How To Break Through A Chess Plateau

Becoming a stronger player is about finding ways to turn knowledge into skill. - GM Tiger Hillarp Persson in Tiger's Chaos Theory.

When you're new to chess, improvement is relatively easy. Most of us lose our first few games, and then start learning some tactics, how to avoid losing to Scholars' Mate, and begin to climb the rating ladder. 

Sadly, everyone's progress eventually slows down. At some point, weeks, months, or, if you're lucky, years after starting chess, you will hit a plateau. You get stuck at one level and can't figure out how to continue your climb. When you get trapped there, here are some tricks that work at any level to help take that next step.

• Analyze Your Games And Work On Your Weaknesses
• Try Something New
• Enjoy The Game
• Play At Peak Performance

Analyze Your Games And Work On Your Weaknesses

When you're stuck, the first step is to figure out why. Analyze your recent games to identify the sources of your mistakes. Typically, a pattern will emerge that should tell you an area to work on. For many of us, it's time management. Some of us play too impulsively and finish games with most of our time still remaining. Others have the opposite problem and get into time pressure. In cases like that, it can help to set yourself a hard and fast rule, like "never think more than five minutes on a move" or "always have two-thirds of your remaining time left at move 20." You may make worse moves temporarily while following these rules, but eventually, healthier time management will become a habit, and your overall results will improve. 

When GM Gabuzyan Hovhannes found himself plateaued in online blitz, he looked at his games and realized that the openings he had been playing since childhood were not sufficient to get him to the next level. He worked out a new set of variations for the white pieces that were sharper, more likely to lead to an early advantage, and more likely to induce mistakes from his strong opponents. In an in-depth blog post, he describes a several-month adjustment period, as he got comfortable with his new lines, followed by quick progress as he started to get good positions against opponents of all levels.

Check out this nice attack by Hovhannes in the Scotch Game against the strong GM Pavel Eljanov.

Try Something New

When what you're doing now isn't working, you'll need to make a change. You can change an opening like Hovhannes, but that's not the only way to do it. Several strong players have described trying to play like a role model. Focusing on limiting counterplay like GM Anatoly Karpov or attacking like another world champion, GM Garry Kasparov, can give you a helpful change of perspective. 

After the following game, GM Erik Van den Doel explained that he came up with the aggressive plan with Nc3-a4 and O-O-O by asking himself what Kasparov would play.

Oddly enough, Kasparov had previously had that exact position before and had come up with another plan. Channeling a player can be a helpful change of mindset, even when you don't actually know what they would play.

Enjoy The Game

Sometimes worrying about your rating is what's stopping your rating from going up. When you're playing a game, your head needs to be focused on finding good moves. Any thoughts about your rating or your tournament situation are distractions.

If you examine the games of the 2024 world championship, you'll see two roughly even players, but only one who wanted to play as much chess as possible. In several games, GM Gukesh Dommaraju avoided drawing continuations and extended games as long as there was any life in the position. For 13 games, commentators noticed this trend, but it didn't affect any results. Then, in the final game of the match, Gukesh kept up the pressure, and it paid off, making him the world champion! 

Check out the annotations on this amazing game by GM Rafael Leitão. 

This exceptional skill by the young world champion is what GM Jonathan Rowson would describe as gumption. He defines it as "not so much the will to win that drives you on, but the will to keep on playing and the will to keep on looking for reasons to keep on playing." When your focus is on playing each move as well as you can, rather than outside factors like rating and results, your experience will improve.

Play At Your Peak Performance

It can be difficult to improve your chess level, but it's not hard to make sure that you're competing when you're at your best. When questioned about his strong performances in Titled Tuesdays, GM David Navara explained:

If my precision is slightly higher in Titled Tuesdays than in OTB blitz tournaments, it is because I only play Titled Tuesdays when feeling moderately well or very well, while I agree on participation in OTB events much in advance and usually do not withdraw even if I suddenly fall ill or feel unwell for other reasons.

If you play the games that you care about when you're fully healthy, rested, and focused, you'll be able to play at your best.

Here are some tips to follow in Navara's footsteps effectively at the events that matter most to you.

• If you lose multiple games in a row, take a break. It's the only way to avoid tilt.
• Get rest before playing. No one plays well when they're tired.
• Warm up before key games. Don't use your first few games to get in the right mental state. Start with Puzzle Rush or your preferred strategies to get ready.
• Create a second account for your less serious games. Many of us are proud of our ratings, but also want to play to relax. If you don't want those games to hurt the rating you care about, play unrated or on another account.

Have you ever been able to break through a rating plateau? What worked for you?