6 Great ways to ruin your Chess Life
Chess is a game of strategy, focus, and limitless opportunity. This age-old game has the potential to become an essential part of the lives of people who are passionate about it. But just as there are strategies for honing and improving one's chess abilities, there are also particular habits that might unavoidably damage the life of a chess enthusiast. In this post, we'll examine some of the major chess life-ruining mistakes and dangers that you should absolutely avoid making. These cautionary facts will serve as a reminder of the value of making good decisions in the search for chess excellence, whether you are an experienced player or just getting started.
1. Neglecting Opening Theory: One way to demolish your chess level is to ignore studying and understanding opening theory. This will limit your understanding of key principles and strategic ideas in the opening, putting you
at a disadvantage right from the start of the game.
How to prepare Openings:
1. Focus on common tactical and strategic patterns.
2. Focus on model games so you will get the ideas about what kind of endgames or middlegames you will get in chosen line.
3. Test your drills with your training partners.
4. After every playing session , check your games and if you found any new move then add it to in your database.
Don't do in openings prep:
1. Memorization of variations.
2. Neglecting playing practice.
3. Playing against engine all time. Only is specific occasions you can try.
4. Ignoring model games.
For example: I took this position from French Advance. On beginner level players play Bb5 many times and after Bd7 they reply with Nf3 and totally miss Nxe5!
2. Ignoring Tactical Training: Chess is a game of tactics, and neglecting tactical training can gravely affect your level. Failing to recognize and calculate various tactical motifs, such as pins, forks, and skewers, will make it easy for your opponents to exploit positional weaknesses and capture material.
For example: I once heard a friend of mine tell a story. He was observing two 1500 FIDE players as they competed. They both overlooked the Greek gift sacrifice. When my friend questioned them about it after the game, they both said that they were unaware of it. Let me show you a position related to Greek Gift. Here Bxh7+ wins.
3. Lack of Endgame Knowledge: The endgame is often overlooked but can greatly impact the outcome of a game. Ignoring the study of basic endgame principles, such as king and pawn endgames or rook and pawn endgames, can lead to unnecessary losses and missed opportunities for a draw or even victory.
For example: In this current position White is a piece and a pawn up but still this position is a draw. Write in comment. If black is not aware of this simple ending then he will resign by seeing that his king is alone.
How to prepare Endings:
Go through Endgame Manual and practice the most common endgames with your training partner. Do not focus on uncommon endings like B+R+K vs R+K.
4. Neglecting Opponent's last Moves and it's ideas: We must carefully examine the moves made by our opponent and his reasoning behind it. My coach previously instructed me in this since Karpovian's method had impacted him. Karpov, according to Vishwanathan Anand, was more concerned in preventing his opponent's strategy than pursuing his own.
How to improve?
Best players to improve this skill is Karpov, Ulf Anderson, Petrosian. Check their games collections and you will see huge improvement in your game!
An example from my game: Black just played Bg4? Yeah even though it's a simple position but instructive one. After Bg4 first of all his king is stuck in the center. Second his b7 pawn is weak and third I have development advantage so I have initiative. He totally missed my next move and went on to lose the game.
5. Playing bullet: Nowadays, bullet is a popular mode of play whenever people livestream. However, many newcomers are motivated to play Bullet after seeing the streamers. But I'm confident and I can say that It's the best approach to diminish playing ability and destroy game knowledge. Here are several ways that playing bullet may damage your game: focus issue in long time controls, poor decision making, neglecting positional advantages, promoting bad habits etc.
An example from top level chess: On the longest and most dramatic day so far Levon Aronian joined Sergey Karjakin in the lead at the Candidates' Tournament. Aronian beat Hikaru Nakamura who was forced to make a fatal 74th move with his king after he had touched it. In the same round Vishy Anand nicely beat Peter Svidler.
6. Ignoring analysis of your games: There are tons of benefits of analyzing our own games. Some benefits are : Finding mistakes and fixing them , psychological improvement, improving decision making, fixing opening issues , fixing endgames issues , etc.
Thanks for all of you guys for reading my article. I hope you guys learnt something from it. If you like it then please share and subscribe to my Newsletter.
You can also check out my previous articles:
Chess Study Plan for beginners!
Chess Classics Part-2: Anatoly Karpov vs Andrew Jonathan Mestel ,1984
