Overcoming The Wall

INTRODUCTION

(no, this post has nothing to do with the Caro or with Hans lmao)

Some chess players become grandmasters before they turn thirteen. Other chess players play for their entire lives stuck at various different levels, unable to improve. This phenomenon is often referred to as "the wall"; oftentimes. Hitting the wall often causes chess players to believe that there's some sort of "hidden secret" necessary to achieving the next level, discouraging them from playing chess, an issue which is exacerbated by greedy and selfish chess books. Many chess authors (intentionally or not) abuse data overfitting, slapping hastily constructed algorithms onto games they didn't play, or even trying to justify games they did play. Other books will discuss ridiculously specific scenarios which offer no practical benefit, sometimes drawing inaccurate conclusions. As a result, a lot of chess players and non-chess players think that proficiency in chess is only achievable by a select few people born homozygous for some sort of recessive chess talent allele. While it's true that certain factors like motivation, time commitment, and location can make things more difficult, I believe that everyone who is motivated enough and has enough time/money to spend on chess can become a strong chess master (let's say FM? getting norms requires luck, especially with the addition of the superswiss rule). The issue is, it's very difficult to properly improve after hitting a wall.

DISCLAIMERS

So why should you listen to the random 16-year old on the internet instead of hundreds of years of collective chess wisdom? Well, I honestly don't care lmao I'm just writing this, it's up to you whether or not you want to read it

Disclaimer 1: This blog is for people who don't have serious holes in their chess knowledge. At a higher level, you won't gain much from learning obscure concepts like "bishop billard balls" and "Troitsky's trashcan", so learning new things is not a good way of studying. However, if you are shaky in terms of chess knowledge, you can improve easily by studing books such as Aagaard's GM prep series, Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual, and Mikhail Shereshevsky's Endgame Strategy (these are my most recommended books, but anything that has important concepts you don't know will work). If you don't have serious holes in theoretical knowledge, you can keep reading the blog. Rating? Probably like 2000 FIDE or so. You may hit walls before then, but you should be able to overcome them simply by patching up the holes in your knowledge.

Disclaimer 2: As I said, motivation, time commitment, location, and luck are real factors in your chess success. I think the first two are pretty much necessary for improvement. If you aren't motivated or don't have enough time to spend on chess (less than a few hours a day), you will have difficulty improving.

Finally, onto the actual content lol

SELF-ANALYSIS

If you notice that you haven't improved in a while, the first thing to do is to try and diagnose the problem. You can do this with your coach as well, but I think it's good to do it yourself first. If you do try to find the issue with your coach, make sure you participate as well and don't just eat whatever they feed you; you know yourself better than your coach does (unless you have a REALLY good coach). Take your recent games (recent means recent enough that you have some idea of what you were thinking during the game. If you haven't played in a while, then the whole "not improving in a while" thing doesn't really apply, come back when you aren't suffocating in iron oxide) and study them extensively:

Why did you make the mistakes you did? Be honest with yourself, and try to remember as specifically as possible. Did you not calculate deeply enough? Did you not see a resource from your opponent? Were you outplayed positionally? Did you feel tired/sad/hungry during the game? Were you low on time? Were you distracted by your opponent picking at their face? An excuse is not an excuse if it's true. Compare all the mistakes that you made, and try to find similarities in the mistakes you made, the reasons you made the mistakes, and the similarities in opening/structure/middlegame ideas.

Compare the games you lost. What was the opening/structure/imbalance/endgame...etc.? Is there any commonality? Same thing for the games you won.

What sorts of positions did you feel comfortable in? What sorts of positions did you feel uncomfortable in? Did you have any positions where your perceived evaluation was very different from the true evaluation?

How was your time management during the games? Did you spend too much time on a trivial moves? Did you spend not enough time in critical moves? Do you do worse/than better than your average opponent in mutual time pressure?

There are many, many questions you can ask yourself. It's pretty difficult to be objective about your own games, but if you succeed, you should have a good idea of what to work on. If you had calculation errors, train calculation puzzles (not silly chess.com tactics, Aagaard level puzzles that actually take some time to solve). If you had issues with positional play, find some positional exercises. If you're slow, play more blitz. If you're fast, play more rapid. If you have a type of position you are uncomfortable with or have trouble with, steer your opening to avoid those kinds of positions or try to improve at them by actively practicing them online. Essentially, practice your weaknesses.

Now, you probably had some difficulty with remembering what you thought during the game. If you aren't already, always write down the time after your move so you can analyze your time management after the game, and always go over the game with the opponent after if time permits. Unless there was a time scramble, you should be able to recall the entire game from memory for around a few hours to a few days after you play the game, depending on your memory. If you can't enter the game into the database without using a scoresheet extensively, you aren't giving enough thought to the moves. Always analyze your games as soon as possible (probably after the tournament), and annotate them! It will be much easier to diagnose problems in the future.

TLDR: Merry Christmas!