Chess Improvement Equation Part 2 - What You Should do to improve your Chess
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[00:00:00] Hey, and welcome back. I'm Grandmaster Noel Studer and you are listening to Next Level Chess Podcast. In this week's episode, I want to go deeper into the chess improvement equation. This is an equation I have presented in last week's podcast. If you haven't heard that yet, it might be useful to hear part one of the chess improvement equation.

Having said that, even without the first one, this episode will give you tons of value and help you understand how you can figure out what you should do in order to improve your chess. So, in today's podcast episode, we will focus on the first part of the chess improvement equation. [00:01:00] As a reminder, the chess improvement equation is "what"

times "how", times the amount of time you spend, and then you get a score which is your chess improvement score. So today we will exclusively focus on the "what": what are you studying, what resources are you using, and then we will be able that you can grade yourself and you can take away a lot of ideas of how to improve that part

of the equation. As a very quick reminder, the equation works with multiplication. This is really, really important because it would look way different if you just use addition. So, if you have a 0.2 score in what and a 0.2 score in how, that's not 0.4. You don't add up, but you have to multiply it and that means your score will be 0.04, which is quite [00:02:00] horrible. So, really, remember that and that shows you how important it is that each and every part of the equation needs to be at least decent. So, that's a very important reminder. And now let's get into why the "what" matters. Training doesn't equal improvement. If you spend your time on things that don't matter for your level, what you focus on must align with what decides games. 

Once you're working on the right areas, the next step is using high quality resources suited to your level. These two elements, what areas and what resources define your "what" score. And if you want to improve your "what" score, that doesn't happen overnight. And it doesn't need to. If your score is very low and your training is all over the place, you go from random YouTube videos to neglected tactics, [00:03:00] little playing, or maybe you play a lot, but you don't analyze your games,

your first goal should be to aim for a good enough score. So, we don't want to go from catastrophe to perfection, but we want to build it up step by step. Once you reach a good enough score and the other parts of your chess improvement equation, the "how" and the time are strong, you can then push for excellence.

And here's how you do that. Step number one: if you're not following the one third rule, make this your first priority. This is a super simple way to ensure a balanced approach, and you make sure that you work on the right areas. For everyone not knowing what the one third rule is, it's super simple.

It says that you should spend one third of your time on tactics, one third of your time on playing and analyzing games, well, [00:04:00] analyzing your games that you just played, and then the last third should be split between openings, strategy, and tactics. and end game. Okay, so, the one third rule, super simple way to get a decent score.

And then, when we talk about what resources you need, you don't need to jump from a 0.4 score to a perfect score. And you can use a very simple and easy progression. You can first go with free but high quality resources. For example, platforms like Lichess, they allow you to solve tactics, play, analyze your games.

And if you do that consistently, you will already improve your score. Already free tools can still deliver significant improvements. Then you can move to affordable books. For example, you can introduce structured low cost options like the Step [00:05:00] Method books. I really love them. I'm a big fan of them. They cost only 5 dollars per book and they mostly focus on improving your tactics.

Once you start working with these books and you still want to improve, you can then go to high quality memberships. Something like ChessMood, I'm a very big fan of them as well. They have an all in one monthly membership and then you get, so many high quality courses that will help you improve your chess.

And then, If you're working with high quality memberships like the one from ChessMood and you still want to take it up a notch, then you can consider private coaching, right? So you realize, "Oh, I'm really serious about chess improvement and I want to speed up the process. I want to work one on one with a highly qualified, motivated coach."

That can be the ultimate way of improving your "what". Now, I'm not saying that you [00:06:00] can't go from free stuff to already private coaching, but I'm just saying, if you are the type of person that generally goes all out and then burns out after two weeks, maybe it's better to just slowly improve your score,

instead of just going all out. So, you understand what I'm talking about with the score. I want to give you a small reminder of how the score works and then give a few examples of high, good and red flag scores. So, in the chess improvement equation, we want to score ourselves on the what part from zero to one.

So, one would be perfect and zero would be absent. And then your improvement equals also zero as well because it's a multiplication. So, what we are aiming to do today is to score your current chess training in the "what" segment. And there are two factors, right? We talked about [00:07:00] what are you doing. So, what areas are you working on?

That will be zero until 0.5. So, there, 0.5 would be ideal. And then we add to that what resources you are working with. Again, zero to 0.5. If you're spending your time, ideally, really doing the things that move your chess ahead. And you're having the best possible resources, working with a one on one coach and you're just super dialed in with the what, then you will have an excellent 1.0 score. Well, that would probably not be the case for anyone listening to this podcast, because after all, you want to improve something and having an excellent score already would mean that there is no improvement in that "what" area left. But just to give you an idea of what a perfect, excellent score would be. The excellent score would be between 0.8 and 1.0. And it's really takes [00:08:00] experience or expert guidance to get there. Plans at this level are personalized to your needs, focusing on your strengths, weakness and specific goals. They also take into consideration if you like more blitz or rapid or classical chess. It's really a super personalized way of training chess.

Here is an example from one of my students. So, this student obviously spends, enough time in all the areas that matter, follows more or less the one third rule with some additional personalized twists. Here's what we are doing for tactics. The student uses Tactic Ninja from ChessMood, occasional Puzzle Survival on Lichess.

You need to get the puzzle right in order to progress, and then you can get a score. And this is a easy way to get a little bit of gamification into your training. And then we use the Step Method [00:09:00] for over-the-board training. So, this student will use the Step Method book, put it on a board in order to prepare his brain for the upcoming over-the-board games.

Then the playing and analyzing happens on Lichess most of the time and then sometimes over-the-board in the tournaments. And we have weekly topics to focus on specific skills whenever the student plays. And we then analyze those games as well. So really every game the student plays has some kind of idea behind it and the student learns something from it.

Super important. And then, last but not least, we have the theory. The last third, which could be basically anything openings middle game and game. And this is our specific focus. And right now we are specifically focusing on working on winning one positions. That's one thing the student struggles a lot with.[00:10:00] 

And we do that by a course from ChessMood again. It's called Winning Won Positions, I think, and my student is going through this course. And then we have targeted lessons on this specific topic, like Winning Won Positions, where we look at some games the student played. And I will say, "Hey, here, how could you apply the winning-won-position principles?"

And then, occasionally, we have lessons as well on openings. When I see that my student is going wrong in the same opening often or some key strategic concept. That would be an excellent score. Let's move to good enough. Good enough would be anything that is rated between 0.5 and 0.7. And initially, this should really be your goal.

To achieve that, you don't need that much sophistication. You just need high quality stuff. And here's how you do it. For [00:11:00] tactics, you can use Leach's free tactic trainer. There are better options, but it's a good enough option to start with. Then you can play and analyze. And I would, for simplicity, I would recommend that you focus on one time control.

For example, you're saying, I like rapid, so I mostly play rapid games, and then I analyze them. That's it. And then for your specific focus, you look at the one-third rule, and you're just switching in between opening and games and strategy. So, what you can do, for example, is you focus one month on openings, then the next month you focus on strategy, and then the third month you focus on endgames, and then you cycle through those.

So, that would be a good enough score. And from my experience, if you have a good enough score, you're already outperforming most other chess improvers, [00:12:00] because so many people have plans all over the place, just randomly trying to go through some videos. So, here we get some organization, we make sure we focus on the most important things, and then we are able to improve and slowly work our way towards the excellent score.

And now, let's move to, sadly, what is the reality for most chess improvers, which is a red flag score. That would mean that you're not really following the one third rule. You're not really focusing on the things that matter most. And most likely you're not working with super high quality resources, rather scratching the internet for some free advice somewhere.

But who knows if this is actually good quality or not. Sometimes it will be, and sometimes it won't. So how does your tactics look like? Well, it's only sporadic and you have little [00:13:00] structure or consistency in your tactic training. Maybe one week you're studying five hours of tactics. Well, the next week you just completely neglect it.

On the playing and analyzing front, you are probably not playing and analyzing enough, and most of the time it actually happens that either you're just not playing at all, because you might be scared of losing rating points, or you might be playing a lot, but analyzing only a few games or maybe not at all and that's a super big red flag you need to adjust for that.

And then on the specific focus on the last third, most chess improvers are spending way too much time on opening traps, on opening ideas, just on openings in general and just neglect the rest. So that will be a big red flag as well if your last third is only openings, or if your chess training is only openings and you forget [00:14:00] about everything else, that's a big, big problem.

If this sounds like you, you are wasting your time. You need to rebalance your training and move towards a good enough score before attempting anything more advanced. Again, it's super important. We want consistent improvement, so we're not going from zero to hero in one step. It's just too dangerous that you'll burn out, you won't make it perfect, and then you just quit chess for good.

We don't want that. What you want to do is to say, "Okay, what are the simple actions I can take to go to the next level?". So, to get to a good enough score, and then only I can work myself up to the excellent score. And the most important part of everything, and that will be for this area, so for the "what", but also for the "how", for the time, is taking action.

If [00:15:00] you're stuck in chess, it's because something in your training isn't working. You're either focusing on the wrong things, what? Using the wrong resources, what? what. Or both of them. Or then we will talk about it next week, and the week after the other parts of the chess improvement equation. The good news is - you can fix it, right?

Just review your training plan and if you don't have one, start one and make sure it follows the one third rule. That's the simplest way of improving. Adjust your focus on tactics, playing, and analyzing. And only, spend one third of your time on anything other than that. Then step number two can be upgrade your resources gradually. 

You can go from scattered free resources, by scratching the internet somewhere, to something like, "Okay, I know Lichess is high quality. I know I can just solve tactics and [00:16:00] play there. And then I can slowly move to paid stuff like the affordable Step Method books. Then I can move to high quality memberships like ChessMood, and then I can maybe go into one-on-one training."

And then third point, and that's super important, track your progress every single week. What you want to do from now on is every week you train chess, you then look back, what did I actually do? And you want to rate your "what" score regularly. What that does is, first of all, it's a great feeling when you improve something that you actually see it in some numbers.

So, the score helps you. "Oh my God, yeah, I started with 0.2, now I'm already at the 0.5." That's a 2.5x improvement. That's insane. What it also does for you is that if you're slowly getting off track, you can catch yourself within a week and then [00:17:00] adjust for the next week. So, make sure to track your progress every single week.

And really, remind yourself that every single week you continue with a bad plan or poor resources is a week of progress lost. You don't want to let another month go by without improvement, you want to start right now.

Okay, guys, that's it from me on the "what" of the chess improvement equation. As a small reminder, the chess improvement equation is "what" times "how" times amount of time per week equals chess improvement score. And if you haven't done so yet, write down your "what" score and write down one thing you want to improve next week to slightly increase that score.

And next week we'll talk about "how". And small spoiler alert, the "how" is the Achilles heel, the [00:18:00] backbone of most chess improvers. You are most likely doing the "how" wrong, getting a super low score, and that's why you're not improving. Why and how you can improve that: in next week's podcast. See you there.