Episode 97 - Your Last Rating Jump Wasn't What You Think
===

[00:00:00] Welcome back to Next Level Chess Podcast. I'm Grandmaster Noël Studer, and today I wanna talk a little bit about the confusing nature of chess improvement. More specifically, why sometimes we have a jump in rating or we win rating, and it's not that easy to understand what actually caused it. That leads to misattribution and to quite a few problems down the line. So let's talk about it.

I recently had a lesson with a student where we discussed opposite side castling, and there was one main takeaway. As soon as there are opposite castled kings, a flip should switch in his brain, and it is now all about attacking.

And the same day, he played a game. So after that lesson, he played a game [00:01:00] and got a position in the French Exchange, where his opponent went for the plan with Black to go opposite side castling. So his opponent castles long, and immediately, my student had the chance to apply what he just learned a few hours earlier. So he started a huge kingside attack, and by move 26 had checkmated the opponent.

When I saw that game preparing for our next lesson, I was so happy. And the student also shared being very happy about being able to implement it so quickly. And I was so happy. Not only because this was an excellent game, but also because I know just how rare it is that a student can immediately, concretely, and correctly apply something we've discussed in a lesson and get a positive result from it. Because usually this looks different, and that's what this episode is about.

So chess improvement [00:02:00] can be so difficult because you might learn something new and start building that skill, but you need to wait dozens of games to apply it. One easy example would be you learn a new opening, and many people talk about this. You learn something against e4, suddenly, magically, nobody on this planet seems to play e4 anymore, and you get 15 games of 1.d4.

Or you work on your rook endgames, you're really excited about this, and then you never get into an endgame anymore. In psychology, this concept is called delayed gratification. There is a delay between the input, so your training, and the output, your improvement.

The obvious risk with delayed gratification is that you give up. And the less obvious risk, but not a smaller risk, is the one that wrecks more chess careers. It's misattribution. So what is the most common misattribution in [00:03:00] chess?

You do what matters for a while. So you're doing your tactics well, you're really focused in training, you play your games, you analyze them. But because there is a delayed effect, you don't really see results. And so you get frustrated and you change plans. Because of that frustration, you're more prone to the marketing of some opening course or whatever quick fix that is in the chess market, and you fall for it.

And then a few weeks later, or maybe even a few days after buying something like that, your rating goes up. Now the story checks out. You got promised quick improvement, and somehow it worked. And in your brain, you're so convinced that you're like, "Okay, this needs to be the hack for chess improvement."

So you keep buying opening courses, you keep doing the same things. But at some point, nothing works anymore. You stagnate for a long time. You get more and more frustrated. So what happened? The thing is, your improvement was actually caused [00:04:00] by the work that you did before buying the opening course. And then, once the effect happened, you misattributed that to the opening course or whatever else you could have bought or done or not done.

Sometimes it's just not doing anything. And you learned a painfully wrong lesson. And that wrong lesson cost you so much more struggle down the line. Wasted money, wasted time.

And so it's so important to be aware that in chess. Most of the effect, most of the training doesn't have immediate results. That's usually a red flag for products that promise you immediate rating gains. There can be immediate changes to your training. There can be feeling of relief. There might be many things, but just immediate results, it's always tricky.

And so the next time that your rating goes up, or it might be the other way around. You're [00:05:00] losing some rating or you're stagnating. Ask yourself, "What did I do four, six, eight weeks ago?" Because that was likely the cause, the input for what you're getting out right now with the delayed effect. And the thing you bought three days ago, or the thing you started doing three days ago, or stopped doing three days ago, is not the thing that caused this effect.

And once you attribute the correct things to your chess improvement, you can keep doing those or even doubling, tripling down. You will be more patient with waiting for seeing the results, and you can cut out the things that promise these quick and easy improvements, but actually don't deliver.

Or if they deliver, they are just a correlation. They are just something that you also did. Or you did later than when you actually did the right work that drove the improvement.[00:06:00] 

Hey, guys, just two quick things before you take off. If you enjoyed this episode and want more structured chess improvement tips from myself, check out my newsletter at nextlevelchess.com/newsletter.

It's totally free. It will always remain free, and it goes out every single Friday with the best, latest chess improvement tips that I have. Most of the podcast episodes that I record are based on a previous newsletter. So getting the newsletter, you'll get the advice earlier, and you'll get it directly into your inbox every single Friday.

It's totally free, as I mentioned, and you can unsubscribe any time. So go to nextlevelchess.com/newsletter to sign up. And one last thing, if you enjoyed this episode and if it helped you, then please take a few seconds and [00:07:00] review this podcast. This helps a ton. It helps other people see, oh, yeah, many, many people profit from the advice given in this podcast.

Let's give this podcast a try. And if you can, if you know anyone in the chess world that would profit from this episode or any other episode, make sure to share it with your friends, with your people online. That's super helpful. Podcast growth is really just working through mouth by mouth recommendations.

So thank you, thank you so much for listening, and thank you for spreading the word about the Next Level Chess Podcast. Now, that's all from me. Thank you for listening, and see you next time