Episode 87 - The (chess) skill nobody talks about
===

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to Next Level Chess podcast. I'm your host, grandmaster Noël Studer, and as always this podcast episode is made to help you simplify your chess training and to work on some mindset, psychological things as well. And speaking of mindset and psychology, we definitely go deep in this today.

And this is a really important topic and one I care about a lot. And I'm not saying I don't like more chess specific things, but when I can talk about something mindset related, when I can talk about something as important that I see in so many areas of my life with friends, with family, with myself, and I can geek out about it in [00:01:00] my job and kind of connect it back to chess. This is what I love the most.

So if you hear me, hopefully especially excited today, it's because I care a lot about this topic, but it's also, it might be something that might upset you a little bit. And that's kind of by design, so. Let's jump right into it.

It's so easy to lie to ourselves. Over the years, I've worked with dozens of private students and observed more than a thousand course students improvement stories. And there is one skill that is very rarely talked about, but it makes an incredible difference. It's self-awareness. Students who are self-aware are not immune to struggles, plateaus, or losing games with a piece up.

But when these things happen, and by the way, they are inevitably going to happen if [00:02:00] your strategy is trying to avoid any pain, not going to work, not a good strategy. So these students are so much better at ignoring all the noise, focusing on the one or two things that actually hold them back. And they are working on them relentlessly. Or in other words, those with enough self-awareness are able to see the truth without needing to fabricate stories they would like to believe but are not true.

And I think that's worth repeating. Those with enough self-awareness are able to see the truth without needing to fabricate stories they would like to believe, but are not true. So let's talk about the basics, tactics, and why it's so much about execution, not about knowledge.

Let me be brutally honest here. If you're listening to this and you're rated below 1500 and you think anything other than hanging pieces and super simple tactics [00:03:00] are holding you back, something is wrong. Only two options come to my mind. Option number one, you've been tricked by people who want to sell you their over complicated courses.

Hint, probably some opening shit. Number two, you are not self-aware enough, or maybe it's a combination of the two because you are not fully self-aware. You are falling for this false advertisement and you get sold these things that you don't really need. And I don't mean that to mock you, to make fun of you, and I'm sure that your story feels real.

I've heard it so many times and I fabricated so many stories myself in my life and I keep doing it. That's just how our brains work actually. So here are a few stories that I hear often. I keep getting bad openings. I don't know how to transform an advantage. I struggle with winning won positions. I don't understand middlegame strategy. I can't evaluate the position properly. The [00:04:00] list goes on and on.

And by the way, these things could all be true. If you are below 1500, well, the thing is, you haven't mastered the game of chess yet. And by the way, even as a grandmaster, I sometimes feel like I'm not even close to that. So it means that just you could get better at anything.

But at the end, when I look at these players' games, what I see that really decides the games. Majority of the games that holds them back hanging pieces and simple missed tactics. And there are so many versions of this, right? Occasionally you lose because of opponent's preparation. Occasionally you get into time trouble and time trouble is your problem.

Occasionally you miss a tactic in the endgame. So you think, oh no, I have to work on the endgame now. Actually, there was a tactic. There are so many different ways, but the thing is, if you're looking at a big amount of your games and you see for the [00:05:00] one or two common denominators that are really changing the outcome of the games on this level, it's hanging pieces and simple tactics. That's it.

And here, if you're listening this and you're above 1500 and thinking, ha, ha, ha. Yeah. These are under 1500 to say, I have no idea. It's very likely that in your case, something unglamorous is also holding you back.

I hope I am not misattributing this, but I think Jacob Aagaard, grandmaster and a very famous coach has said that if you are below 2000, this is paraphrasing by the way. If you are below 2000, you haven't figured out your tactics yet. So that applies even to higher levels. And then even above that.

Usually is one or two things that are unglamorous that is holding you back. For example, are you sleeping seven hours a night? Do you do your daily or every second day tactics? Do you [00:06:00] play games with full focus on the process and not the results? Are you actually analyzing every single game you lose?

Especially the ones that hurt a lot? There are so many ways, so many basic things. You don't want to really see it, and so you fabricate these stories of, I don't need this. This is not me. Or, I know everybody else needs tactics, but I actually need openings. There's some way of this.

I know what's going on, but I am different. That is very dangerous. Usually it's better to really stick to the basics and what actually we know that matters for others. Likely, it also matters for us.

And now I want to go a little bit deeper because yeah, you can just say, oh, you're not self-aware enough. But actually, why does it happen? I've talked about it and written about a lot that a lot of chess players, especially adult improvers, are connecting their self-worth with their chess skills.

And when this happens, it gets more and more painful to admit [00:07:00] making basic simple mistakes. Because if you think what I'm doing in chess is how worthy I am, and then you're saying, well, I am just hanging pieces left and right, then that's very painful. Your story could be, I'm stupid, this is not for me. I really suck. And all of these things.

And for me, it took a traumatic brain injury to force me to look the cold, harsh truth in the eye. And I feel this is one of my biggest superpowers right now. It's whether it is in chess learning a new language or building my business, I can look at the reality of the situation or as close as it gets, right?

Everybody is biased. Even if you know you're biased, you're still biased. But I feel I am better than others at it. I can say, I really suck at this right now without feeling attacked in my ego. So I don't feel less valuable as a human being if I'm just saying, oh yeah, I'm really bad at this and it can be a very basic thing, or I don't [00:08:00] understand this, or I don't know what this is.

And so when we manage to separate our self-worth from our current skill level, and this is especially important when you start out something new. Chess is something super difficult. So if you're starting this out, you need to deconnect as much as possible because you will be. Honestly, you will be quite shit at the game.

And it's just normal. Doesn't say anything about you as a person. So when your ego isn't on the line anymore, you don't need to invent these fancy excuses about why you lost, fabricate these stories. You allow your brain to just say, oh yeah, that was really a blunder, that I consider quite simple and I don't wanna do it anymore, but that's what happened.

Doesn't say anything about me. How can I fix that? And so the quicker you allow yourself to do that, the more you really see like, okay, in this game there's one big mistake. Yes, I could come up with 15 different reasons because I could have played better on so many moves, [00:09:00] but when it really mattered, I just hung my queen.

Nothing else really matters. The students coming back to the students, right? The students who are doing this. Even without me pushing in them into it, are the ones that can improve the quickest.

And please do not get me wrong, this is not something that you do once. So I feel like I've disconnected my ego quite a bit from improving at stuff. This is coming up every single day again. So when I do different things, my first instinct is to want to fabricate an interesting story. And then I've learned to push back and look at it like it's very likely this is not fully true.

What my brain tries to tell me is probably not the thing that is really happening. So when I play paddle, I'd love to believe that missing, difficult, fancy shot is what holds me back from progressing. Everybody in Paddle wants to have that kick smash if you've ever played it. Super cool, right? There are some fancy plays.

[00:10:00] Oh, I can make winners. The end of the day, it's not about that. In poker, I wanted to think that I needed more sophisticated, complex plays to win, and in my business, I catch myself looking for some super sophisticated breakthrough to increase my reach. It's like, oh, what is the hidden strategy that I need?

But in reality in all of these things, it's still the same, boring, simple, but hard things holding me back. In paddle, I just make way too many on first errors, like basically everybody. In poker, it's more sometimes a lack of discipline. This feeling of like I know I shouldn't do this right now, but I would really like to win that pot, so let me push.

Not good. And the fear of losing money, kind of the opposite. You let your emotions get into your way of like, Hmm, I know I should bluff here, but I, I would really hate if my opponent then called, so let me not do it. And in business it's really just continuing to provide good content.

And do the writing, do the videos, do just the simple things that I've [00:11:00] been doing for five years, but just keep doing them without trying to find a fancy method that changes everything or the secret or whatever.

And while realizing the bigger picture problem is similar for most, the root cause can be deeply personal. And here's what I mean by that.

Tactics and hanging pieces hold you back. But the important thing is to understand why are you missing tactics? Why are you hanging pieces? Because this can be extremely personal and there can be so many different reasons for it. You can lack focus during a game. You can lack the tactical fundamentals and pattern recognition.

You, if you don't know what a fork is, how are you going to find it? You could have the knowledge, maybe even the skills, but you get so nervous during the games. You have what I call chest anxiety, right? And then you mess up because of that. You have fancy play syndrome, right? So you often miss tactics, simple tactics, when you want to go for [00:12:00] some absurdly beautiful, amazing move.

And that's the moment where you miss something. You are just not considering opponent's resources. You would find it if you would actually ask yourself, what is my opponent planning? But you're just not doing it during the game. You might be playing chess, but completely distracted. Well, similar to the first point, lack of focus. Or you might play when you're just tired and exhausted. So there is no chance for you to have good focus in that moment.

And so even if you have someone, like a private coach working with my one-on-one students. When I point these out to students, that's not even half the work. Because you still need, first of all, the self-awareness to say, oh yeah, that's actually true. That hurts. But yes, I agree. And then you also need to be able to report what is actually happening to your coach.

So when let's say I just get a database of games. And I just see a piece has been hung. I can [00:13:00] come up with theories. But you as the player, and that's why it's so important to write down, to do the game analysis the right way. You as the player are the only person that can really a hundred percent understand what has been going on in your brain that led you to a certain decision.

And usually the decisions that go wrong that are so important. Also there, there are better stories to tell yourself. And there are more uncomfortable, but maybe the stories that are actually really mattering, right? What really actually happened? Maybe you were really just not focusing at all.

Or maybe you felt like, ah, yeah, this opponent, I'll crush him. I don't need to think anymore. Whatever it was. It's so important that if you work with a coach, you need to tell the coach. But if you are your own coach, you need to be able to tell yourself the truth. That's the most important.

Self-awareness. And then you can share it with others as well. And this is your task. No matter how good your coaches are, you need to do this. And [00:14:00] whenever a student can pretty clearly explain what happened in a certain move without trying to say, oh my God, but Noel is a GM. I don't wanna disappoint in us.

This is not the disappointment at all. Your coach, if they are a good coach, they care about understanding what's going on in your mind and to help you to improve that there is no shame involved. Whatever it is. That's it, right? Okay. I was on the toilet, I was playing chess and I don't know, my phone fell into the toilet, whatever.

At least say the truth. Don't say, well, I'm not sure, or whatever. Then you can move so much quicker. Then we have problem, okay? Very likely. Tactics, something concrete. Then cause okay, what caused it? And then you can actually get to a solution no matter if you're doing it on your own or if you're doing it with a coach.

And really the most important thing to take away from this is that this truth might hurt a little bit, but ooh, it's so [00:15:00] relieving in the long run. It's actually so much easier to just decouple, disconnect your ego from your results, from your mistakes, from everything you do in chess and just say, Hey, this game is super hard. So yeah, I am probably bad at calculation, right? Compared to an engine. We are all really bad at calculation. It's okay. Actually, sometimes I joke, sometimes I say like, we're all really shit at this game. If you compare with computers. And for me this is relieving. It doesn't put any more pressure on me.

It's like, okay, I allow myself to try my best, but objectively speaking, if we compare with Stockfish, I suck. And that's okay. I don't suck as a person. And this, once you do this and you keep repeating this to yourself, actually, chess becomes way less anxious, becomes more fun. You can learn much more.

You can go quicker into certain moments, and you can put yourself in difficult situations and not be scared that you are doing something wrong and then [00:16:00] you think you are so bad.

But I have to be honest, this is the hardest thing that I ask of my students. That you are able to look honestly at where you are and accept it without your ego fighting back, or when your ego fights back, you are aware of it. Oh, this is just an ego response. Let me breathe in. Let me breathe out.

And the students who are successfully doing this, and often by the way, these are students who had the same journey of improvement already in other areas. So what I see very often is that when we are good at one thing only, it's usually that we were very, very good at it already young. So we didn't learn to be bad at something from the get go. Really start new. And then when we start thinking, oh yeah, we're so stupid or whatever, we never allow ourselves to be a beginner anymore. And then it gets harder and harder. The more things you try, and especially something as difficult as chess, it gets really, really, really, really hard because you're not [00:17:00] used to it.

But the people that do it well, they allow themselves to be a beginner already in many different areas. They have some students who were good in sports, then tried out music, then tried out languages right in their adult age. So which means they are used to going from zero and say, okay, yeah.

At the moment I'm pretty bad at this. The more you get used to that, the quicker you can improve, and I feel that's a huge advantage for me, that I can pick up so many different things and I, generally speaking, improve quite a bit quicker in languages, sports, card games or whatever it is, because I learned to be okay, I'm bad at this. No worries. Let's learn. Let's be curious about it.

And if this whole thing resonated with you, I highly recommend you check out my course Simplified Chess Improvement System. Because even though it's not a pure mindset course, the whole point of the course is to understand what matters [00:18:00] most. To look that in the eye, to figure out how to improve it and to say no to the rest.

And that's basically what we talked about today. So make sure to check it out, link in the description, and talk to you next week.

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'll always remain free, and it goes out every single Friday with the best, latest chest 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 [00:19:00] 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 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.