I won 200 points with this challenge (raw)
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[00:00:00] Hey, and welcome back to the pod. I'm Grandmaster Noël Studer and yes, on episode number 13, I finally managed to get a podcast intro. Yay. I hope you guys like it. And let's go straight into today's topic, which is a challenge I set to myself and I actually ended up winning 200 rating points with this challenge, but I failed it.

So imagine. How good the challenge could have been if I even, stuck to the challenge for the whole time, what am I talking about? So the end of July this year, this is a few months back. I set myself a challenge 30 days, each day, six games of three plus two blitz with full focus. Now for those not following me [00:01:00] for a long time, I'm a retired grandmaster, so I generally don't play, I don't care about my results, and I from time to time play online.

But in the past, this has become more and more mindless, so I got upset with myself and I said to myself, okay, I gotta stop playing. So back in April, I stopped playing for like four months. And then in July I said, okay. Now, let's see what is possible if I really focus in my games. So I set myself this challenge 30 days, six games of three plus two blitz online.

And the goal was reaching a new all time high rating online. And this podcast is about how I failed the challenge, as I mentioned already, but I won a staggering 224 points in the process. That's a lot of freaking rating points. So why did I do this challenge? I said already it was because I was frustrated with myself, but also [00:02:00] because some things started turning and I started become have other beliefs for chess improvement.

And one of those beliefs is that everyone, especially everyone listening to this podcast can win a hundred points. Online without any training. Okay. So you don't have to do tactics and games, analyzing games, working on strategy, learn new openings, whatever it might be. You can win a hundred points. if you're just focusing while you play your games.

And that might sound crazy, but when you, listen to this full episode, you'll see that I didn't do anything and I won 224 points. And I think many of you can do the same. the same. Now, does that mean you should never train chess again? Absolutely not. That's not my point. That's not the point of this podcast.

But the idea is just that there is such a huge difference if we play mindless games or if we play fully focused. And fun fact, [00:03:00] actually, the day before recording this, I was watching a YouTube video of Daniel Naroditsky, one of the strongest online blitz players. And he said something along the lines of, if he is watching or listening, A podcast next to playing chess.

He will be 2,900 on chess.com. And when he focuses he will be 3,200, that's a difference of 300 points. And he casually said that. So again, when we focus, we can be so much better. And I have this core belief right now that anyone listening to this podcast can win a hundred points if you just focus on your chess.

So let's get back to my challenge, what went wrong and what you can take away. from it. So the starting point, as I mentioned, was that I made a break on my chess playing activity, especially on chess. com. I didn't play from April to July, and this was mainly because I was [00:04:00] playing mindlessly. And the low point of playing mindlessly was in February 2024, so this February, I had a 2476, so rating on Chess.

com. Now, you might say, wow, that's great, but guys, I'm a grandmaster, and my classical rating is equivalent to roughly number 300 in the world. Now, that's not true. 2476 is a hundred points, more than a hundred points lower than my feeder rating, and usually Chess. com ratings are hundreds of points higher than the feeder rating, so something is not going well right here.

In April, where I stopped playing on Chess. com, I had a rating of 2516, as mentioned, that's really, really bad for the level I'm at. Okay. I'm not trying to, judge anyone with a lower rating. I'm just saying for my skills, that's a very bad chest. com online rating. And my goal was to hit my highest ever, which was 2776.

So maybe, getting to [00:05:00] 2800 would have been nice. So that was my idea. And even 2700, 2770 for grandmaster of my level is not really good. I think I could aim higher. So that was the goal. The goal was to reach my new all time high and to just stay strict with playing 30 days in a row, six games per day.

Not more. Thank you. And not less. That would have been 180 Blitz games. And the idea of this whole process of limiting my games or just setting a clear amount is that it helps so much to avoid tilt. It helps me to stay focused. It helps me to have a clear process goal. It helps me not to say, Oh, I just won rating.

Let's play some more. Or I lost rating. Let's get it back. No, it's just six games every day. So now. to the results. What actually happened? Now, I already took that away. I said, Hey, I failed this challenge. [00:06:00] Okay. So I failed the challenge. I played a total of 171 games. That's not too bad. No, that's very close to 180.

The sad part is that only on a handful of days I really stuck to the six games. Now, turns out it's easier to say to everyone that they should stick to six games than actually sticking to it myself. I lost a little bit my, maybe my muscle of controlling myself when playing chess because I haven't done it seriously for a long time.

I started the challenge by playing 14 games on the first day, so that's not ideal. But the stats were pretty good. I won 97 games, lost 55, so that's plus 42, and drew 19. And most importantly, I increased my rating, as I said already, by 224 points, so I went from 2516 to 2740. [00:07:00] It's very, very close to my all time high of 2776.

Now the problem is, since I finished this challenge, I lost back 100 points, and at the moment of recording I am somewhere in the low 2600s again. Well, why? Because I play mindlessly again. And some of you might wonder, why am I recording this podcast right now? Why didn't I do it earlier? Actually, in my mind, I failed the challenge.

So I thought, okay, it's not interesting. I'll not share it. But then when one of my students had big problems, really big problems with playing too many games. I just took this challenge and my rating graph as an example, and I saw, holy, I didn't even remember that I won 224 points. So I gave it as an example, and it was really inspiring to the student to see that even on grandmaster level, just proper focus makes such a huge difference.

So it should be as an [00:08:00] inspiration to people, maybe also, just to say, Hey, if you from time to time fail to do exactly what you set out to do. That's human. That happens to everyone. And then I have a few takeaways for you guys. So when I lead with these takeaways, I have six of them. So number one, this is very important, is the difference of playing focused and mindlessly is just absolutely insane for anyone.

As I mentioned, Dania claims that it makes 300 points difference if he is focusing. For me, at least it's 200 points and guys, I even failed to stick to my whole routine and to really do it very well every single day. So I believe it could be even a bigger difference than these 224 points for me. That's already insane and just very important to realize that all the chess work you're doing, if you're not focusing during your games.

your rating will, [00:09:00] stagnate or even go down. Takeaway number two is sticking to a regular schedule is hard. Okay. So this experience really made me more empathic for all of my struggling readers, listeners, and students. And it brings me back to my own advice actually to start small. Now, I hadn't played at all, seriously, I would say for two and a half, three years online Blitz, right?

And I just start with a difficult challenge. Maybe that was a little bit too much. Maybe I could have started with a five day challenge or a seven day challenge, or I could have said, make it a little bit easier on myself. It was just zero to a hundred. It's very tough to do that. Point number three, clear guidelines are essential.

Even though I didn't manage to stick to my six game interval, it's still a kind of a point of reference for me. And as I set out to have this focus and to play the six games, [00:10:00] bad days were 14 games, but I get emails from readers. And these readers are playing a hundred Blitz games a day, and that's then really much, much worse.

So if you at least have a reference point, even if sometimes you don't fully stick to it, it's not as bad as if you just have absolutely no guideline whatsoever. Now takeaway number four is setting a reward and punishment could help. And I didn't do that. And I think that was a big, big factor why I didn't stick to my challenge.

So it's. It's better to, say, Hey, if I do that, I will, buy this leather jacket I always wanted to buy. Oh, or if I don't achieve it, I am not allowed to eat chocolate for a month or something like that. And that brings me to takeaway number five, that is holding yourself accountable is an extremely valuable motivational tool.

tool. So you can combine these two. You can combine [00:11:00] setting reward and punishment because it only, or it works much better, let's put it this way. If you also hold yourself accountable. So instead of talking to myself only and writing this for myself, I can say, Hey. I can share, this challenge on my newsletter.

I could have done that, right. Or on the podcast, wherever I could have said, Hey, I'm trying to do this. If anyone sees an online game or more than six online games from me on a certain day, I will do X, Y, Z punishment. And if I reach these 30 days, or if I managed to do it, maybe, talk to my fiance, Alessia and say, Hey what would be something you can put up?

Or what can I allow myself that I. You usually wouldn't allow myself to buy or to do, to experience if I actually manage these 30 days, six games and then take away number six, that's super important. And that happens a lot in the health sector as well. Is that. Good habits need to be consistent. [00:12:00] Why do I name the health sector?

There's a lot of, people losing weight. I actually, my father, for example, is always trying a little bit to lose weight. At the moment he is on a challenge to, to get back, to a great shape. And so when you have these challenges, it can be very dangerous. They lose weight, lose weight, lose weight.

hit their goal, and then boom, there is no habit anymore, or there's no challenge anymore. And then boom, this is the so called yo yo effect. So you go up with the weight again, then you set a challenge, you go down, we go up again. And in chess that can happen as well. I had this 30 day challenge, and at least in the back of my mind, I tried to be disciplined with my playing.

Once the 30 days were over, It was absolute catastrophe, right? I just had no rules anymore, but I had somehow the wish or the habit of playing chess. So I just instantly lost a hundred points. And actually even just writing this article and, and thinking about it and now recording the podcast [00:13:00] has led me to do more games on chess.

com. And again, they were mostly mindless. So these are my six takeaways. And now for anyone struggling to play too many games or playing mindless I have a few recommendations as well. What you can do to, follow my steps, but maybe even do it a little bit better than me. So I'm very curious to hear from everyone how this will go.

So if you struggle to play with good focus, do the following. Step number one. Step one, take at least seven days of playing. I just got a new student and he started with this seven day fast. It's super powerful. So when you have a bad habit of playing mindless, break that habit by not playing for at least seven days.

Step number two, set yourself a clear goal and daily limit. Okay, so it needs to be that you clearly say [00:14:00] every day maximum this, or at least every playing session, maximum amount of games. I like six games for Blitz and two games for Rapid. This usually works. with the analysis that you should do right to get better at chess it should take around an hour to play six games plus analysis of blitz and then two games plus analysis for rapid so this is manageable and it's a good way to get going step number three commit to analyzing your games that's super important playing is nice and fun but if you want to learn make sure to analyze your games Now, back to my initial point, I said, without analyzing, you can win a hundred points at least.

But obviously the idea is that we do the good focus plus the good chess work, and then we can even win more than a hundred points. So analyzing your games, very important. Point number four, [00:15:00] plan your playing sessions. Okay. This might sound a bit nerdy or, you, your sense of freedom gets disturbed by this.

but it helps. Okay. Take 10 minutes on Sundays to plan your training sessions for the upcoming week. Just look at your calendar. When will I be able to focus for roughly one hour at a time? If you have less time, just shorten the amount of games, right? Play one rapid game or play three blitz games, for example and plan it, put it into the calendar and tell yourself, That's when I will play with a great focus and I will analyze my games, I will learn from them and I will play at the best of my possibilities.

That helps a ton. And then step number five is the thing that I neglected, I didn't do it myself, is to set a reward and punishment and hold yourself accountable. The goal is to make success easier than failure. To stay [00:16:00] disciplined is difficult, but if you're setting an amazing reward that is really, pushing you towards staying disciplined and also, and maybe even more importantly, an annoying punishment doesn't have to be financial.

Could be, having to put on a certain dress and walk in your city or a friend of mine once had that he was he, he, he was a a boy and he. Had to hit a certain rating. Otherwise he had to play in a, in a female skirt, the next tournament or things like that, that could be embarrassing, but doesn't cost you anything.

If you really don't want to do that, then it's a great way of punishing yourself and using that punishment. to actually stay disciplined. That's the whole idea. And if you end up doing one of these challenges or this challenge exactly what I did, please let me know, contact me, tell me how it went. I'm looking forward to hear all of you guys success stories [00:17:00] and still, believing everyone can win a hundred points if you just manage to focus properly when you play.

And some of you might, ask themselves, Hey, Noel, is there a second challenge coming in? You said that you could have done it better at the moment. I have a lot of projects going on. I have a lot of stuff. I took on new students. I'm refilming some of my courses. So there's a lot of stuff going on.

So I don't have time to allocate to, fully mindful playing. An hour a day, I will definitely do a second round within the next six months, I would say. So when I do it next time, I will actually let everybody know. Maybe some people will join me at the same dates to make the challenge, but also I can hold myself better accountable.

And hopefully by then I will cross my new all time high and then go beyond that. Let's see what is. [00:18:00] Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I am Grandmaster Noel Studer. And if you want to learn more chess from me, if you want to get more chess improvement tips from me, make sure to join my free email newsletter.

You'll get exactly this type of chess improvement advice, but just directly into your inbox and before the podcast is coming live. out. You can check out the link in the description. It's nextlevelchest. blog slash newsletter. And if you want to learn even more from me, make sure to check out my courses.

They are linked in the description as well. I realized that I'm horrible at marketing them. There are so many people that profit from these courses, but even much more that would profit from these courses, but I'm not letting them know. So guys, if you want to learn how to improve your chess, make sure to check out next level training.

And if you want to get an all in one [00:19:00] beginner course and you're rated lower than 1200 online or 1400 lead chess, I would say beginner chess mastery is absolutely the course for you. Again, links in the description. Thank you so much for listening and see you next week.