How to Make Confident Chess Decisions Under Pressure
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[00:00:00] Hey, and welcome back. Today I want to talk about what is arguably the hardest part of chess, which is having to take a decision without knowing if that is the right decision. And I find that also the most tricky in life. Deciding without certainty or being able to make decisions in uncertainty without having complete information or unlimited time.

And that's why playing a game is so much more difficult than training at home or than watching others play a game, because it's really that pressure that is on us not knowing the evaluation of a position and then just having to find a move and play it in reasonable time. This is super, [00:01:00] super difficult.

Puts a lot of pressure on us, and it might be the reason you are freezing when you play games of chess or you're so stressed while playing games of chess, and especially if you have perfectionist tendencies, then this is even harder on you because you want to do everything right, you wanna solve every question or have every time the right answer, and it's just impossible, both in life and in chess.

You can't find the right answer to every single question. So, this is what I want to talk about today, and more specifically I wanna talk about today if you're actually training this part of the game, because if we're looking at how most players train, then you can see, or you might realize that in all of your training basically, or you are not training, is this most difficult skill.

Of taking decisions while being [00:02:00] uncertain about the current state of the position and about the quality of your move without double checking it with an engine, with somebody else. So a normal study routine that I see with many people, which is already pretty decent, is solving tactical puzzles.

You watch some videos, you play some games, not always with the best focus, and sometimes you review a few moves with an engine, and so while you play games, obviously you have that problem. But in your training outside of playing games, you're never solving problems the same way as during the game.

Because the point is, when you are looking at a tactical puzzle, for example. You know that there is a tactic, so you already have a guidance as to what the evaluation is and what you are looking for. During the game, that does not exist. [00:03:00] So knowing that there is a solution is already alleviating some of that stress that comes with uncertainty because you have kind of certainty: either I find the winning tactic or I know this is not the right move.

And this is very tricky because basically what happens is so many chess players are training different skills than what they need during the game. You are training the skill of knowing a certain position has a solution and then finding that solution. But then you're trying to transfer that into a game where you don't know if there is even a solution.

And so you're going crazy. Because you're like, well, I don't even know. And so you don't have the skill of understanding if there is a solution or finding a move when there is no obvious solution. And this leads to a ton of problems. For example, perfectionist find themselves in time trouble because every single move they try to find the correct solution.

They calculate a lot of moves, and they try to find what is the correct move. [00:04:00] But sometimes there is no solution at all. At least no human can find the right solution in any reasonable amount of time. So what is the right way? It's just to play. And move. So this is super, super important. And so how do you get better at this?

Well, how you get better at it is by a simple fix. By training the decision making in an unclear position or in a position where you don't know what the outcome should be and train that more often during your tactics training, during your different training, away from playing game and away from the stress of playing again.

I suggest you make just a very small change to your tactical training, and then you'll be able to train that skill already. You'll already see differences. And then later on in the podcast episode, I will also give you an even better way. That could be the second step of training. [00:05:00] That uncertainty finding moves when you don't know what the position is about.

So when you solve a tactical puzzle, you write down your move before checking the answer. This is super important. I've talked about this a lot. This is one of the things that gets quoted most by Simplified Chess Improvement Systems students, because I hammer it home in the course. This is what you have to do,

how I teach how exactly you have to do it. And it shows, it makes incredible difference in people's results and the game. So this is super important and now how do you do that exactly? Here's the process. You set a time cap. This is key for training the skill of taking a decision. So you're saying, okay, this is an easy puzzle.

I have two minutes right now. Then you set that timer. Then you calculate like you would in a game. Now if in [00:06:00] the two minutes you find what you think is the right solution, perfect, great. You've solved that tactical exercise. You write that move down and then you go check the solution. This is great. This is the right process.

Writing down has already helped you. And in a different episode I can talk about this or why this is so important. This is not the point right here. The point is, what if after two minutes you're not finding the correct solution? This is super crucial because this is where now we have the tournament, the game situation where you have a position, your time is running out.

You are not sure if what you're thinking about is the best move, but you need to make a decision. So here is what you do. Step number three, after you calculate for two minutes timer's up, you're going, if this was a tournament game, which move would I play? So instead of searching endlessly, basically, that's what most people do, just using tactics to solve [00:07:00] until you find the right solution.

So you can take half an hour on the same position. No, you're setting that timer. You're thinking, what would I do after the timer is going out, you're thinking what would I do if it was a tournament game? You are writing that down. You're writing that move down. It has only to be one move. You can't say, "well, these are the three moves I calculated. Here's all I calculate." 

No, no, no. You need to take a clear decision. Which move would you play? Underscore it, write it down, circle it, do something that is obvious to anyone watching, which would've been the move and what was the calculation? And then go check the solution. So if you're doing it online, you can either just put that move in, or you can click on solution. 

Then you have two things to think about. Then you have one, did I find the right move? That's great, but more likely, more often than not, you will not have the right move. That was the whole point. Well, a [00:08:00] tactical exercise usually has a clear way to win. And if you didn't find that, you took an alternative path.

But now this is super important. Many people will just say, okay, that tactic is wrong. No, no, no. We wanna understand what was the quality of your decision. Because let's say that the right puzzle solution would've made checkmate in five and your move, you're going to check with the engine and you see your move is actually giving a plus five evaluation.

Now this decision making was amazing. You found a move that was winning and in a practical game, it doesn't matter as much if it's clearly plus five or mate in five. Obviously we prefer mate in five, but plus five should also win us the game. So we can be super happy with the decision making and we learned a little bit more, or we tested our skill of having to decide under pressure without knowing for sure if we have the right answer. 

If [00:09:00] instead you go check and you see that your move was absolutely horrendous. Let's say you calculated five moves, and within those five moves that you calculated, you thought about there was somewhere the solution, but the move you actually picked was the one that was losing. Now we have a problem because you didn't completely see the calculation of the right solution in order to pick it.

But what went also wrong is, of all these five moves that you calculated, you chose the completely wrong one. So there's something very, very, very much wrong with your decision making under stress. And this will be exactly what it's showing during the game. When the time is ticking down and you're like, oh my God, I have to make a move.

Boom, you make the game losing move. So you not only want to look at the quality of the move, or if the move is right, yes or no, but you wanna look at the quality of your decision. Did you decide for something that's maybe not the best, but also pretty decent? And if that is so then your decision making gets better [00:10:00] and better.

And if you always fail to pick what is best, even among the moves that you think about, then you really have a decision making problem. And you need to do that more often and more often. This is super, super important. It's a way to modify your tactical training a little bit just to make sure that when you don't find the right move, you set yourself a time limit and then you take a decision no matter what, even if you are sure that you don't have the right solution.

Because during the game, it's exactly what you have to do.

Okay, and I promised you a second way. Okay, so this is the simple version. Just adjust this, do this, let's say for a week. Next week, you just try to do it this way. If you feel you've never trained that. Additionally, what you can do is what I call inside my Simplified Chess Improvement System. I call it step four of my [00:11:00] tactic method.

There are five steps to tactical mastery that I explain in Simplified Chess Improvement System. And step four is a step that nearly nobody does, but it can be super helpful. So here is what step four is. Step four is solving positions that are not necessarily having a tactical answer to them.

So this is just taking a position where the right thing to do can be developing a piece. It can be that you're winning something, but it can also be that the most obvious tactic is actually losing, and you need to see that. So it's a mix of different positions, and this is exactly what you have to do in the game again.

This can be super, super helpful not only to get better at spotting hidden tactics, but also to get better at deciding how long should I think on a certain puzzle. One way to do that is, for example, you have six different positions. You give yourself a certain [00:12:00] amount of time, let's say half an hour.

Okay? You have six positions. You don't know if the solution is a tactic or you don't know if it's a just a development move, a strategic kind of rerouting the knight, whatever it could be. So, you have these six positions. You give yourself 30 minutes, and you need to decide yourself, how much time are you spending on each moment.

And which kind of move are you playing in each position? It's a training I did a lot when I became stronger, and it's a training I did with my coaches. They prepared me these tests, there are books on this as well, so you can really do that. Take a certain amount of positions, set a timer. Now you need to understand which position is more important.

Which position do you need to calculate more on? Which position are you just playing an intuitive development move and you're happy with that. So that's again, decision making in terms of how much time do I spend? And then you train the decision making in terms of, well, I have no freaking clue what the [00:13:00] evaluation of this position is and what the goal of this position is.

So you have the game moment and then you can compare with the solution of each position. Again, what is super important is that sometimes there might not be a super clear solution. Sometimes it might be, well, there is just one move that loses that looks obvious, and you need to see that this is losing.

And if you're playing one of the other seven obvious moves doesn't matter. So you need to go check how was the quality of your decision? It's not a binary question of did I play the same move that the solution of the book, of the puzzle, of whatever is saying, but it's more like, what is the quality of my decision?

The same thing you wanna do during a game. When you analyze your game, you're not thinking, did I take the first engine move? Yes or no? Well, you could have taken the second, played the second engine move and be totally happy about that. The exact same applies to this training. So you're thinking about your decision [00:14:00] making and you're learning how to do that outside of the stress of the game.

You're adding some time pressure to it if you want to at the beginning. You can also leave the time pressure out. Just say, Hey, have six positions or have this one position, let's solve it. Second one, and so on. Then you will feel that this skill when you train it outside of the game, that this game will be a little bit less stressful because now you've trained what you actually have to do.

Extra bonus is when you make it more stressful in your training than during the game. How do you do that? If you're playing usually classical games, first, do the tactics. Super simple. Then do step four, then make step four more difficult. You can go as far as to say, well, I have five minutes in these five positions, right?

So I have one minute. A position, which is harder than what you have in a classical game. Why do we do that? Sometimes it's good to make training more [00:15:00] stressful than the actual game because then during the game you will feel less stress. You're like, oh, I did that already. This was way harder in my training.

And you don't have that full-blown kind of panic response anymore of like, I don't know what I should do. I have no idea what this position is about. I don't know what the right plan is. And then you just block and you can't think about anything and you go into crisis mode during the game.

So that's the whole goal. This is how you can actually train how to decide without knowing if there is a clear answer and what the clear answer might be. The more you do it, the better you get during the game. Enjoy that training and will be freaking hard. That's the whole point of it.

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