Step by Step Learning
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[00:00:00] Welcome back to Next Level Chess podcast. I'm Grandmaster Noël 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.

So today I wanna do something a little bit different instead of an article that I prepared, something I thought about, very structured and kind of explaining this structured thought. I want to go into a topic [00:01:00] and talk about something that I've thought about a lot, but never really wrote about much.

This idea is basically that chess improvement has become way harder because many chess improvers know what they should learn at some point, but it doesn't matter right now. So the idea is that basically, let's say you're rated 1500, but you get a lot of information already of what you should know, if you would be 2000 or 2200 or 2400, and that this is basically destroying your improvement or just making it so much harder. 

And fun fact that this is one of the biggest differences I see between adult improvers and kids where kids basically, they don't really care. They just want to learn something new. They don't care what I should do later on. And many adults overthink this process. So try to get into that. Before I start, I just want to say this is a different version of the podcast, so please let [00:02:00] me know how you like it.

You can leave a comment in the wherever you listen to the podcast, if you can leave comments. Otherwise, just write me an email. You should find my email in the podcast descriptions. Okay, let's get into it. So I just finished a discussion with a friend where, basically, we talked about chess improvement and what makes it so difficult for people to improve because really every day that passes that I keep teaching people, that I work on my courses and everything, I get more and more the feeling that chess improvement is becoming harder and harder. 

You get more resources, so that's very cool. But something in today's society, or is it chess environment, makes it harder for people to improve. I have a strong feeling that many people are stuck that wouldn't have been stuck 15 years ago. 

And I think one of the big reasons, and I need to find a way to explain it very concisely in the future, [00:03:00] but this is just my thoughts at the moment, is this concept of too much of what you should learn. Because if we think back how we learn in school, I think you go into first grade.

And you sit down in math class and there are two options of learning. And say option number one is a normal option. You start with something like, Hey this is a table of numbers. This is number one. Let's count to 10. 1, 2, 3, 4, and then you do this. And then at some point it's like, okay, now let's, learn about addition. So addition is one plus one is two. Okay. Yeah. Super interesting. Okay. One plus one is two, one plus two and three and so on. So we learn it this way and then we slowly and steadily introduce maybe how do you call that? Detraction, like the minus, right? And then multiplication. So you do it step by step.

And the other version would be you get into class. First grade. First day, you are hopefully motivated. And then the teacher's telling, okay guys, so now the goal of math is that at some point you will be able [00:04:00] to understand the Pythagora's theorem, I think it's called in English. And then you will be able to do algebra where we do numbers and we add some letters and we have this cool thing written somewhere.

You can calculate this and kids are like looking there and it's like, "what the heck is written there? I don't even understand anything of that." And then they say, okay, but now just forget about everything. Now we go, what is actually a number? Okay, let's count from one to 10. And kids are like, what? What is happening?

Like I'm so overwhelmed by all the information I get. And I would say for most people out there, how you're learning chess is a little bit like the second example. And I wanna make a strong point that the first example is way better. It's better to learn step by step instead of just learning, okay, this is how madness plays chess.

Now there's 5 million things, I don't know to get there. But yeah, let's just try something and, well, somebody tells me that I don't have to, I know I should learn opening theory, but I [00:05:00] don't have to do it right now. Why? So it gets more and more overwhelming. 

Let's say you have like 5,000 skills you need to learn. You just pick some of them and you try to get better at them. And then when you are not at the point where, well, I'm good enough, right? Which good enough means, oh, that's how Magnus does it, or how grandmasters calculate or whatever, you never finish a certain point so you get stuck, for example, at openings.

'cause, well, truth be told, you will never have finished openings or have fully understood openings because there is no end to opening theory. So you buy courses, you still feel, well, I still don't know enough, okay, I need to do more and more and more. And so you don't have a step-by-step learning experience and you're getting super, super overwhelmed. 

This is a big problem. And really, when you look at kids, how they intuitively learn. So when I teach kids, or when I taught kids, now I'm really focusing on adult improvers. But when I compare with, when I [00:06:00] still had some kids, usually I would just tell them "Do this tactic, do this book, come back next week, we'll talk about this."

And they just execute. They're not saying, why should I do tactics? Shouldn't I do endgames? Well, but wait a moment. Capablanca once said that you need to learn first endgames and then middlegame, and then this and that. No, they're just like, okay, this is my coach. I trust this coach. I just execute what this coach says.

I'm getting better, right? So this is a way simple process. Whereas if you are teaching an adult improver, sometimes I have the experience of like I'm saying, okay, this is your training plan for the week, and then there are like 5 million questions. Wait, but this guy on the internet said this. This guy said that I read this.

Shouldn't I do that? I like this book better than this other book. Can I do this? Can I do that? And, on one side, it's understandable because you are hearing so many things, but on the other side, like you are hiring an expert in some ways, you need to trust that expert and you need to give away that think of, I need to do the perfect training, or I need to [00:07:00] do understand everything.

And maybe you'd say, okay, maybe he thought about something that I haven't thought about yet. Let's try to execute, and I'm not trying to say here that you shouldn't ask questions. What I'm trying to say is that you try to execute and then you have execution problems and you bring that to the expert.

So let's say, you're doing the tactics and you don't know how exactly to do the tactics. That's when you come back and you say, Hey how should I do them? I had a problem here, or I didn't understand this position. How can I execute? So this is a little difference also in kids and adult improvers and just also in how it was 20 years ago where you didn't have a lot of information on chess improvement.

And nowadays you just go to X, you go to Reddit, you go to anywhere, basically any chess form or anything. And people have opinions, opinions, opinions. 10,000 different opinions. If you are watching seven different YouTubers, they have seven different opinions on how to study chess. And I by no means wanna say that my opinion is the correct one and everybody else is wrong.

But what I want to say is that if [00:08:00] you're mixing too much opinions, also, then you're for sure getting a mix that doesn't work. So the way to for sure not improve is to try to take seven different approaches and take the best out of everyone, and then trying to make the perfect training plan yourself, because probably that's not going to work.

So what I highly recommend to simplify. So let's get to a solution. What I'm thinking about right now of the solution or why I did the Simplified Chess Improvement System the way it is right now, is that I think you need to learn more step by step and to follow the process and not trying to go from zero to 10,000, both in terms of learning chess skills.

So let's build it up. We don't have to do perfect opening. We don't need to straight away go from a zero into a 50 hour opening course. That's one reason why I'm not a big fan of these big opening courses because for many people it's just super overwhelming. It's way better to get a two hour opening course to be able to study all of [00:09:00] it, and then to execute, and then to add maybe one hour, and then to add maybe one hour again.

Instead of looking at a 50 hour opening course and they say, by the way, this is the perfect opening, but just forget about 90% of it. Our brain is not working like that. Once we know we should know something, it's very hard to forget about it. So it's way better to do it step by step by step. So the solution really what I try to do with the Simplified Chess Improvement System is, with part one, you get a very simple explanation of the most important things. 

Playing games, analyzing games, and doing tactics. And for people that have seen the course already or went through the course, they had some questions and most of the time I answer was, you'll get to that later on.

Because sometimes it's really good to have a rudimentary way of doing something to start with a good enough training plan. And then you start executing and then through execution, [00:10:00] through getting better at chess as well. Questions come up, and then you resolve those questions when they have a practical value.

So way more step by step learning instead of, here are the 10 million things that you should know, pick some of them. It's like, here are the five things you actually need to know for your level at the moment. Resolve them. Once you resolve them, you get to a next step and you get new problems, and then you solve them and solve them.

Now, the one biggest risk with that approach is that what you are learning from one step to another is hindering your progress in the future. And that's why it's so important to listen to people who have experience and who know the way where you wanna go. So let's say. You're a beginner chess player.

You want to go to 2000 rating. If you're listening to a 1400 chess player, they can only give you advice until 1400. So maybe what they are [00:11:00] teaching you would be wrong in the future. So you would need to relearn things. So it's best if somebody has experience in bringing you somewhere where you want to go, and then they can do it step by step by step.

The risk there is, as we see with many grand Masters, and I hope I'm an exception to this, but many grandmasters have a very hard time to understand what does it take to go from 1200 to 1300, right? So they are too high level, but the ideal learning way. I by no means wanna say that school systems are perfect, but I think the step-by-step methodology of school systems are super helpful for our human brains because once we have this extra information of what we should know, it's very hard to just blend it out and say, no, I'm not going to do this.

If you want to make it easier for yourself, then take a step by step approach. Don't overthink everything. Don't try to get the perfect [00:12:00] opening that you can still use if you win 500 rating points. But just think about what is a simple and easy opening right now that fits your level that you can understand for your current level, and then you learn something extra when you progress.

That's also, for example, how my beginner course is built up. Funnily enough, the only refunds I get for my beginner course are people that claim that it's not enough in there. 'cause they're saying, wait, I heard so many things about chess and you only tackle a few things. I'm like, yeah, that's the whole point of my beginner course.

I'm not teaching you stuff that you need to know at 1800, but I'm just going for the fundamentals and that's why it's targeted at below 1200 chess.com. Because I just wanna say, if you manage to know and apply these things that are in this course, you will get there. And for many people that's problematic because they know already way more what they should know, and then it's harder for [00:13:00] them to split it down.

I'm not starting the beginner course saying, by the way, you should know opening theory like this at some point and do this at some point. And there would be these 17 endgames, but we don't, we forget about them right now, but I'm just not mentioning it at all. And I think sometimes that's better. And if you want to go for the do it yourself way, if you want to be your own teacher, there is one skill that is super important, which is being able to say no to things and being willing to exclude stuff from your training. 

And being able to say what really matters and what doesn't. And that's also one thing I try to teach in my Simplified Chess Improvement System. Or I'm actually very clear about teaching that is that there are things that are cool to make in chess, but they don't really make a big difference.

And if you're not able to say, okay, I really want to improve, I really love endgames, but endgames at the moment don't make me improve much or studying [00:14:00] classical games don't make me improve much, so I'll focus on the things that really matter. Tactics and playing games and analyzing them. If you can't do that, if you feel like you need to study everything, once you know that you should know them at some point, then it is way, way better for you to just listen to someone.

To switch off your brain to not think what you should know at some time and just trust a teacher and going step by step. This way you can avoid your overwhelm. Okay, guys, that's where my head is at right now for this topic of like, step-by-step learning instead of just knowing where we should roughly go and just picking randomly. 

If you have any questions or if you know this was super helpful, whatever, please let a comment. This was a different podcast episode, just me basically sorting out my thoughts about this topic. I hope you've enjoyed it and probably next week we have a more ordinary podcast again. [00:15:00] So see you there. 

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