5 Myths That Actually Harm Your Chess

The world is full of chess advice. You will find all sorts of ideas in books, videos, and articles. While most of the wisdom you receive will help your game, here are five popular pieces of advice that you are better off ignoring.

• Don't Play Blitz
• Don't Study Openings
• You Need To Calculate Many Moves Ahead
• Only Study Your Losses
• If You See A Good Move, Look For A Better One

1. Don't Play Blitz

"Yes, I have played a blitz game once. It was on a train, in 1929." - former World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik to GM Genna Sosenko.

For many years, it's been conventional wisdom that fast chess games are like candy. They're momentarily satisfying but will rot your teeth—or your brain, in this case. Botvinnik famously preached against blitz, and GM Bobby Fischer once said that "blitz chess kills your ideas." However, if you want to play like GMs Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura, you probably shouldn't shun one of their favorite activities. Nowadays, nearly all top players play tens of thousands of blitz games on their way to the top. There's simply no good substitute for the practice that playing against strong competition provides.

Even though he criticized it, Fischer played blitz, too. He even included a beautiful blitz game in his book, My 60 Memorable Games. Sometimes, you're better off emulating grandmasters rather than listening to their advice!

To ensure that blitz is helping you improve, analyze your games afterward. It's easy to click the Game Review button after each game and take a look to figure out where you had some great ideas that you'll want to repeat in the future and where you made some mistakes that you can avoid. Obviously, Botvinnik and Fischer didn't have access to Game Review! Blitz is also an effective way to learn your openings in the way that we will discuss next. 

2. You Shouldn't Spend Time Learning Openings

You may have heard the popular advice that beginners should avoid studying openings and focus exclusively on tactics. Openings can be a rabbit hole that will suck you in if you're not careful. If you're new to chess, you probably have better ways to spend your time than watching all 43 hours of GM Fabiano Caruana's Chessable course on the Dark Archangel variation of the Ruy Lopez. Leave that to the pros.

On the other hand, every chess game starts in the same position, so it's good to know a few things. First, you should learn the goals of the opening. Develop your pieces, control the center, and castle your king to safety. After that, it's a good idea to understand the plans for both sides in your main openings. Here's a great place to start. You don't need to learn every opening, but it feels great to play the first few moves of each game with confidence. After that, you can review your games and try to learn one little new idea each time. Pretty soon, you'll be playing great openings without having to lock yourself away for a lifetime of study.

3. You Need To Calculate Many Moves Ahead

Yes, it's great to be able to calculate deeply and play amazing combinations, but they're probably not going to gain you many rating points. Even at the highest levels, it's much more essential to calculate a wide variety of options for both sides and see all of the simple tactics on the board rather than go in-depth on any one line.

In the final round of last year's Qatar Masters, GM Arjun Erigaisi was leading the field before he missed a fork that cost him the game.

Black just blundered with Rh4?? Can you spot what he missed?

I've played hundreds of tournament games in my career, and I think that possibly my longest-ever calculation in a classical game was in the position below. I calculated an eight-move line to justify a bishop sacrifice on g4, assuming that my opponent would recapture immediately.

Of course, my opponent surprised me on the very next move with an idea that I hadn't anticipated. That's typically how it goes in chess. The further ahead you're looking, the more likely it is that you're missing something early on, making the whole calculation irrelevant. There's even an old saying about this popularized by GM Bent Larsen, "Long analysis, wrong analysis."

4. Only Analyze Your Losses

This piece of advice is well-meaning. You can learn a lot from your losses. Yet, you're going to sell yourself short if you focus most of your attention on any one type of result. You can check out this article on perfect chess games. They are incredibly rare. Most of us chess players would be thrilled to play any mistake-free game in our lives.

Because we are constantly making mistakes, we should be trying to learn from every game we play: wins, losses, and draws. 

Most of your game review graphs probably look a bit like the one above. Both sides missed big opportunities and have plenty to learn from this game.

Check out NM Matthew Jensen and WCM Lula Robs analyzing one of her games and finding ways to think differently next time.

5. If You See A Good Move, Look For A Better One

Emanuel Lasker, the 2nd World Champion created this perfectionist saying. There are occasional positions where his advice makes sense and there's a brilliant idea that you'll miss if you play too fast. However, most positions have several sensible moves and you'll run out of time if you look for something amazing that isn't there. 

Take a look at the position below from a game between Nakamura and Carlsen.

What would you play for Black? 15...c6 perhaps? 15...Re8 maybe? Carlsen chose 15...g6 and went on to win the game. He didn't spend long on the move because the other options and several additional choices led to nearly identical evaluations. There's no need to spend a long time pondering here. Unless you're in a sharp position, you should typically try to string together as many good moves in a row instead of trying to make a brilliant move happen in a position where it's probably unavailable.

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— Dan (@boldmovebydan) February 20, 2023

I hope that freeing yourself from these chess myths will give you more opportunities to enjoy chess in whatever way is most satisfying for you!

What chess advice put you on the wrong track? Let us know in the comments.