Chess Training Tips-Track your progress

Chess Training Tips-Track your progress
Monitor your successes and failures
Is this important? You bet! Most of the top Russian Trainer's track their student's progress very carefully.
Why do you think a baseball manager wants to know if his number 1 Pinch-hitter does better against righties or lefties? or against the fast ball or the curve ball? or the slider or maybe a sinker? Because the more he knows about his player's Strength's and Weaknesses, the more likely he is to make an intelligent managerial decision. i.e. a winning decision.
The same principle applies to you. Is your "Jack-Rabbit Gambit" losing more games than it is winning? Is that opening better for players over 1800, or maybe better for players under 1800? How do you know? I track my progress very carefully. Certain openings have their own notebook of graph's and charts and notes. This is NOT my original idea either; GM Andy Soltis wrote an excellent article about this same topic many years ago in the magazine "Chess Life".
Another training tip, but one that goes hand-in-glove with this one, is charting your opponents. I have lost count of how many players say, I play that guy virtually every tournament. He's in the cross-town club. Get the general idea here? You have regular opponents too. Make a record of the openings that he plays then instead of studying the obscure main lines of, say the "Hawker Variation" of the NoteBoom Gambit every weekend, (which, by the way, you have never played in an OTB - tournament game); - - - study what good old John Smith plays and beats you with every time you get Black against him. Does that make sense to you? Make a notebook on him. Find out what variations he likes and knows well then either learn them better than him, or stay away from them completely. Just common sense!
Does he study the endgame? What part of his game does he consider himself the best at? The weakest at?
perhaps you don't know... so ask the local master or expert; he can probably give you a very accurate profile on your opponent