It is common knowledge that the key to making progress in chess is the consistent and deep analysis of your own games. Once you have learned the most typical nuances of positional play and tactics, it is worth finding out what you miss in your own practice. It is necessary to try to get to the source of your mistakes and learn more about your own strengths and weaknesses.
Going serious at chess all by oneself is something truly admirable. It is unnecessary to say that chess is one of the most difficult things to master and every day it continues to become more difficult as the level of the players keeps rising. How to become better at chess? That is a difficult question with more than just one answer.
In this article, we want to shed some light on the aspect of the training process from scratch and onwards.
It is well known that tactics play a major role in the chess game. The ability to spot tactical motifs and hidden combinations is a must have for every chess players who wish to obtain notable results.
However, the vast majority of players does not shine because of their talent in spotting tactics; in fact, many are just average in this aspect. The reason for this may well be that it is an element of chess that hasn’t been trained properly or even not at all. There is the thought that tactical vision, or let’s say tactical style, is something innate; you either have it or you don’t.
Preparing for a game has become an important factor in today’s tournament practice. In times where the level of the average chess player has increased drastically, the pre-game preparation is considered a key step towards the desired outcome: the victory.
Of course, times have changed and nowadays this task is more difficult every day.
One of the questions we receive most often from our students is “when do I know when to play for an attack and when to stay quiet and follow the strategic path?”
The answer to this question is always contained in the position you have in front of you.
There is no rule that tells you when to do one or the other, but there are certain things in the position that usually point to the path you have to follow during your game.
Believe it or not, the title of this article is a frequent question among club players and aficionados. I’ve been asked this on several occasions while hanging out at the chess club. I couldn’t help but notice certain hopes for a “quick fix answer” as if there was a magic trick.
Well, obviously, there isn’t any shortcut to higher ELO rating. It takes general improvement, specific training and most importantly: constant learning. This means that you need to be always learning, not just train a week with a master to get a result. In one word, consistency.
How frustrating is to observe kids make leaps and bounds with seemingly no work while we adults work so hard and yet we barely make progress! While it is true that sooner or later everybody reaches a plateau, I think there are other, hidden factors at work when it comes to chess improvement as adults.
Quite often we have met club players who perform well in tournaments with classical time control and give a strong appearance of being underrated players. However, when time trouble comes they tend to collapse quite easily.
The same is seen at rapid and blitz events; some players can’t even finish the game and they end up losing by flagging or making horrible blunders. We all have seen that and it is sad, indeed. Playing good blitz and rapid is important; every strong player is competitive in these modalities and it is a fun way to develop skills.
I have been a member of my country’s Olympic team for more than a decade. In the last year, I was also involved “on the other side” as a coach of the women national team. These two roles gave me a unique perspective on the preparation a national team does before the most prestigious team event in the world.
The chess-related preparation for an Olympiad consists of two parts: improving the opening repertoires of the players and improving their form just before the start of the event.
The road to improvement and becoming a strong player is usually long and requires a lot of time and patience. If you are a club player who doesn’t fully dedicate to chess or you are just starting the long journey of improving yourself, we suggest that you focus on improving your chess understanding. As we have said before, we believe that investing a lot of time in learning long and complicated theoretical lines is not particularly useful at this point.