The messy truth about getting better
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[00:00:00] Hey, and welcome back to Next Level Chess podcast. I'm grandmaster Noël Studer, and as always, let's talk about how to improve your chess. And today I wanna share a story from my own improvement journey in another sport, which is padel. I've recently started playing, well, actually last year I started playing and I wanna get better.

I wanna have fun. It's both for me at the moment. And two months ago, I shared a story where I got thrown off my best game because of a toxic opponent, unfair behavior. And back then I shared that I wanted to have my main focus for my future matches, [00:01:00] to keep playing my best, even when this trigger comes up.

And in this episode, I want to talk about three moments or three times the same thing came up again and how I learned from that. And how on the surface you might say, well, this was very unsuccessful. I still didn't fully play always my best. But actually that's normal. It's how messy real improvement really is. And what I learned from this and what hopefully you can learn from this for your chess.

So let's dive in.

So the first time I got an opportunity to learn, and that's really already a key. We gotta see every time that something like this happen, a trigger happens. It's an opportunity to do it better. It's not a test, it's just an opportunity.

Okay, so I got this opportunity and right away I can tell you, I didn't handle it super well. So I still played very badly. But towards the end of a game, so padel usually takes one and a half hours. We rent a court for one [00:02:00] and a half hours, and maybe after an hour 10. I was confronting my opponent about their unfair behavior. So kinda they were screaming, often being obnoxious on the court, but also kind of on the verge to cheating.

And, initially I would take it in, get annoyed, get annoyed, get annoyed. And then at some point finally I confronted my opponent and said, Hey, that's not fair. I'm not letting that slide. I will claim that point for me. And while it was late in the match, it was still something I'm very happy with because previously what happened is I would just take it in and not say anything.

And once the match finished, he said, oh yeah, let's play again, or, let's use the time we still have on the court. And I said, Nope, I'm not interested in playing with you anymore. So, kind of made two steps forward. First of all, finally said something during the game. And second, I was able to clearly voice my opinion that I'm not ready [00:03:00] to play with this person anymore.

And after that match I talked to my padel partner and we said, okay, next time we are saying it even earlier. So the first, second time something happens, we are saying it even earlier. So even though we lost that match, kind of a positive experience.

So in comes opportunity number two. Playing with a friend of mine and we play against, oh, such an annoying person. And by the way, it's always males. I'm sorry guys, but it's all on us. It's just males that are so annoying. So anyway, we play against this player and he's throwing tantrums always like, oh my God.

And he's also being obnoxious to his partner because they didn't, often you play with people you don't know. And so it just annoying. But we win the first set. And something changes in the second set, and both me and my friend are playing terribly. So we go down zero five, which is a huge disadvantage.

It set number two. But then I was very happy what I did. I didn't say anything. But I [00:04:00] told myself, okay, calm down. Don't let yourself get influenced by that. Let's just try to focus playing well. And then we won four games in a row. We still lost the second set. But the third set we actually won.

So it was the first time where I had an obnoxious opponent and I got triggered, but I still managed to get a good result out of it because previously I would always just get so much thrown off my game that I would lose. Now, I said in the previous opportunity that I want to say it as early as possible, didn't manage that, but I managed something else to play well. So I saw that as an improvement as well. Again, I failed my goal, but I move in the right direction.

And then came few days ago. That's why I am making this podcast episode. I had another match, and this time I was playing with someone, let's say I wasn't happy with their ethics. Okay. Just all the time. Oh, being a sore loser, [00:05:00] screaming, owing, whatever. Not against me, generally against himself, but still just super annoying to play with. And we lost first set. Actually, zero six might have been one of the reasons he got so annoyed and he played pretty badly. Gotta say. But I still kept my cool, so I was happy with that.

I kept my cool. And the second set was super close. We did still lose. And then in the third set, I was saying something. I realized also that our opponents were fed up with him, but they didn't say anything. So at some point, and this happened a lot. So he would start whining, start being annoying, even during the point.

So he would hit a shot, not perfectly, and then just be like, oh my God. And this time he would just scream, not run anymore. And we just lost the point. And I just told him, dude, just instead of whining, just keep playing. Like the ball was still in play. Just run. And I would expect that my partner would be super mad.

But what he actually said was, we all right. I'm sorry. And even after the match, he came again to me. He said, Hey, I'm so [00:06:00] sorry. You could have told me even earlier. I'm sorry that it was not nice to play with me. And even though again, we lost that match. But I felt so good. I was like, oh my God. You can say something to people, and some of them don't want to be annoying. They just, the worst comes out of them. When you remind them they can actually change. So that was a super positive lesson for me.

Now, why am I sharing this? Why does this fit to a chess improvement podcast? Let's think about what that means for chess.

I wanna share it because I have seen a student of mine having a similarly messy way of improving at chess, but not taking the right lessons out of it.

Because often we have this dream that we set a clear goal. Next time we try it, we achieve it, everything is great, boom, improvement is done. But that's not how improvement is happening. I realized I was triggered by something. I tried it three times. I never did it ideally, but I moved in the right direction.

And I see that as a [00:07:00] big pro. I am like very happy of my own behavior, even though not everything was perfect. And I think that's so important for healthy improvement.

And there are so many examples in chess, and I will share one with one of my students, but one example that is super simple, and I think everybody can understand. That is the thing of hanging pieces. Just doing the basics. We all know we shouldn't hang pieces. But even if you try hard, you play a game and you try not to hang pieces, you might still hang pieces.

It's way easier to formulate the goal, to understand what you should do, not hang pieces. But then execute. It is way harder, especially there comes pressure during the game maybe you have a little bit of anxiety. You play for rating, all of these things come together. Just like me and padel, I can say before the match, well I'll just say, if someone is not acting nice.

But then during the match there is the pressure, there is the, I'm tired, there is tension in the air and all of these things. So, actually, doing what we want to do gets way harder.

Now [00:08:00] to the student that I had. So this was incredible to me. So I worked with them for a few months. And this student wasn't looking at the rating at the time, but it went from 800 to 1250 in a few months. Now, this is a nice jump. This is nice improvement. There's clear improvement.

The rating is clearly going up. But the point was that whenever he lost, he did so because he hung something. And now in his brain, he said, well, I invest so much time and I still hang stuff. I feel stupid. This is a failure. This is bad.

But that's simply how chess works at that level. I'm very clear about this. That chess below 1500 in general is hanging pieces and simple tactics. It's just so much easier to say that than to actually execute. So improvement is okay. I'm trying to make a step in the right direction. I'm trying to ask myself, what is the threat of my opponent?

And you will still hang pieces, but maybe a little bit more complex. Or you will still hang pieces, [00:09:00] but under the time pressure. You will still hang pieces because your opponent made stronger moves and put you under pressure the whole game.

So the problem is the same, but the process starts to become different. And then slowly you start hanging less stuff. And that's super important to understand. Because if I think that well, i'm such a failure, I'm so bad. Why couldn't I just say something? Or why couldn't I play perfectly after that trigger, I would quickly lose the joy in playing padel and also probably just quit.

By the way, that's what happened with that student. It was so painful that he couldn't keep up with it.

And at the end of the day, that's an expectation setting problem. We gotta expect that improvement is messy. Improvement is not going to be easy. Improvement is not going to be linear. And likely you will be able to say what you should do very easily. Stop hanging pieces. Find tactics. Look at opponent's opportunities. Always making a blunder check. [00:10:00] But in actually executing that during the game, you will make mistakes all the time.

And so what we wanna focus on is just getting a little bit closer to the right process. And not expecting that once we set up a goal, even if it's a process goal, like blunder check. That the first time we try it, it's going to be perfect. It's going to take a lot of repetitions, a lot of failures, a lot of close misses for then the process to get better and better and better.

And so I hope when you go through a similar experience, like my padel experience, that you manage to see it as progress and as something positive. And not as something negative that you still make the same mistakes. Because I felt so good. I drove home in my car and I was like, yep. I said something. I'm super happy. And the next time I think I'll do a little bit better.

And by the way, there will be a relapse where I don't say anything. It's okay. We gotta expect things to be hard. Then [00:11:00] we can be happy even with small improvements.

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