaltonPerrine/streams. I’m still in the first cycle but will eventually get to cycles 2, 3, etc. with the ultimate goal of solving all 1,128 puzzles in one day.

I’ll be back next week with the week 2 update!

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