There is no chess player who has not asked himself that question. And it is not about ratings or titles, because, let us be honest about this, we all think we are better than what those two parameters suggest.
The question is a serious one because it does not only determine our current strength but it should also give some idea of our own potential, how good we can be.
So how to answer that question?
Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.
This is a very popular saying that’s even more popular among chess players. As good as you get, you can’t help but lose a game from time to time or draw a completely winning position which, to be honest, sometimes feels just as bad as a loss. Defeat is part of the game and in my opinion, one of the most notable characteristics of a sports person is knowing how to deal with it and accepting it with grace.
How to obtain your best form in order to perform well at your next tournament?
We all know miracles and shortcut solutions do not really work in chess progress; as in any other activity, consistency is the key. However, for one reason or another, not everyone can keep up with regular training and very often, we are at a stage where our next tournament is approaching and the time we have to prepare for it is limited.
What should we do then?
Most of chess training routines are oriented to develop and a player’s skills at typical scenarios that can appear on the chess board during tournaments.
That includes tactical training which develops intuition and combinative vision, calculation, positional play, endgame play etc., the list is large. In addition to this common training system, we add a player’s homework towards learning the opening phase.
In today’s lesson, we are going to show you how to convert a slight advantage and slowly improve your position using the principle of two weaknesses.
First of all, what do we call a weakness?
In this post, I would like to show a very simple, yet a very effective principle that is present in every game of chess.
While our opponent’s moves are providing vital information about their intentions, still we often fail to understand them in their entirety. By entirety, I mean not only understanding their intention, but also their drawbacks.
Playing in chess tournaments is a completely different thing from studying chess or playing friendly casual games at the club with your pals. While we can do pretty well during our lessons, training sessions with friends or coach, an official competition forces you to make your best effort and put to work your best competitive skills and character. Of course, usually there are hundreds of other colleagues doing exactly the same and as if this didn’t sound hard enough there is the time pressure.
“I can’t play this move because my opponent can capture it” – How many times have you heard a chess player say this? How many times have you said it yourself? There are many positions where we believe a move is not possible by default though. Our subconscious tells us that it is not possible to move to a specific square because our opponent is defending it with more than one piece or more than one pawn.
One of the most important tasks every chess player needs to do in order to improve his level is to analyze carefully his own games, regardless of the result. Analyzing your own games has existed since forever. Mikhail Botvinnik was one of the most notable world champions to recommend this practice as the essence of chess improvement. If we look back to the days when it was possible to adjourn games, chess players spent nights and days analyzing a position.
One of the most difficult things to measure in chess is progress. No matter how much you train at home, how confident you are or how many blitz games you win online it is the tournaments that will put a note on your efforts. As explained in several previous articles, improvement relies on many different qualities, not only on well-sharpened skills but also on a strong mind, capable of overcoming any difficult situation that may arise. It is hard to imagine that one can achieve success at a tournament without having previously worked hard in a consistent way.
