Chess Improvement Equation Part 5
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[00:00:00] Hey, and welcome back to Next Level Chess podcast. I'm your host GM Noël Studer, and today I want to conclude the series on the Chess Improvement Equation. Just as a small repetition, the chess improvement is equation is a very simple way to calculate your chess improvement score, and this score in turn will predict how much you will improve your game. The higher your chess improvement score, the more you will improve your game. 

So, what is the chess improvement equation? Well, you score yourself on the three main factors of chess improvement which are what you're doing, how you're doing it and the amount of time you're spending on chess each and every single week. You multiply those three and then [00:01:00] you get your chess improvement score. 

In part two, I've talked about the "what", in part three i've talked about the "how", in part four, I've talked about how you can stay more consistent with your time that you spend on chess and now we have this bonus part where we talk about the habits that are working against you.

Those are the minus sign in the chess improvement equation. So what we're doing today is talk about Three habits that actively sabotage your chess, and then you can calculate your minus score by just adding up the hours you spend on each of these habits and then detracting that score from your chess improvement score.

And if you have those bad habits, it's very likely you might get into the minus scores in the chess improvement score and that might show why you are on a plateau or why you're even just slowly, slowly losing these [00:02:00] rating points. So now you're wondering what are those three things that are so bad for your chess?

We'll start with one that nearly everyone experiences, which is number one, tilt. It's really the worst case scenario. It's every player's worst enemy. It happens when you lose focus, get emotional and start playing recklessly. It doesn't just waste your time. It destroys your progress. And it is so important that actually my first ever podcast episode was on tilt.

So if you have a tilt problem, this podcast episode will give you a very short overview of tilt. If you need more help, check out that podcast episode just on tilt. So I've worked with a student that was a very successful entrepreneur, CEO of a company, and he won 522 rating points in one single year.

And this [00:03:00] sounds like insane progress and don't get me wrong. It is really crazy progress. But if you look at the graph, especially in the last six months, then you saw that he would slowly raise his rating and then drop 200 points in one day. Then again, slowly raise his rating, drop 200 points again in one day and this was just the result of tilt.

Putting in 20 to 30 hours a week, this student was really improving their chess just with one single problem. Some point he went on a tangent, played way too many games, lost focus, and just destroyed all the progress we had been working so hard on. So if you want to see how much you lose by tilting, just to keep it simple, every game you play on tilt or just when you're not properly focused is a [00:04:00] minus one multiplier to your time.

So if you spend 10 games on tilt, you basically erase 10 hours of chess training. So it's not only these 10 hours that you're wasting, but you're also wasting another 10 hours that you trained optimally. You're not just failing to improve, you're actively moving backwards. So here are the five steps, and I talk about them as well in my podcast episode on how to stop tilting.

Step number one, only play online chess if you can fully focus. Point number two, only open one single tab, your chess game. Anything else needs to be closed. Point number three, never play when you feel emotionally overwhelmed. It only makes it worse. Point number four, set yourself a limit of games before you start playing. 

And point number five, play for [00:05:00] fun and learning. Stop thinking about your online rating all the time. Okay, so that was point number one. Tilt. You need to make sure that you play the games that you play with good focus and you avoid tilting. Point number two that is actually working against your chess improvement is applying a wrong thought process.

Most adult improvers overcomplicate their thought process. They try to calculate everything, value abstract concepts over concrete ones, or mimic advice for players far above their level. And I see this time and time again. Players neglect the basics, which is just spotting the easy tactics, developing a piece, playing with all your pieces, and they try to go for fancy stuff instead.

They look at what Magnus and Hikaru are doing and they want to replicate what these super [00:06:00] grandmasters are doing. But that will end in disaster. One good example was a position I looked at with one of my students. This student is roughly rated 1500 online. And we looked at a position where his knight was attacked by a pawn.

Now, in this position, you should think, " Where should I move my knight?". We couldn't capture the pawn, there were no other counterattacks, so it was really just about understanding where this knight should move. And my student was considering all these abstract ideas, like, "Oh, the knight on the rim is dim, so I don't want to put it there.

Hmm, I heard I should bring the knight closer to the king, it's a good defender. Oh, so yeah, I'll go, I'll go knight d7." And then the opponent played the move. An easy double attack that one can very simply spot and basically my student could resign the game. So the thought process was completely wrong. Here is what the right super [00:07:00] simple thought process could look like.

What is my opponent threatening once I move my knight? Well, the double attack. And then the second question could be, how can I stop the double attack? By moving the knight on the side, on the side of the board, actually the knight is covering the square where the queen can deliver a double attack. So, yes, in general, the knight on the rim is not a great piece, but if the knight covers a square that would otherwise be used by a piece from our opponent to make a double attack and win the game, we should put the knight on the rim.

So, with a proper thought process, this position is super easy. With a wrong thought process, this position is extremely hard. And every hour of overthinking is minus one again to your time. Learning concepts above your level adds another minus one multiplier to your chess [00:08:00] improvement score. Five hours spent on advanced material that confuses you, that's five hours subtracted.

And here is how you fix your thought process. And before I give you how you can fix it, I just want to reiterate the more sophisticated your thought process gets, if you don't need it right now, the harder it will be to improve that in the future. So when I work with the student, it's so hard for me to change that thought process because it has been so ingrained over the past months and years.

If I would work with a complete beginner it would be easier for me to teach them the right thought process. So again, here's how to fix your thought process. Number one, stick to your level. Don't follow advice meant for players 200 plus points higher. Basics first and just forget about these things or just watch these games as inspiration, but don't try to take any [00:09:00] advice from these games for your own games.

Number two, use level appropriate resources. There are amazing books, for example, like Aagard's Grandmaster Preparation series. This is a book series I have absolutely adored, and it has helped me to become a grandmaster. But if you're reading that, if you're under 2000 rated, you're actively sabotaging your improvement because everything in there will be way too complex for your current level.

And then point number three is study your losses. Focus on what's really losing you the games. Hint, it's usually tactics and simple mistakes. So as long as you make these simple mistakes, forget about doing something complex. Don't think you need some sophisticated thought process or rook endgames or whatever it might be that comes in your mind that you need to improve.

First, fix the basics, basics, basics, basics. [00:10:00] Keep it simple. Improve your pieces, play with all your pieces, and look at the simple tactics, and you'll win your games. Okay, so, we covered number one, tilt, number two, the thought process that gets way too complex. The third point that will actively work against your chess improvement is an overblown opening repertoire.

Too much opening theory, again, doesn't just waste your time, it again also sabotages your improving. Here is why. An opening repertoire can be a time sink. You never finish opening theory. This is coming from a grandmaster who has played chess professionally. The more you know, the more you understand how much you don't know.

For example, I have absolutely no idea on the theory of the Berlin Opening. Now this is an opening that has been played so often at top level grandmaster level and [00:11:00] I've never ever even started to study it. So this just shows you how much theory there is and no matter how much time you pour into it, you will never feel like you've mastered it all. 

An overblown opening repertoire also compounds stress. The more you memorize, the worse you'll feel when your opponent deviates. It feels like an insult of like, "Oh my god, my opponent doesn't even play theory. How should I play against this person?" And also, the more theory you learn, the more pressure you will feel that you actually have to memorize all of these things.

Less stuff you know, less memorization needed. And it also blocks progress. Memorization doesn't teach you to play chess. It just gives you the hope of winning games without having to think for yourself. What happens is that you will be spending hours and hours, 10, 15, 20 hours a week drilling opening lines.

And the more of [00:12:00] these openings lines you know, the more you will feel forced again to drill more of the opening lines. And that's why having a too big overblown opening knowledge is another minus one multiplier. The more you learn, the more you will feel forced to do more in the future, and the more you will neglect tactics and the basics.

So again, all the time you spend on an overblown opening repertoire will be a minus one multiplier once more. And here is how you can fix your wrong opening approach. Number one, keep it simple. Stick to basic repertoires with plans you understand and not just moves. Really, as a general idea, if you don't know why you have to do a certain move, if you're an amateur chess player, you're doing something wrong with your openings.

You should understand why you move [00:13:00] your pieces, where you move your pieces, and what your plan and your opponent's plan are. Point number two, focus on ideas. Learn the principles behind openings instead of memorizing endless variations. This ties into point number one. It's really about understanding what am I actually trying to achieve with my opening?

Where do my pieces go? Which pieces do I want to trade? Should I actually trade pieces? Am I attacking on the kingside or the queenside? Because these generalized opening ideas will help you no matter if your opponent plays theory or not. You will have the understanding and then you will be able to improve.

Point number three is limit your scope. Deepen your understanding of a few main opening lines instead of spreading yourself too thin. Again, if you're an amateur player, you do [00:14:00] not need several openings. You don't need to play e4 and d4 and c4 with White. You do not need different ideas against the e4 if you're playing Black.

You need one opening that you actually understand. Nobody will outprepare you like a grandmaster. And it will be totally fine if you play the same similar things all the time. It just helps you to understand those positions better. And if you're getting bored by playing the same positions all the time, then by all means, play a few different openings, but only by knowing the ideas and you should just be aware of the risks because you're spreading yourself too thin.

So if you really want to improve your game, stick to one opening. learn it well, understand the plans, understand the ideas and don't overboard with memorization and useless opening lines that anyway you will forget and you will not even understand what you're [00:15:00] memorizing. So now, after talking about this third point, we can calculate the damage that you've done to your own chess and this might be quite painful.

So, the cost of these habits are: tilt, minus one for each game played without focus, overthinking minus one for every hour spent on material way above your level, an overblown repertoire minus one for every hour wasted on unnecessary theory. Add these up and then subtract them from your chess improvement score.

And if you have those habits, I'm telling you, they erase your progress very, very quickly. You might get a negative score, and well, that explains why you are stuck. See it as a positive, see it as a chance to see how much more improvement, or actually [00:16:00] breaking through the plateau, is possible with the right study habits.

Just avoiding these three sabotaging habits will save you hundreds of hours, drastically improve your improvement score, and increase your rating down the line. Crazy results are possible with the right approach. Just think about the student I talked about in the tilt example. He won 522 points in a year despite tilt's problem.

Twice with tilt he lost more than 200 points in a period of a few days or one day only. I'm sure he could have won even much more points in a single year with better habits. Crazy? Yes. Possible? Absolutely.

If you haven't done so yet, make sure to calculate your chess improvement score, rate yourself on the what you're doing from zero to one, then [00:17:00] rate yourself how you're doing the things from zero to one, and then calculate the amount of hours you spend every single week on chess. Now with these numbers, you get your chess improvement score.

And now what we did today is to find out if you need to detract from that score. So take a moment to assess yourself. Do you struggle with tilt? You can go back and see your rating on the online platforms and see "Did I have like huge dips where I played for 30, 40 games in a row and I just lost 100, 200 rating points?" If yes, you need to detract that from your chess improvement score.

Then, is your thought process too complicated? Or do you spend time, or too much time, studying material that isn't aimed at your current level? If you do so, again, you need to detract that from your chess improvement score. And then last but not [00:18:00] least, are you spending too much time on openings? Do you have endless opening courses that you just watch but you can't memorize the stuff and even if you memorize you don't understand what you're looking at and then you feel stressed because you need to memorize more and every day you feel like you need to log in and memorize again and do again and you just waste so much time on openings. If so, detract that as well from your chess improvement score.

And no matter what the score is right now, I want you to feel optimistic for the future. But being ready to improve always also includes being able to look at the current state of things with clear open eyes and be honest to yourself, and if that means looking at a negative score, that's all right. You now know that you have so much potential, you need to eliminate the three habits of tilt, of thinking too [00:19:00] complicated, and of doing too much openings, and then you need to improve your what, your how, and your time, and you will be able to improve your score. And then, that score will slowly but surely work into your rating, and you will see you can break through your plateaus, and for those that are already winning points, you can even improve so much more if you're doing chess improvement the right way.

Okay, guys, that's it from me for this series on the chess improvement equation. I hope you've enjoyed it. Make sure to just improve yourself a little bit every single day and I'm sure you'll be able to write an amazing chess improvement story. See you next week.