The Top 10 Challenges You'll Face As A Chess Improver

Introduction

It's the start of 2024, and you've set a New Year's Resolution for your chess.

I don't know whether that's to improve X rating points, win a tournament, or improve some specific chess skills...

Whatever the case may be, know that your initial excitement and enthusiasm aren't going to stay this high for the whole year.

We're running a marathon, not a sprint here.

Willpower and passion will get you started, but something more is needed to surge past the finish line.

Regaining Momentum

Sometimes, you start the year exceptionally well and enjoy amazing results to build momentum for the rest of the year.

Thus far, 2024 hasn't been one of those years.

I woke up on the morning of January 1, 2024 utterly exhausted.

I was burnt out and I knew it.

If I'd kept pushing hard with raw willpower, I would have only got even more burned out.

My Solution - Experience The Destination

So I changed gears and spent a day living the life I dreamed for myself one year from now.

It wasn't just to relax/unwind...it was a way to get feedback on whether my 'dream' life is, in fact, my dream life.

This is all to say, don't assume that you're going to be happy and satisfied when you reach your destination (achieve your goal) - try to experience that destination in a smaller way, and pivot if you have the epiphany that you'd rather go in a different direction.

A chess example would be: If you're thinking of playing the King's Indian Defence, start playing it immediately in some games. If you can tell you just hate the positions, you saved yourself many, many hours of studying and learning the opening, only to find it wasn't the right fit.

Now it's time to talk about the ten biggest challenges chess improvers will face in 2024.

1. Time Management

There are two levels to this one:

1. Using your time effectively during your chess games. (This is a multi-faceted topic that I'm likely to discuss deeply in a future blog post);
2. Using your practice/training time effectively to get the best chess results for the effort you've put in.

The exact answers to these are individual, yet tend to feature the same components at play. I cover these (and provide individualized solutions) for my private students.

2. Consistency

This one also has two components:

1. Consistency of form in our chess play;
2. Consistency in implementing our chess practice/training.

The first one can be optimized with strong psychology and high-performance living, while the second one also falls in the category of 'High Performance'. I will likely return to this topic in a later blog post (for those who can't wait, reading 'High Performance Habits' by Brendon Burchard is a great starting point, and something I'll be doing this week).

3. Identifying Your Weaknesses

Sometimes, the hardest person to openly see is ourselves.

For many of my junior years, I saw myself as a 'positional' player, because that's how I started.

But from 2004-2007, I was more of a dynamic player - I just happened to play more strategic openings.

Self-awareness is a difficult skill to master, and even a critical analysis of your games doesn't always guarantee that you'll pick up on the patterns of your mistakes.

That's one way a coach proves immensely valuable - by giving you that feedback on the things you are blind to.

You may also notice, for this reason, that all of the best coaches are coached ;)

4. Ineffective Study Methods

You may be putting the necessary time in to achieve your goals...but is your training of a high quality?

There are ways to learn and master things much faster than the average person.

It's a topic I'll return to in future posts, but for now, I'll leave you this simple hack:

Start asking more questions (and answering these questions).

As you practice this more, you'll have the flow-on effect of asking better questions. (from 'what is the best move?' to 'why is this the best move?', to give a simple example).

5. Opening Knowledge

You may think of this as 'opening theory', but I have something a bit different in mind.

Perhaps you don't know the key moves to get out of the opening alive and need to test yourself on the key moves more often, to make sure you remember them in a game. (The Lichess Explorer is great for figuring out what moves you'll face most often in your games, and I make copious use of it in both my lessons and my courses).

But for others, who already have that 'baseline' knowledge for their level, you may often end up in an early middlegame position where you just don't know what to do. (This is common at many levels of play, you are not alone).

So in your case, the key 'opening knowledge' may well be middlegame knowledge - how to play the typical middlegames arising from your opening.

You can learn a lot from your own experiences, but the much less painful path to mastery is to learn from the experiences of others - especially, experts who have reached the level you are aspiring toward.

6. Endgame/Converting Technique

For inexperienced players, endgames (beyond the basic checkmates and K+P vs. K) may not be all that relevant, because the game is already decided (aside from an accidental stalemate) by the time any 'endgame' is reached.

But as you improve and face better opposition (who won't just leave pieces en prise), you'll start to find that you end up in an endgame where the result is not yet clear.

You'll also notice that resistance in losing positions increases as you move up the ranks, forcing you, in turn, to show a higher accuracy of play to turn a winning position into a win.

You can get a long way in endgames by simply:

1. Knowing some key positions (Lichess has a nice free feature for this);
2. Experiencing a lot of endgame positions for yourself. (Playing them is good, but playing through the games of great endgame players like Capablanca/Karpov/Carlsen, then trying to implement their methods yourself, is the best way).

As for converting winning positions into victory, this is a more complex topic that I will likely cover in future posts. But knowing that this is a common challenge for players of all levels should make you feel better - that you are not an idiot, you're just a normal chess player having a normal experience.

7. Ineffective Puzzle Solving

We all get a kick out of solving 'Puzzle Streak', 'Puzzle Storm' or 'Puzzle Racer', right?

But what feels the most exciting at the moment is not necessarily the most conducive to chess improvement.

If you solve random tactics puzzles with a different theme every time, you'll retain far less of what you practiced. (This is how you can have a very high puzzle rating and a relatively low online rating, as in the example of the top streamer Tyler1).

You'll retain even less if you aren't repeating puzzles that you got incorrect.

If there's one thing you should swear by, it's solving puzzles by theme.

Private students learn the most effective way to solve puzzles by theme (and improve their accuracy/speed in solving puzzles in general) in the first lesson with me.

8. Not Understanding Strategic Aspects

Do you work very hard on opening theory & tactics, yet still feel like you keep getting outplayed?

That's likely to be because you don't understand the positions occurring in your games.

The tip for 'opening knowledge' is useful, but there's more to it than that.

You also need to understand the different types of long-term advantages a player can have (because most of the time, you aren't going to have a game-ending tactic available).

You also need to know how to improve your position, anticipate the opponent's ideas, and execute the correct plan (without allowing tactical tricks, but that's where effective puzzle solving comes in handy).

It's a lot to take in, and most people who try to fully understand chess on their own fall into some bad habits. (One of the most common ones is getting so fixated on stopping the opponent's ideas passively, that they keep losing the initiative).

The process is a lot easier with the right mentor showing you how everything fits together in a game (and most importantly, setting you exercises for you to figure it out for yourself, then giving feedback to help you fill the gaps in your thought process).

9. Mental Toughness

It's easy to keep pushing and trying your best when things are going well.

But a lot of people give up when things start to get tough (be it losing 100 rating points in one day online, having a bad tournament, or more general frustration over a seeming lack of progress).

What particularly helps is having 'grit'.

Grit is that beautiful combination of perseverance in effort, with passion for a long-term goal or state.

If you're putting in the effort, but questioning your love for what you do, go back to the 'why' - remind yourself of why this matters to you. (And go beyond the surface level, ask why several times).

If you're feeling the passion strongly, but feeling lost on what to do, ask a mentor for guidance on your struggles. (Remember, no question is a dumb question - it's likely that many others also struggled with your current challenge at some point).

10. Using Quality Sources Correctly

In the old days of chess, there was not so much information on how to play better chess, and people mostly had to learn from their own experiences.

Nowadays, we have the opposite challenge - there is so much information out there (both free and paid), that it can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the choices available.

And when we do finally make our choices, we may find ourselves confused, or wondering why we aren't improving from this 'great' book or course.

The main traps to avoid, in my experience, are:

- Don't learn from too many people at once (or you're likely to just get confused and not understand anything);

- Make sure the resource you're using is appropriate and relevant for your skill level (e.g. don't study a 'Grandmaster Repertoire' or 'Lifetime Repertoire' if you're rated 1200);

- It's fine to enjoy some 'infotainment' (like Youtube videos or Twitch streams), but be honest with yourself about this, and don't include it as study time.

- Find ways to make the material your own (whether that's writing down a summary of key points, making your unique opening file, pausing the video to ask questions and answer them, or playing out/analyzing some interesting moments in your own time).

Summary

This was a bit of a long post, so let's summarize.

Before reading the summary below, I encourage you to try and recall the main takeaways you got from the post.

What is the main challenge that you're facing at the moment?

What's a solution that you'll start implementing today?

Recapping, these are the ten challenges you'll face as a chess improver in 2024:

1. Time Management
2. Consistency
3. Identifying Your Weaknesses
4. Ineffective Study Methods
5. Opening Knowledge
6. Endgame/Converting Technique
7. Ineffective Puzzle Solving
8. Not Understanding Strategic Aspects
9. Mental Toughness
10. Using Quality Sources Correctly

I've also offered suggestions on how to reduce these challenges, and ultimately overcome them.

Bonus: The All-In-One Solution

But implementing ten suggestions at once would be difficult for anyone.

Fortunately, when you get the right coaching, the coach will deliver solutions to many of these problems at once (especially the ones you are currently facing).

They'll give you the basic knowledge/introduce the thinking technique you need to overcome that challenge.

Then, they'll get you to practice applying that knowledge/thinking technique during the lesson.

Then, they'll give you feedback on your thought process, so that you can apply that better during your games.

Finally, they'll show you the path to master that knowledge/thinking technique yourself, so that, with enough effort (you may have thought of 'grit'), your challenge will have transformed into one of your strengths.

Feel free to reach out if you'd interested to discover more about how this coaching process can work for you.