Many chess players have trouble improving at chess. Even when they have the right resources and motivation to work on the game they make progress very slowly and cannot achieve their goals.
In this article we will give you five very important tips that will take your chess training to the next level.
1. Eliminate distractions
It does not matter what type of training you choose, eliminating distractions is the first step towards achieving your goals. If you cannot pay 100% attention to the material you’re studying, you will not be able to make any sufficient progress.
It does not matter if you study chess individually using books, DVDs, our comprehensive training course or taking private lessons from the World Champion himself.
If you want to improve your game and you’re serious about it do not multitask when working on chess. Forget all these people who tell you otherwise. If you watch TV, text your friends, cook dinner and try to study chess at the same time, you won’t learn much. If you really want to improve your game, I suggest turning off your phones, TVs, computer notifications and finding some quite place where you wouldn’t get disturbed during your training.
Then you can just set a timer for one hour, or how long you feel comfortable and dedicate that time entirely to working on your chess.
Do not cheat yourself thinking that you are working on chess, while engaging in other activities. It does not work that way.
2. Evaluate every chess positions yourself
When you encounter a chess position during your lessons, you must always evaluate and analyze it yourself. It does not matter if the position came from the chess encyclopedia, our training course or your World Championship level coach. It does not even matter if the position has detailed annotation glued next to it.
You always should stop and think critically about the position, evaluate what’s happening on the board and make your conclusion about what side has an upper hand. Then, and only then you can proceed with reading the annotations and comparing it with your own analysis. If you simply read “white is winning” without questioning this statement, you won’t be able to improve your game much.
On the other hand, self-evaluating all of the positions you encounter, will enormously help your game.
3. Have an analysis board handy
As a continuation of the previous point about the importance of analyzing all chess positions by yourself, you should always keep an analysis board handy. Sometimes it is very hard to visualize everything and you may want to check some of the lines by shuffling chess pieces around. The analysis board is a very useful and a must have tool if you’re serious about your chess.
That brings us to another very important point. If you are studying material from books, you should consider setting them up on a chess board. If you cannot use a real board, you can use a computer board as a fair substitute. Just make sure the analysis engine is off, and won’t be interacting with your studying.
4. Take brief notes
It is a good practice to have a dedicated chess notebook. In that notebook you can plan your training, record progress, set goals, and most importantly write down the most important stuff you have learned. A small notes like “keeping your rook on the long side” during 6th rank defense, “playing Ne5 instead of the d5” in your favorite opening line or “doubling the rooks on an open file” can turn out priceless.
5. Take short breaks
As you probably already know it is important to work on your chess consistently. Having 5 short training sessions 45 minutes each, is much better than having a single 5 hour session. The same goes to the individual training sessions.
To increase your productivity it makes sense to take short breaks during your training sessions. For example, if you have a 60 minute training session, you should consider taking a 3-5 minutes break in the middle (after 30 minutes). These 3-5 minutes are enough for your brain to rest and will allow you to slow down the fatigue and start absorbing the information much more efficiently.
Good luck with your training!
If you want to improve your chess level, you need to have a clear study plan. If you aim for a dramatic improvement at chess you need to work on all of the elements of the game in a systematic way:
That seems to be like a lot of things, and that is. But no worries, we have made it easy for you. Our comprehensive training course covers it all and much more. Sign up for 21 Day Training right now!
You will instantly discover how you can significantly improve your game, adding hundreds of elo points without hiring an expensive chess coach or spending 5 hours a day on chess!
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