The only best shortcut to quick improvement at chess

Chess has been growing up drastically over the past few years, if we look at the number of registered members in chess.com we can appreciate that there are more than 60.000.000 accounts and people are still joining at the time of writing this.

There might be some reasons behind this fact, the spectacular Netflix series “Queen’s Gambit” or the laziness inside the houses during the quarantine, a lot of factors made 2020 one of the most important years in chess and it is still fascinating in 2021.

Whatever you aim for, nobody wants to lose, but not many are willing to spend the necessary time to improve. Sadly, for those people, chess is not a random game, and the side that is better prepared is the side that tends to win more often, therefore, if you want to succeed you need to spend some time practicing.

Although there is not a magic wand for this, you can make this process a little faster, doing something that the best champions in chess history such as Botvinnik and Alekhine used to recommend, analyse your own games.

Chess is a constant battle, not against your opponent, but against yourself. Let's put them in simple words, in a game wins the last who makes a mistake, and if you play and play, you will notice that at some point, you are making the same mistake over and over again, if you can detect and decrease the number of times you do the same, do not you think you have more chances to win? I am not saying that you will be a super GM just doing this, but at least you are taking the first step.

To see an example, please read carefully the analysis I had with one of my students

And now see what happened some months later after training this aspect of his thought process

He was able to recognize a mistake in his thought process and after some training sessions, he is playing better chess.

Hard? It depends on the type of person you are, but a little spoiler, in chess you need to be the number 1 critic of your losses.

I am Gabriel Salazar, Fide Master, and chess coach. Available for new students, contact: gabosalazarolchowski@gmail.com