Fix Your Leaking Roof
===

[00:00:00] Welcome back to Next Level Chess Podcast. I'm Grandmaster Noel Studer and I help chess players train deliberately with what I call the Simplified Chess Improvement System. Deliberate chess players live by three rules. Do what matters. Do it well. and do it consistently. If you're tired of training randomly and want to follow a simple proven system, this podcast is for you.

Today I want to talk about an extreme case where basically all that matters is only one thing in your chess training. If you want to be a deliberate chess player, then you need to focus on one thing only. Do what matters [00:01:00] means there's just one thing that matters at this moment, you should focus on it.

But this is counterintuitive and many players struggle with it. So I hope with this episode I show you why sometimes you just need to double, triple, and quadruple down on one point solving your biggest issue, and then your chess will skyrocket up. Okay, let's get into it. Imagine your roof is leaking and water is pouring in, damaging your home.

What do you do? Most would follow this simple process. Number one, identify where the leak is coming from. Number two, understand the underlying issue. Number three, fix the leak so no more water enters. And if you're a cautious person just like I am, you do number four, take preventive measures to avoid it happening again.

That makes sense, right? Now imagine you get into a friend's house [00:02:00] and that friend has a leaking roof and your friend is saying, I have a leaking roof, I know where it's coming from, I tried fixing it but I gave up, it didn't work, so now I simply live in a house with a leaking roof. You probably think they were crazy, they should keep finding solutions until the problem is solved.

But what if I told you that more often than not, you might be that friend when it comes to your chess? You know the problem is there, yet you're living with it. Don't worry, you're not alone. And in the next few minutes, I'm going to show you why this approach isn't working and how you can finally fix it.

So nearly all problems in chess come from two sources. I recently spoke with a student who's been stuck for a while. In five consecutive lessons, I drilled one simple point. Your issue isn't thinking concretely enough. You're blundering in every game because of it. The message landed, yet [00:03:00] nothing changed.

He said he tried to focus better and see what happened. But game after game, the same mistakes happened. We both understood the problem, yet nothing shifted. He continued his normal training routine. Now that he knew the leak was there, and he knew where it came from, he simply started living with it. You might be doing the same.

I've yet to see a player under 2000 online rapid rating, sometimes even higher than that who doesn't have an issue with tactics or focus leading to blunders. Some people have a lesser issue and some people have the issue that they blunder in every single game. Sometimes the opponent sees it, sometimes the opponent doesn't.

Yet, when I suggest focusing nearly entirely on tactics and playing with intense focus, almost everyone resists. Back to do what matters, right? Two things that pass the test in doing what matters are tactics and playing with focus. When I suggest this, they say, [00:04:00] hey, I need to study openings, rook and game strategy, yada, yada, yada.

But when we look at a game, they ask about deep plans, slight improvements, complex ideas, things that intrigue them. But yet, when we look at this game in detail, somewhere, sometime, a full piece is hanging. And with a specific student, I looked at a game. that he played. It was a longer game. And this student analyzed this game for over an hour.

And there I click through it and I see, wait, there is a moment where a piece is hanging. It's just a full piece blunder and there's no annotation on it. Nothing. Zero. So plays a game for over two hours, analyzes the game for an hour. There was one thing that mattered, blundering a piece, but because the opponent didn't see it and somehow he still won the game rather smoothly in quotes, because there was a full piece hanging, the opponent would have taken it, you could just resign, this one thing [00:05:00] that mattered didn't get any attention.

This is so important. It might be basic, it might be obvious, but if you're still blundering pieces, this is the only thing that matters, nothing else. And I mean that, nothing else in your chess matters if you're giving away stuff for free frequently. So, what should you do instead? Once you realize blunders are holding you back, treat them like a leaking roof. 

You need to fix it immediately before it causes more damage. Now here's what you do. Identify the source of the leak. Is it tactics, focus, thought process? Two, fix the leak, solve tactical puzzles daily, change your thought process, remove distractions, stop playing on your phone, do whatever is needed to fix that leak.

And then point number three, prevent future leaks, implement a blunder check before executing every single move so that you can [00:06:00] stop blunders also in the future. Because would you consider putting in a new floor if your roof was leaking? That would be a waste of time and money. The floor will just get ruined again.

For the same reason, you need to stop focusing on openings, endgames, or complex strategies while you're still blundering pieces in every game. It. Does. Not. Matter. You're wasting your time and money. As long as this blunder problem is existing. No matter why, right? Again, it can be focus, it can be that you're distracted, it can be that you're just not solving enough tactics. Whatever it is, you need to double, triple, quadruple down on that blunder issue to really try to understand, dissect this blunder and forget about everything else in the meantime.

And actually, I have a story from how this works on top level. It's a little bit different, but if you're observing a [00:07:00] sports team, sports people, you can sometimes see, I recently heard an interview with a boxer and he said that he got a new coach and for the first month, this coach did one thing. He said he just did footwork.

There was no boxing training at all. He just had to make the same kind of steps because something with his footwork was not good. And then the coach said, as long as this is not good, everything else will not matter. So we'll just focus on the footwork. So you see that in sports a lot as well. 

And I had the pleasure to work with grandmaster Artur Yusupov. He was one of my earliest coaches. And Artur Yusupov, if you don't know, he was world number three behind Kasparov and Karpov. And he was one of the prodigies that Dvoretsky coached. And in a book, I sadly can't remember, I can't find that passage, but in a book, and he told me this story as well.

They discuss how they realized one weakness of Artur and then focused on solving it. [00:08:00] So at some point they looked at Artur's games. It was when Artur was still pretty young. And they realized, okay, you're strong. He was already very strong. But, there was one main issue, attacking games. He was not attacking well enough and just not often taking attacking opportunities.

So what did they do? For three months, Arthur was forced to attack in basically every game that he played. He solved a lot of attacking puzzles, studied games from attacking players. So they just said, okay, this is the main issue. Now guys, mind you, this is probably at the time maybe international master, or maybe already grandmaster.

So there are a lot of fundamentals that are just working. He can not do super simple tactics for a month and he will not just give away pieces, right? So he has a different floor than most people, but it still applies the same thought process of the biggest pain point realized, okay, it's attacking.

So what they did for three months, just attacking, attacking and training games, [00:09:00] attacking puzzles, studying attacking games. And then he went to a tournament after that period. And I think during that period, he wasn't playing very well. That's usually what happens if you're working very intensely on something.

It can be that your results slightly drop even, but then once it clicks, boom, he played this tournament, he destroyed everyone. Just attacking chess, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So this is really key lesson that you can see this applies whenever. On your whole chess journey, this applies all the time. If you have one leak that is so big that it drags down everything else.

Then instead of doing, Oh yeah, I want to be doing some openings, be doing some this, be doing some that, you just need to say, I need to solve that problem. Boom. And that's why I say this all the time for nearly everyone listening to this. For the average chess improver, the problem will be either tactics or it will [00:10:00] be focus and the resulting problem in a game will be that you're leaving pieces hanging, that you're allowing easy tactical opportunities.

So the most important thing is to find out what is causing that leak and then to fix it and to work on it and then to just say, I work on it until this leak is fixed. And you'll see that the whole chess, your whole chess will suddenly go up everything together, because then when you start having openings that are better and you don't have a leak anymore, then this matters more.

If you're having strategy and you don't have a leak anymore, you're doing even better. If you're then getting into endgames finally, because previously we were just blunder pieces, then you can use your, oh, how to subtly do this one pawn advantage into a queen and then win the game or whatever it might be that you're working on.

As long as you're having the leak, it doesn't matter. When you fix the leak, then everything else is just so much better [00:11:00] as well. Once you're doing that with blundering, you'll be able to do that with other areas. 

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 [00:12:00] and if it helped you, then please take a few seconds and 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.