The weight of what you know
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[00:00:00] Welcome back to Next Level Chess Podcast. I'm Grandmaster Noël Studer here with another episode. And last week, I introduced the analogy of knowledge being the gear that you bring to a hike, and skill being the body that you build for the hike. And now it's time to talk about the weight of extra knowledge.

So if you have two players that have the same amount of skills, so two people going on a hike having the same body. The one with less gear can be faster.

So if you have more weight, more gear that you're bringing with you that didn't earn its place, that you [00:01:00] can't use on a certain hike, you only slow yourself down. So every piece of knowledge you carry should have a job during a game. Something it does for you, something it makes easier, better, quicker. If it doesn't, it's not neutral, it's slowing you down and probably confusing you too.

So last week I teased the comparison with my dad. My dad is a very good example of very little gear.

So he started playing because he had to anyway bring me to tournaments. He was spending time there. He didn't have much to do, so he was like, "Okay, I'll also play." He didn't really feel like studying, and he did a little bit of Yusupov book, like one book, just a very little bit. He was quite lazy.

I showed him a few opening moves. He usually botched those.

So after the opening phase, which as [00:02:00] mentioned, he mostly messed up already, he did three things all game long: check for threats, look for a way to win material, if neither, develop or improve a piece. That's it. That's his whole chess game. And he peaked at around 1,500, which after the latest rating increase by FIDE is 1677 in FIDE rating. It worked.

Now we compare that with you guys, the modern adult improvers. You've probably studied hundreds of hours of content. You know something about some pawn structures, prophylactic moves, desperado sacrifices, common plans. But most of it is just a glimmer. It's just like this half-knowledge. There's nothing clear in your head.

It's just like, oh Hikaru once said this, and this other person once said that. So you're carrying a lot of gear, not of very good quality, and you're not [00:03:00] even sure what gear is for which situation. So every move, you kind of have to go through your whole backpack and think about, "Oh, do I need gear here? Which piece? What kind of gear? And if I use it, how do I use it?"

Meanwhile, my dad has the same body as you, but he just has a bottle of water and simply walks the simplest path without looking back, without stopping all the time. As long as the path doesn't need any tools that you have and he doesn't, you have no chance keeping up with his pace. That's what overwhelm actually is at the board. It's not knowing too little, it's waiting to understand the position better than you currently can.

Because my dad doesn't even have the hope of that, of understanding the position on a deeper level, he doesn't try it and he doesn't need to. On his level and on yours too, that's fine.

And what makes this trickier [00:04:00] is once in a while, you find this super sophisticated move that you were chasing. You find that double exclamation mark move. And that gives you so much positive feelings. But the rest of the time, you burn the clock, get confused, and lose sight of the basics you should have used.

So here is the ideal case. As a grandmaster, I know a lot about chess. Paired with my good body, with my skills, that is a superpower. But here is what many people miss. I know precisely what to bring for each hike and what to leave home. I only have extremely high-quality gear. I only bring what every specific hike needs. And I have a very clear understanding of what tool does what and how I have to use it because I've done it 100 times at home.

So what am I getting at here? My dad never gets into trouble he can't [00:05:00] handle because he doesn't even own the gear that would tempt him. But you do. Having that fancy knowledge drives you into positions you shouldn't try figuring out and drives you to try to play things that are way beyond your level.

And that slows you down. And worse, owning that gear might pull you towards mountains you have no business climbing. In real life, that's risking your life. I'll talk more about this next week.

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