Mainstream Content Is For The Lazy Ones
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[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome back to Next Level Chess podcast. As always, I am grandmaster Noël Studer, your host, and my goal with this podcast is to help you simplify your chess, to help you put in the real work that is necessary. To improve your game and to get meaningful improvements.

And the way to do that is really to simplify, to focus on what matters the most and to leave out the rest. And talking of leaving out the rest, this will be the main idea and main topic of today's episode. 'cause I want to talk about mainstream things. Well, when we focus on the hard work, on the real thing that actually drives home chess improvement, mainstream is as far [00:01:00] away from this as it gets.

And so today's idea is that mainstream isn't for you, guys. If you like my work, if you subscribe to the Next Level Chess philosophy, to the less but better, to 80 20, to all of these important parts of chess improvement, then probably what is getting the most views online is not going to be good for you. And I just wanna dive a little bit more into this, what it means for you and what I can recommend you instead.

So most people just aren't ready for real chess improvement. What they chase is quick dopamine in the form of easy progress. Or at the very least, it's the hope for the easy progress, right?

So the good news is that you can outperform 90% of people without doing some magic stuff, just by doing the right work. If you do what matters, do it well, do it consistently, the three do's [00:02:00] of the simplified chess improvement.

But there is a downside of being part of the 10% that actually wants real chess improvement. Is that, well, mainstream and basically nearly all the content, the courses, the advice that you see online is not directed towards you.

And this might sound a little bit harsh, but very, very often mainstream is just for the lazy. When a channel or a book or a course gets mainstream, you can count on it probably not being for you. Why is that so? Because if it's mainstream, a lot of people like and consume it and as we know, 90% aren't ready to put in the hard work. So if they like and consume it, probably is not what really drives real chess improvement.

And if you are an expert in any other field than chess, then I'm pretty sure that you've realized the exact same thing happening in your field. For example, Netflix [00:03:00] is for the masses. If you are a true film lover, probably you get a headache from their own production, which is just very quick and a lot of different things.

In music, the same is happening. The lyrics of General Pop musics are either super basic, always the same kind of easy love story or whatever, or they don't make sense at all. And most songs sound pretty similar.

Then in food, it's the same. Fast food is engineered for the masses. It's not the high quality stuff for the masses. Fast food is designed to be cheap, fast, and give you a dopamine hit when you eat it. But it has almost zero nutritional value. So if you want to build the body of a serious athlete, again, that would be the 10%, you just can't eat at the mainstream places.

And I chose those three examples because we all consume them, or nearly all of us consume them. Sometimes after a long day, I also just want to watch a simple Netflix show and I will watch something that some of my friends who are [00:04:00] movie lovers are like saying, what? How the hell are you watching this? This is terrible. Or I grab a quick burger at some fast food place or do something quick myself. And in those areas, I am part of the mainstream audience.

As a small side note, even though the older I get, and this sounds weird from a 29-year-old, but I often feel I might even be happier without those mainstream things, even in different areas.

What I wanna say is that mainstream is not inherently wrong. When you just want to relax, be entertained, right? But when you want to do hard work, when you want to build character, when you really want to dive deep and improve a skill, mainstream isn't going to cut it for you.

And something that has gotten extremely clear for me, especially since starting to record YouTube videos and publishing them, is that the packaging of videos is so insanely important if you want to get these huge numbers. YouTube doesn't [00:05:00] really care or does not care at all if you improve your chess. What YouTube cares about is how long you stay on the platform. The longer the better. And so for the most important chess improvement topics, the most viewed videos are often filled with huge promises, but only touch the surface.

It's just giving you a little sparkle, promising you a lot, but it doesn't go into depth because once you go into depth, it's more complex. You can't just see one side. You need to see five different sides. You need to deeply think about the topic. It's not just so easy to follow maybe. You can't make a one minute short about how to improve. But instead you need to weigh different options and go deeper into the topic.

And I often get the feeling that most YouTubers that have these huge videos are spending like five minutes thinking about what is actually being taught in the video, and working hours on the thumbnail, on the title, on the so-called hook. So that's the first thing that they're seeing, like how amazing this video will be, how much you [00:06:00] will learn, all of these things, right? So it's a lot of work put into getting your attention and keeping your attention and very few work into the actual substance of a video.

That puts me often in a dilemma because if I would want to optimize for more views, I would have to shorten my explanation or kind of neglect a little bit the topic, but actually go more into the packaging. And so true experts, you will find often in, in many different fields, they have a little bit more niche channels because they are not ready to compromise on this.

So it just means that the deeply valuable work, the really putting in the effort into understanding a topic and then talking about it is often hidden in smaller channels. And so well, by definition, not mainstream anymore.

And there is a small exception I want to share, which is books. Usually books take so long to write. Already the author needs to have very serious intentions. Like it's if you're just saying, Hey, I [00:07:00] wanna make a living out of teaching something. Books is the hardest way of doing that. You spend a long time writing, editing, and everything. Publishing. This takes years. Making a YouTube video's way, way quicker. So books in general are already of higher quality. We'll talk about this later on again.

And one of the best examples for this that I came up with is the Step Method. This is a book series that I really, really enjoy and I recommend, and by the way, I don't get any money from recommending it. I used it when I was younger.

I recommend it to all of my students in the Simplified Chess Improvement System. It's super good, high quality, very simple, but it's not really talked about a lot in the mainstream chess media because the workbooks are not sexy. It's not something you can package well. The homepage also looks like somebody didn't touch it for the last 20 years.

And so making a viral video about it is not really [00:08:00] possible. It's like, yeah, this is a very good resource, but it's not really exciting. It's, it's kind of doing the boring work. You have to solve the exercises. You're not just, you know, leaning back and listening to someone, but you actually have to do the work.

And so talking about resources, I want to take a short moment to give you a few rules of thumb. What could be for you. So if you're saying like, yes, I want real chess improvement, I want to simplify my chess. I'm really ready to do the hard work. I don't want this mainstream stuff. So what is then for you? So here are few rules of thumb. Again, these are rules of thumb. There are exceptions, but this can help you guide yourself towards the right things.

First of all, avoid mainstream YouTube channels. YouTube channels usually compromise the quality and work with a more sensationalism, strong packaging, all of these things.

Then second thing is be careful with chess.com [00:09:00] content. There was a investment from private equity in 2022. I don't know how much they had investments before that. But since then, I really feel quite a strong push towards the gamification, towards getting as much people as possible, very strong marketing, very hard marketing. In my opinion, also marketing towards people that wouldn't fit a certain course. So, yeah, just be careful with that. And keep in mind that chess.com, the company, the group, has things like Chessable and AimChess under them, right? So it's not just the chess.com homepage. That's important.

Then the third rule of thumb is: prioritize books over digital products. I talked about books take so long to produce, so it really takes more effort and more dedication and I would say more a wish towards really helping people. If you put yourself through a thing like books. For example, Quality Chess books are very, very, very high quality. I enjoy them tremendously. And I [00:10:00] know that Jacob Aagard who is, I think, co-founder, and maybe now leading it alone, is putting a lot of work into making them really high quality. They are just a little bit more advanced. So if you're a serious, FIDE rated player, probably above 2000 FIDE, those are great.

Then rule number four is: books turned into courses are preferred over courses turned into books. Just again, if you spend so much time figuring out a book, and then the book was very well received. And then, let's say, Chessable decides to make a course about that book, you have a way better chance of that being high quality.

There's, for example, Silman's books. There are the, I think Yussupow book series might also have some courses. So when it's a very good book that got famous quote unquote before COVID, before Queen's Gambit. And then it got turned into something digital. That is a good way. The other way [00:11:00] around. Yeah. Some opening course that then got turned into a book. I'm not a huge fan of that.

Then number five is just if you can afford it, invest in paid products. You have much less BS in paid products than just in quick videos that also work with your attention. It just works with grabbing your attention, keeping your attention. So promising you a lot, having edits everywhere. That's not really how real improvement is happening.

Next one: less is more. This is super important. So you don't need like a thousand resources. I see students spend way too much money and time on too many resources in my Simplified Chess Improvement System. I recommend two all-in-one approaches, one for video courses, one for books. And then I have a third approach where I say, well, you can figure your own stack of resources, but you never need more than two, three resources at the same time. And sometimes a book can take you months to work through. So you don't need that much.

Then I forgot which number we are on. But next would [00:12:00] be: don't ruin a good plan with bad add-ons. This is something I see extremely often, especially for Simplified Chess Improvement System students.

They get my help. They go through the course, they configure their training plan, and it looks all nice. And then they have this extra time where they feel like, oh, I could still squeeze in this. I could still squeeze in that. I can get more out of chess if I add on top a little YouTube video, a little this, a little stream, a little that.

And what often happens is that they actually worsen their improvement. They stress themselves about it, but also they make the improvements worse because they have a good working plan that gets a little bit thrown off track with these confusing extra things that just don't fit at all. So they learn how to do really the work. And then two, three YouTube videos about, oh, just do this and you'll improve, or whatever. Not really recommended. So stick to a plan, have a clear plan, and then give yourself the freedom, the allowance, to not have to [00:13:00] think about chess improvement all the time. To not have to watch a video, even if you'd have time.

A good distinction, for example, that I use with my students, with my private students. As well as like, if you want to listen to podcasts or test podcasts. Listen podcasts that are about news in chess, about tournaments that are happening. Top level things, maybe stories from famous players history, but not chess improvement podcasts anymore.

If you have your source of chess improvement, if you have your plan, you don't need anything else anymore. If you have these interview podcasts where somebody comes like, oh, I just created this course, it's the best, you expose yourself to the potential FOMO, potential going off track. Don't do that. Just have your plan, stick to it. That's all good.

And then one last tip is specifically for beginners. If you're below 1500 on chess.com, you really just need one single good resource for your knowledge. The real [00:14:00] work is done by getting the skills right. There is not that much knowledge needed.

Many of your games will be lost by hanging pieces, by missing small tactics. You don't need a lot of knowledge for that. You need the repetition and learning the skills of having an overview of the board, seeing what is attacked, having the right thought process every time you play, every time you solve a puzzle.

These are all things you need to do yourself. You don't need somebody to tell you knowledge. So very few knowledge if you're lower rated, and a lot of execution and skill building.

And the most important with whatever resource that you are watching or you are buying is that don't just consume stuff. Real skills are built when you work with resources. When you challenge yourself, when you look at a position and you first think for yourself before you go check the solution, when you really write down the solution to hold [00:15:00] yourself accountable.

It's doing the hard work that pushes you. It's not just listening to someone play a game and thinking, oh yeah, that sounds easy. Yeah, that's not real training. That's consuming stuff. You can do that in your free time. That's fine. If you want to do it, I don't recommend doing it. I think there is a bigger chance to going off track than actually improving. If you wanna do it, go ahead. But when you train, you gotta work with your own brain. You're gonna think for yourself, you gotta execute, you gotta take decisions. You gotta compare your decision with the book, with the course, with whatever you are working on. That's why I also say chess training. I'm not saying studying chess.

Studying looks like, sounds like a workbook. Sounds like school, boring. Reading through something. Memorizing something. No, no, no, no. It's training. Chess is a sport. You wanna train and execute and improve your skills this way.

Hey guys, just two quick [00:16:00] 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 chess improvement tips that I have.

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Thank you for listening and see you next time.