The Four Stages of Chess Improvement
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[00:00:00] Hey, and welcome back to another episode of the Next Level Chess podcast. I'm Grandmaster Noël Studer, and I'm particularly excited for today's episode because it's about something that clarified in my mind and I thought, oh yeah, these four stages to chess improvement will hopefully clarify a lot for my students, listeners, readers, and so on.

And I hope this will be the case for you. So when you listen to it afterwards, please let me know in the comments if there is a comment section on your podcast platform. Or you can just send me an email, say how you like this one and which stage you are in currently. I hope it's not stage two, but sadly the reality check will be that most of you are probably in stage two. So what stages am I talking about? Let's dive in to the four stages of chess improvement.

So stage number one is when you start your chess journey, and this is a kind of rosy stage [00:01:00] because everything is so exciting. Every video you watch there is something new and you will likely make improvements just by watching some video or solving a few exercises and just immediately, boom, oh, you improve and sets the tone or sets your expectations as well, because you're kind of winging it.

You're kind of randomly doing stuff. You're not really as an athlete, training something, but you're just consuming different things. Maybe also watching some streams and just seeing others play and your game gets better, and it's super exciting. But as I mentioned, it sets you up the wrong expectations and leads to the later stages, which are sometimes a little bit less comfortable.

Now, some people are in this stage only for a few weeks or months. And some people, especially kids, might be in this stage for a few years. Like when I started playing chess, I was just lucky enough that I kind of randomly got exposed to the right coaches. There was not [00:02:00] so much information on the internet yet, but just some books that were generally the quality general quality.

Chess book was higher than the average quality of a YouTube video or of a online course. And so it can be that some kids are in this random improvement stage. That's how I call it way beyond 2000. But the problem is that if you're listening to this, probably you're an adult improver. You learned just later on you might have stumbled upon some of the first resources you got were not as good and so your improvement stops way.

Earlier, and that means that you are moving into stage two way quicker than somebody else would, and it's just important to play your own cards. Okay? We don't want to compare here. It is just stage number one is you randomly consume things, but you still improve your game. And then stage number two is coming, which is called confusion, which, well, the only difference is you're randomly doing stuff.

But you're not improving [00:03:00] anymore. So you get your first plateau and you lose your mind, right? You're like, what am I doing wrong? This worked so well. I maybe won hundreds of points just by learning some openings, learning some new ideas, watching others too, maybe here and there, do a little bit of tactics, and somehow everything flowed.

And now you are in the stage of confusion because the same thing that you did, the random improvements, they are not working anymore. And again, because stage one felt so easy, this can really be frustrating. And the initial reaction of many people, nearly everybody, is doing more of the same. Maybe I just need some more YouTube videos.

Maybe I need some more secrets. Maybe I need some more openings. Maybe I just need to memorize more lines. So there's more grinding and more of this random improvement. And the longer this doesn't work, the more your frustration builds up. Because you see around you, [00:04:00] other people seemingly seem to improve.

You're listening to podcasts that have success stories. Everybody obviously that sells something, always will put up the examples of people improving. So seems like people around you are improving. Just you are not. You're stuck. So, what am I doing wrong? Maybe I'm just stupid. I have a lot of readers and a lot of students that told me that they felt just like, okay, it's just not for me, and I'm not made for chess improvement.

That's exactly the feeling you get in this confusion stage.

And then when this frustration gets super strong, there are basically two possible outcomes. Possible outcome number one is that you realize winging it by yourself doesn't work. So the random improvement doesn't work, and you need a more structured approach, which will bring us, spoiler alert, to stage three.

Or point number two is you think chess improvement isn't for you. You've tried, you bought courses, you did things, and somehow [00:05:00] your rating doesn't move at all anymore, and you give up chess improvement or chess altogether, or you get so frustrated that you basically phase out a little bit, you accept you won't improve and whatever.

And basically, my work, the hope with my work is that I bring as many people as possible out of this confusion stage. And help them enter to stage three. And then I want to teach people how to actually do stage three properly. So let's talk about stage three. So we had stage one random improvement, stage two, confusion where this random improvement doesn't work anymore.

And stage three will be the structured chess training. And this, guys, is where real improvement happens. And a lot of people, and a lot of my students, a lot of people that sign up for Simplified Chess Improvement System are so relieved that they finally hit the stage. Because the confusion goes away.

Once you realize you have to train properly, you have to do structured [00:06:00] chess training, that kind of self-doubt of, am I the stupid one is going away because you realize, oh, I just did it the wrong way. It wasn't me, it was just my system or I had no system system, and random improvements aren't good enough anymore, but there's also this bitter taste to it that many people are telling me, well, why didn't I find you three years ago?

Why did I have to go through such a long, frustrating period before realizing, okay, let's just do a structured approach. Let's just do real chess training.

So is all perfect and only beautiful in this stage? Nope, and that's exactly the problem, because if this stage would be easy, relaxing, funny, great at all times, then obviously everybody would be in here. Everybody would structure their chess training, improve their game, enjoy it.

The problem is that to be in here and to do it properly, it actually requires hard work. [00:07:00] That's something I talk about a lot, that kind of expectation many have that it should be easy. As long as you have the expectation that things are easy. I just want to watch something on my phone. I don't want to really focus when I play.

I wanna play, maybe even if I'm under the influence or I want to play when I watch some other things and I'm distracted. If you still are in this, then you are not in the improvement stage. So improvement stage, or how I call it, structured chess training stage. It's difficult and that's why so few people are in here and there are a lot of challenges you face in this stage.

Even if you say, okay, I agree that I should train with a structure, it still means that it will still be difficult and hard because executing my three do's: do what matters, do it well, do it consistently. It's difficult. The best analogy I have is that this is like having to walk a straight line, but [00:08:00] this path is rather boring.

And when you look to the left, when you look to the right, there are these beautiful paths. Everything seems greener on the other side. It seems beautiful, nice flowing and so on, but it actually brings you somewhere completely wrong. And then occasionally you also find these huge rocks on your road and you have to find a way to go up over this rock and keep staying on that path.

And the harder it gets, the bigger the rock, the more you will be tempted to go to the left, to go to the right. You get off track, and then you are not in stage three anymore, and you know sooner than you would like, you're probably back to the confusing stage. So what temptations and what rocks am I talking about?

Temptations include new courses, success stories of people that say, I just did that and that made me improve. New research. You might learn, oh yeah, this is how you should learn chess. Oh, I need to create my [00:09:00] own perfect training system. We'll get to that later on. Studying material that is interesting, but above your level, I see that way too often.

Yes, it's great. Jacob Aagard is, in my opinion, one of the best or the best author in chess improvement. The problem is he basically writes for titled players only, or for at least extremely ambitious strong club players. So if you're not there yet, even though these books are absolutely amazing, if you read them, you'll get confused.

So that's a temptation in itself. Temptation is mindless games. There's so many more. And then the big rocks are just normal human challenges that happen whenever we wanna do anything in our life, and especially do something meaningful and hard, which are longer plateaus. But you might have private things like family emergencies.

You have lack of sleep, work getting intense, not feeling ready to make mistakes, and one of the biggest one, which is ego, feeling [00:10:00] stupid when you play bad. Tying the rating to your self-worth and all of these challenges that come with chess improvement. And so if you want to consistently improve your game, you need two things.

You need to realize that you should enter stage three better earlier than later. So if you aren't in there yet, one takeaway from here, come to stage three. Organize your chess training. Do proper structure chess training, because otherwise you'll get stuck in stage two. And then the second thing is be strong enough and be structured enough and have guidelines of help to stay in stage three and not getting tempted away from the temptations or not quitting when there is a big rock on your path, but instead trying to figure out how to move past it.

One of my favorite books of all time is called The Obstacle is the Way, and I think that's a good addition to this analogy. If there is an obstacle on our way, it's not that we just run [00:11:00] away on another path, but we actually go through that obstacle.

And I know I say this very often recently, but I think it's really important. Again, I saw just how much on YouTube there are these quick promises. No matter what somebody wants to make you believe. This will be hard work if you want to be in stage three. Like one of the determining factors that you are actually doing structured chess training is that at least from time to time, you do things that are hard, that are uncomfortable, that are a little bit outside of your comfort zone, and that are not just what you would do at 9:00 PM lazily sitting on your sofa and having your phone in hand.

And so I know I said this also already, but as long as you feel like everything is smooth and everything is easy, you never do anything hard, well, you're not in stage three yet, you are still in stage one. It's still everything a roses, everything beautiful. And at some point I can [00:12:00] promise you, again, for some it's way later than for others, but at some point you will get stuck and to get unstuck, unless you want to play the lottery of chess improvement, that you randomly hit the right things.

You want to get into stage three.

But now you might wonder, well, I was talking about stage four, right? And some people wanting to enter stage four. So what is stage four actually? Stage four is another temptation in itself. It's the sophisticated chess training. It's training like an athlete, having your own system or having the, I say, the ideal way of trying to train chess.

And this is a temptation, especially for smarter adult improvers that are very successful outside of chess. They think, oh, I can skip the basics. I can skip everything. Let me understand what I need in chess improvement. Let me create my own perfect way of training chess, taking a little bit from everywhere and creating my own structured approach.

[00:13:00] And if this works, it's amazing, but usually it doesn't.

So here's an example of the sophisticated chess training. I turned professional in 2015 and I was an international master back then. I wanted to get the GM title first to be the youngest grandmaster in Switzerland. And then I always believed in reaching a 2700 rating over the board. That was my super long term vision.

And so when I had these big goals and more time for chess, I changed a few things. So I started working with Grandmaster Yossif Dorfman, which was a second to Gary Kasparov in some of the World Championship matches against Karpov. So a very famous coach. And a few months in, I really realized I basically need to change everything about chess I do right now. And this is the realization of like I was in structured chess training for a while. Now I need to move on to stage [00:14:00] four into sophisticated chess training. So what I did was I changed my opening repertoire, changed my thought process, I changed my approach to things outside of chess.

So I got a nutrition coach, I worked with a sports psychologist. I worked on my sleep. So I became a professional athlete, really in the mindset of like, okay, this is not just, oh, learn one more line, or solve a few more exercises. But this is really a professional way to think about chess improvement.

And this was, without a doubt, the most demanding, but also the most interesting time as a chess player because it's extremely stimulating to having to think about basically every fact in your life and seeing how it ties into chess improvement and where I can still grind out this 0.1% or 1%, 2% here, 3% there.

And that was just super, super interesting.

And by the way, it's not for everybody. Again, yeah, for me, I had [00:15:00] to enter the stage four when I tried becoming a GM. For some more talented players that maybe started earlier, maybe had even a little bit better coaches early on, they don't even need to do that to get to the grandmaster title. There are some players that are so talented and so, so strong early on that just if they have a coach, they give them some guidelines, but they can still kind of wander off from time to time.

They will still achieve the grandmaster title. For example, Magnus Carlson always shares that he only did what he enjoyed in chess. I think that's extremely rare. It's really insanely rare that you see somebody be as strong as Magnus Carlsen without basically feeling that they did anything difficult.

So let's get to why this stage is so tempting. Again, I shared that already, especially for smart adult improvers that are successful outside of chess, and then come into chess and kind of think, oh, this is the ultimate test [00:16:00] of my intelligence, of how strong I am. Maybe you're pretty competitive. It is tempting to think, okay, I did things that seem way harder than chess, very successful in business or whatever, did study at a super known university, whatever it might be that you're thinking, okay, I gotta do chess a little bit differently. I'm not going to just do the basic things that everybody knows, like doing tactics and so on.

I wanna create my own way and I will now move past everybody and make it way quicker than anyone else. And when you're trying this, well, probably if you try this and you're listening to this, you realize that doesn't work well. That ends in the confusion very quickly because you're trying to have a super professional approach, but winging it on your own.

As a comparison, if you look at the biggest athletes in the world, all of them have coaches. Every single one from Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, to all the team sports that you might think of in the world. All of these [00:17:00] athletes still have coaches. So when you are in this stage, in this sophisticated chess training stage, and you're new to a sport and you try to do it on your own, you basically have 0% chance to actually hit the nail here.

And what will happen is, either your system that you built will just break at some point because you just don't know what you have to learn when you go past a certain rating. So you might do something that works until 1200, but then you realize, oh my God, I just learned all the wrong habits.

That's terrible. Or what happens as well is that you're just neglecting the basics so much that you are trying to train these sophisticated things, but you neglect the basics. Like you're just hanging pieces left and right, but you know, the most deep insightful plans in an opening.

Or you might know how to win a certain rook end game that never happens because you blunder on move five. So this is not going to work. And [00:18:00] 99% of you listening to this won't reach stage four. And that's okay. What I want to say with this is that yes, you need to structure your chess training, so stage three, but you don't need to have the perfect plan.

You don't need to do everything perfectly. You don't need to have the perfect opening repertoire. You just need a little structure. You need some guidance to what fits which level. And then you need to execute and train consistently. That's what will help you. You don't need stage four.

Okay, let's get to the conclusion of these four stages and what that means for chess improvement, what it means for my work. I hope I can clarify some things. So, to just conclude the four stages. Stage number one, everything is beautiful. You have random improvements. So call it random improvements.

And you do some things, you learn, you improve until it [00:19:00] doesn't work anymore. Then you enter stage two, which is the frustration or confusing stage. So you are very confused because what you did in stage one, the random stuff that worked, now it doesn't work anymore. Why? So you usually, you do more of the same.

You randomly try to study things, but you're just plateauing real hard. It just doesn't move you, you're not getting stronger, which will hopefully lead to you understanding earlier than later that you need structure. You need to properly train, you need to do some things that might not be super comfortable.

That will be stage number three, which is the structured chess training stage, or just real chess improvement. In here, you write a training plan. You try to do hard things. You balance it out. You do tactics. You play games and analyze them. You try to do things properly and especially you try to do things that are for your level, [00:20:00] but a little bit outside of your comfort zone.

That's how you push yourself, and that's how you can break through a plateau. And then stage number four is the super sophisticated chess training. That's what sometimes people think they need in chess, but it's actually really reserved for people that try to play chess professionally, for extremely strong players.

And so you don't need that. That would be changing all of your repertoire. That would be having three to four replies to 1. e4 because, well, you might play an open tournament and there, you need one reply and then you might play a closed tournament. Then you might need another reply, and then you might play against stronger players, weaker players and so on.

So everything is to the nuances, perfectionist. You try to work on your sleep, on your nutrition. You have professional coaches. I had like, all counting together, like four people that helped me professionally within trying to improve my chess. One of them was a chess coach, and three others were non chess.

So this is really sophisticated chess [00:21:00] training. Most of you listening to this don't need that. It's very cool. It's very inspiring to listen to people, but you don't need that.

And now to the takeaways. So takeaway number one, nearly all chess improvement content is for stages one and two. Once you enter stage three, you realize only a fraction of videos, courses, and books are essential and good for you.

Takeaway number two, proper chess improvements only starts when you get stuck for the first time. Everything before is easy.

Point number three, or takeaway number three. It can be frustrating to see kids seamlessly go to 2200 in stage one. They just do whatever they enjoy and they somehow improve so quickly.

Life isn't fair. What you can do is play the cards you are dealt. Stop comparing yourself to others. It only makes you miserable.

Take away Number four. Stage three [00:22:00] requires things that are hard and sometimes boring. Chess improvement. Being hard is what makes it special, unique, and what people are striving for.

Take away number five. When you get advice from someone, always ask yourself first, which stage are they in? If they are in stage one, so where everything is rosy, the random improvements, stage two, the confusion or stage four, the sophisticated chess training, it is likely best to just thank them and forget about what they said.

And take away number six, you likely will never enter stage four. That's fine. You don't need to be super sophisticated to see improvements. You just need to do the basics well enough, which is what you should do in stage three.

And now to the most important one, especially if you aren't yet in stage three or if you get tempted by all these temptations and. By hard times in stage three is the longer you stay in stage one or two, the harder it will be [00:23:00] in stage three, unlearning your bad habits that you

inevitably create when trying to wing things on your own with random improvement will be super painful and difficult. Or as George Leonard says in his amazing book, mastery. This is really a good book. I will put the link below in the podcast description so you can go check it out if you want to.

This is a quote. If you're going to go for mastery. It's better to start with a clean slate rather than have to unlearn bad habits you picked up while hacking around. End of quote. And by the way, by mastery, he means the process of getting better at something and not necessarily becoming a grandmaster.

So I hope this was conviction enough to see you in stage three. And as mentioned at the beginning of the episode, let me know what you think of this and which stage you identify with the most.