Guideline to be a good chess player
Hi everyone! Today is Thursday of a short post and I would like to talk about the mentality and behavior that a good chess player needs to have if he really wants to improve, because it does not matter if you train hard and participate in good tournaments, if you do not think and act like a champion, you will never be one.
“Champions keep playing until they get it right.”
Billie Jean King
There are several factors that apart people like Kasparov, Karpov, Botvinnik, Petrosian, Carlsen, and others chess champions from normal and good chess players, I am sure that if you have read or watched a video about one of them analyzing and talking about chess you have noticed some interesting behaviors and thoughts that help them to be the champions that they are. Those little factors that not too much people notice are what I want to show you today, although it’s obviously hard that they convert you into the next champion of the world, they can help you to reach the first place in your next national tournament.
So let’s not wait any more, these are 5 behaviors and thoughts that I have noticed reading, watching, and studying the best chess champions in history.
Resilience
The American Psychological Association (APA) defines resilience as follows: “Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems or workplace and financial stressors. It means ‘bouncing back’ from difficult experiences.” If you want to be successful at chess, you must have a resilient attitude against adversity, bad results, and bad positions. One clear example of resilience in a chess game can be demonstrated in the next game between Karjakin and Carlsen in the world chess championship of 2016
As a matter of fact, most people think that Karjakin was until now the toughest opponent of Carlsen for the world chess championship, and the reason behind this, it’s the incredible resilience and toughness mentality of the Russian, if we analyze the games, we can notice that in most of them Carlsen had a good position and many people thought that he was going to win easily, nevertheless, they did not consider the astounding capacity to defend of his opponent.
Confidence
Every chess player who studied Fischer remembers the quote “I do not believe in psychology. I believe in good moves”, although it’s very known that psychology affects your chess performance, this shows the important confidence that Fischer had in himself, this was like a message to his opponents, it does not matter if you prepare me if you study me, I will always play the best moves and I will win the game.
The confidence in a chess player is key, but overconfidence is also dangerous for your game, here I would like to comment that most good players when they see that they play against a weaker opponent they do not prepare, they play quickly, although it certainly shows confidence, if you have this behavior all the time it can make you have horrible losses. Be confident but do not overconfident.
Dedication
If people like Caruana, Karjakin, and Firouzja have stated that they train between 6 and 9 hours per day, being already top grandmasters, why do you think that training for 30 minutes per day will turn you into a chess master? It is obvious that if you want to improve at chess you need to dedicate a good amount of your time to train, play, and participate in strong tournaments.
An intellectual and critical person might think “hey but people like Tal used to go out to parties, drink a lot of alcohol, smoke, and he was one of the best chess players in the history of chess” that is true, but before he created that kind of life, he had to train several hours every day with tough Russian coaches like Alexander Koblenz.
Here it is important to say that it is not enough to train many hours, it is not about quantity but quality, I have already written about it in past posts like https://www.chess.com/blog/GaboSalazar2001/why-dont-you-get-what-you-want-in-chess-how-to-train-well
By the way, this is a good time to resolve an easy puzzle of one of my favorite world champions
Responsibility
This is the word that not many people like to hear, be responsible in chess means to accept to lose a game because of your bad preparation and take this as experience to your next games. Be responsible in chess means that you should not eat a burger before a game. Be responsible in chess means that you should go to bed earlier in tournaments. There are many ways to be responsible for chess, these are the unfunny things that you should do if you really want to win.
Two years ago, I was participating in a chess team tournament, my team was incredibly strong and we were able to win before the last round, this fact made us so happy that we celebrated before the last day and in the last round we were horrible physically, I had a big headache and I felt very bad, we were able to win I do not know how, all the games looked terrible for us, we were irresponsible chess players. If I had lost the game, I would have lost 38 points of ELO! This is a huge example of what not to do.
Love for chess
There is no way to somebody be a good chess player if he does not really love chess, this sport is as beautiful as ugly, one day can be your best day of the life while you walk to receive the prize for the first place, and another day can be your worst day of the life because you lost the chance to win because of a stupid move.
Chess is not a sport for everyone, you need to develop a tough mind to face losses and keep control when you win. I am Gabriel Salazar, a chess Fide Master, and coach. You can contact me if you want chess private lessons. For more chess content check https://tres-reyes.com/en/
