Higher Rated Opponents
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Hey guys, welcome back to Next Level Chess Podcast. I am Grandmaster Noël Studer and my aim is to help you break through your chess plateau. If you want to get more chess improvement advice from me, make sure to check out my email newsletter, my free ebook and my courses. Links to all of those resources are in the description.

And I just want to take a short moment to thank you all for listening to this podcast. It's quite new. It's quite fresh for sending in your ideas of future episodes for giving me constructive feedback of how I can improve that podcast and for your great, great rankings, all the five star reviews that came in.

Thank you. Thank you so, so much. I am trying to improve this podcast from episode to episode. So if you have anything, think of anything that I can do to improve that podcast, let me know. Okay. Now let's jump into today's topic, which is playing against higher rated players. [00:01:00] opponents. This is a topic dear to my heart because I feel I have a very different mindset compared to most other people in the chess world when it comes to playing higher rated opponents.

All my career, I had this very, very strong mindset of trying to beat higher rated opponents with both colors. I wasn't impressed by the rating, I had some respect for them, but I still tried to beat them. And this really helped me improve quicker than others. Obviously, it was hard. I lost more games, but I improved more.

And then later on, I could really have tournaments where I beat so many strong players. For example, I had a tournament, an open tournament, I won with 8 out of 9 points. I was, I think, 1. 5 points ahead of the next guy. I won the Swiss Championship with 7. 5 out of 9. I had a close GM tournament which I won with 7 out of [00:02:00] 10.

All these big, big scores only happened because I learned early on how to beat very strong opponents, higher rated opponents, with both colors. And what I see mostly in the chess world, what you might resonate with is playing with a scared mindset against high rated opponents. And today I really want to show you why this scared mindset can hurt you so much in the short and long term for your chess improvement.

And why you should change to a more aggressive, positive mindset also when you play high rated opponents. Okay, so now what's the problem with the scared mindset? There are three main problems I want to get into in this episode. Problem number one, and these will be more important as we go through them.

So problem number one. is let's say the smallest of these three problems, but still a [00:03:00] problem is that if you play scared, you don't play your best chess in the moment. And that might just be small decisions when you get offered a queen trade, but you believe that in this position, you should actually keep your queen.

If you are scared and just want to draw, probably you'll still go for the Queen trade, which makes you play worse and will likely lead to a worse result. Now, this then goes into the next thing, is that your opponent, problem number two, your opponent can exploit this weaker play of yours. Whenever I sensed that my opponent was scared of me, I would just try to get into a complex position because they would just lose their mind and probably make a mistake very, very quickly.

What happened even in some games is that when you are the stronger opponent and you really sense that your opponent is so scared of you, right? You can offer them trades that [00:04:00] should never be taken, right? So let's say you just offer a queen trade, but they would destroy their pawn structure. Now, if your opponent is scared, probably they will take that queen trade and you can exploit that and just build up an advantage.

And get quite an easy game. Also, if you think again from the position of the stronger opponent, it's so nice to just know that you will probably never lose that game. What happens sometimes is when you guys are scared, when somebody is scared of a high rated opponent, you can even get a super good position, maybe even objectively winning position.

And when the opponent offers then a draw, you will take it. When your opponent knows that, they can take so much more risk and just try to beat you at all costs because they know, Okay, if it's not so obvious that they have a winning position, I just offer a draw, I get a draw anyway. So, point number one was you play worse chess.

Point number two is that Your opponent can exploit that if they [00:05:00] sense it, and stronger opponents can often sense that weakness, that scared mindset. And then point number three, by far the most important thing, is that you will improve way, way, way slower if you don't play your best chess against higher rated opponents.

If you think in a chess improvement mindset. Every game against higher rated opponents is just a gift. It's a lesson. It's like, you know, sitting down with somebody and they teach you something in chess and mostly it's free and you don't take it. That's not good. So really see these games as an improvement, as a way to try to see where you still have differences to this higher rated opponent.

And if you play scared, you will never find out. You will play what you think is the safe move. [00:06:00] You will, you know, be always slightly worse or much worse, and then maybe somehow hold the position. But that's not how you really improve your skills. Because then once when you play against, let's say, similarly late rated opponents or lower rated opponents, You won't use that same chess.

You won't be so scared. You won't play the same defensive style that you use to play against higher rated opponents. So you can't really use those games as an improvement, as a learning, as a, yeah, just a way to grow as a person, as a chess player. And all of those three problems can be resolved. with a mindset switch.

And I'm going to be honest, there is one downside. Okay, we trade three big downsides for one downside. And this only downside is, we'll most likely lose a little bit more games. But if we see these games as a learning opportunity, then losing some of those [00:07:00] or some more, because anyway, you will lose some even if you play scare chess, is not a big problem.

And that's exactly what I did. And This mindset switch, or I didn't even have to switch. I had that from early on. I was always just going all out, trying to beat everyone. Also, if they were stronger than me. It just helped me get so many wins against extremely strong opponents with both colors and then helped me To get these amazing tournaments where I would score eight out of nine seven and a half out of nine against most Mostly gms and even my gm friends sometimes were impressed and they would ask me.

Hey, how do you do that? What what happened? My answer was always I've trained for this my whole life. So now if you're convinced that playing in a positive aggressive mindset is the right way to do, now we'll go into how you can make that switch and why it is so good for your chess improvement. [00:08:00] Now if you think of each game against a stronger opponent as a learning opportunity, you can also think of it as a test for the future.

Let's say you are now rated. 1500. And you play against an opponent that is rated 1600. You can say, okay, this is a stronger opponent. I need to only make a draw. Or you can say, hey, at some point in my life, I want to be 1600 or 1700. So, if I want to be 1700, I need to learn to beat opponents which are rated 1600 at some point, right?

You won't be 1700 if you only draw against 1600s. So, you just say, now is the moment to try to learn how to beat them. The more you try it, the more information you have, what it requires to beat them, and at some point you'll beat them frequently, which means you will then be 1700. And you can do that on every level.

I did that as [00:09:00] a 2300. I tried to beat GMs, and I would lose a lot of games. But then I would also beat like, Knightage for example. I was 2330 I think, and I beat a 2700 Grandmaster. And later on I would beat a top 20 Grandmaster with Black, and with White I would push most 2600 Grandmasters. Again, I lost a bit more games, but I got to a point where I could frequently beat those people.

I would not have many problems against 2400 when I was 2500. Because I tried to beat them for a long, long time. So this is really very important for your chess improvement. If you want to get better, if you want to get to the next level, try to play your best possible chess against also high rated opponent.

And now I don't mean that you have to sacrifice, you know, five pawns and three pieces every game to win at all costs. So you should [00:10:00] just play the best move in the position. You should play as if it would just be a normal game. Whoever sits in front of you, your idea should be to play the best possible move.

If that best possible move, if you believe that the best possible move is a pawn sacrifice or a piece sacrifice, go for it. Try it out. If you miscalculated something, you learn something, your opponent will show you the refutation and you will realize, okay. I need to work on my calculation, but maybe it was great.

Maybe it was good. And then you will start to beat those people as well. So take the initiative, go for the attack. Don't fall into passivity. Don't go for opening lines that are just meant to make a draw. Don't. You know, start with a bunker in front of you when you play white. Go for the lines that you would also play against, uh, similarly rated opponents or lower rated opponents.

Just play your principle chess. [00:11:00] And, extremely important, I might make an episode just on this one point, but I want to mention it, do not offer draws. Never offer draws. Because here's the thing, if your opponent accepts a draw or offers a draw themselves, if they are higher rated, that means you were much better.

That's the only reason a stronger opponent would accept a draw or offer a draw and you don't want to make draws if you're much better or winning. So you should just neglect that there is even a possibility to offer a draw against stronger opponents. And now for those of you that say, okay, this is logical, but I'm so scared when I get into a game against higher rated opponents, I'm scared of losing.

I don't want to lose. What can I do to change that mindset? I think there's one very, very important point that you need to take into consideration, which is you are here to play [00:12:00] chess, to improve yourself, and not to focus on the short term results. Put away this focus on now, now, now, now, now, and put your focus on where can I be in a year or two.

Once you put that long term focus into your mindset. You start thinking about improvement. You start thinking about learning. You start thinking, as I mentioned, about what if in two years I want to be stronger than them. I need to learn how to beat them already now. Put yourself into your future shoes and ask yourself, how can I help this future for me?

Future Noel. In two years to beat this guy, okay, I need to learn it already now. So put yourself in a future position, how can you help yourself in the future and not how can you help yourself now, because once you think about the long term and not the short term, it's very obvious you [00:13:00] wanna beat higher rated opponents and you will only beat them consistently if you play your best chess, if you go for complications, if you think it's the right thing to do.

And then you can really put them into trouble. And one thing I haven't even mentioned is that. Hey, the higher rated opponent, if you just attack them, they will probably shit themselves. They are not happy about getting attacked. So it's also a human game. Use the human component, use the component that they are actually scared of losing against you.

For them, it would be horrible. So if you show, Hey, I'm ready for a fight. Let's go. Let's play our best chess. May the better person win. You might get an advantage even from the psychological standpoint. But again, the most important thing is, if you want to improve, every game against a high rated opponent is a lesson, choose it, never offer a draw, [00:14:00] play the best possible moves and make a better person.

Okay, that's it. I hope you liked this episode. I think it's very, very, very important that you apply the right mindset. As I mentioned, the last week's episode was about lower rated opponents, how to play against them. If you haven't checked that one out yet, you can listen to it anytime and I hope to see you next week.