Today I am twenty years old! (My best chess tips)
The word "chess" has been with me since before I was born, being the reason for the best and worst moments of my life. Today, because it is a special date for me as the title already expresses, I would like to share a bit of my story, writing about the most important lessons that I have learned throughout my 10 or more years playing chess, hoping in this way to help other people who are involved in this sad and happy world.
Quick introduction of myself, I am Gabriel Antonio Salazar Olchowski, I was born in Venezuela and I have played chess since I have no idea. Yes, I know this is not the expected memory of a chess player, but it is what it is, full transparency. However, I do remember the reason why I got involved in this universe of pieces, and it is nothing more than to be better than my sister.
She was a national champion in minor categories several times, representing the country in international events, which obviously made me happy, but it also turned on a spark in my competitive ten-year-old, setting the goal that I would be better than her and would represent Venezuela as well.
And this is when things get interesting, I was just thinking about being that person, the professional chess player, but I never considered the efforts that someone like my sister should have put into improving at chess every day. Sadly, a champion is not built by playing countless blitz and bullet games, therefore I had to work hard to catch up with her.
Summing up the story, after years of struggling with different training methods (spoiler alert: no magic trick to get better at chess, you need to try everything) winning and losing, learning from mistakes in my games, crying when losing a winning position, I was able to build decent strength to achieve the first place in the national championship in my last year as an U18 player, fulfilling my goal that I had set for myself 10 years ago.
I'm pretty sure I would have given up a long time ago if it weren't for the fact that I started loving the process, waking up every day to solve 50 tactical positions, analyzing abundant games from the Grand Masters of the past, reading countless books. I would find interesting and exciting what is difficult and boring for many people. This drives me to my first tip for improvement:
1- Why do you play chess?
A question that not many people ask themselves, nothing else matters if you don't start by answering this (hopefully you'll get a better answer than just "I want to be better than my sister"). Do you play chess for fun? Do you play chess trying to improve every day? Do you play chess for money? All kinds of answers are correct only if you are honest with the most important person in life, yourself.
This will shape your career as a chess player, since if you only play because it is a hobby, then it does not make sense to spend abundant hours a day training, in most scenarios spending 1 or 2 hours solving problems would be enough, while it is the opposite if you want to play competitive chess. Do not get me wrong, both situations are good, I have met many people who play chess as a hobby and they have improved without having any expectations of actually doing it.
Be honest with yourself, are you willing to put in tons of hours a week playing competitive chess and improving? Are you willing to lose tons of chess games to analyze them, trying to avoid the same mistakes, even if you repeat them again anyway? Are you willing to suffer every day with tactical problems? People just focus on the result "oh well, I'll get first place in the tournament and gain money" forgetting about the intense process that such a thing requires. Do not fall in love only with the result, fall in love with the day-to-day work of a chess player.
Once you've figured out why you play chess, you'll probably start wondering how to improve - whether you're a hobbyist or a tournament player, you would surely like to see improvements over time.
2- What is the best way to train?
The sad truth is that getting better at chess is tremendously difficult. People would logically think that if they spend more time practicing, they would learn faster, but sometimes (if not most of the time) that doesn't work.
The most difficult defeats that I digested in the past are those against opponents that I know for sure have not invested the same amount of time as me, however, that is natural if we remember that it does not matter how much time you put in, what really matters is the quality of that time.
Let me explain, imagine this situation, in one hand we have Mario, he is a committed person to chess, wakes up early at 5 in the morning, goes for a run, and then when is back at home, prepares his breakfast and then practices for about 5 or 6 hours a day. On the other hand, we have Luis, he loves the game, but is working at Google, which does not allow him to dedicate many hours to this sport, however, somehow, he trains 1 or 2 hours a day. One day Mario and Luis face each other in a tournament, the result? Luis defeats Mario, despite the difference in hours they both dedicate to training. And yes, this scenario is absolutely normal.
The missing part in the last paragraph is the way they trained, for example, if Luis spent most of his hours just solving problems, while Mario used to focus on the weaknesses that he has discovered in his games, then at the end of the day the result makes sense, Luis is working on the things he needs to improve while Mario solves random problems.
Some smart people noticed this before they started and may have asked themselves “How should I use my time? What is the best way to train? "And the answer is ... None! There is no easy way, what might work for you may not work for others, you will have to try all the different ways of training before you realize what works.
However, let me share with you a strategy that has worked for me during this time. Years ago, I read that a grandmaster used to create a database of a world champion with his best games, analyzing them deeply and constantly day after day. I replicated the same method; I selected the best games of Mikhail Tal. At first, it was difficult for me to notice a change in my thought process, even just trying to understand the ideas of this strong and complicated player seemed impossible, it was not after more than 50 games that I started looking at some patterns that he used to repeat.
So, I started to name these quirks that I found, one of them was the quiet move in the middle of the storm. Please do not ask me why the name for an easy chess concept that is "bring another piece to the attack", the thing is that this tool was used for Tal in positions that someone would never imagine.
This exercise really helped me to build the confidence to navigate through a complication tree.
There are no shortcuts to improve at chess, you need to experiment with everything when training.
3- Failure is the way to glory
If you are a bad loser, always complaining about the cards you get in poker, thinking that the casino has tricked you in some way. Then chess is the best game for you! I bet nobody thought that, right? Yes! This game is for you because you will learn how difficult life can be when you have no one to blame after losing more than yourself.
Chess sucks (sometimes), no one can describe in words what happens after having played a bad tournament, after losing a winning position or even failing to find the correct move that would have won the game for the first place. And the worst? what happened is entirely your fault, even if your opponent played well, you will know that at some point you let him win.
Of course, these are emotions that no one would like to experience, and that is probably why there are so many players hiding in the comment of "No, I just want to play chess to be an amateur, I don't care about this." When reality is another within them. Or also the reason why many chess players quit after an embarrassing tournament. In any case, the cause is the bad feelings we have when experiencing negative results.
But you know what? That is what builds you as a strong player, the number of times you consider yourself a failure for having lost a game, those are the moments that will create a strong desire to NOT repeat the same, and if I am not wrong with what I hardly know about life, that means getting better.
I can tell you for sure, that you will always remember the game that cost you the decisive game, you will probably still feel bad doing it, and that is natural, you remember those moments in your mind to be careful of not repeating the same thing, and to show you that, here are my worst mistakes in my chess career! Try not to drink water when observing these positions if you don't want to spread it on your computer.
4- Good and bad habits
We have all heard the quote "your habits will determine your future", which is completely accurate in life, if you have the habit of eating junk food every day, this will probably determine the poor health you will get in the future. The same analogy is useful in chess, if you repeat a bad habit like drinking alcohol before your classic game, this will determine the poor results you will get.
But going deeper into this, in addition to the bad habits that a player may have out of the board, there are also what I call "bad habits of thought", these are those related to how we think about a certain position.
For example, if when you start a game of chess all you think about is to attack the opponent's king quickly, then this will probably lead you to not develop your pieces, something quite terrible in the opening. Another example, if in a difficult position you do not consider the best moves of the opponent, you will probably notice that you will not be able to discover possible counterattacks.
These habits damage our abilities, and it is an important step for everyone who wants to improve in this game to overcome them. Easy to say, difficult to apply.
Can you guess what happens when, thanks to a bad habit, you win a game? Yes, you will probably repeat the bad habit over and over again to get the same result (which won't happen most of the time). This is why we should criticize even our victory and our best games without prejudice. Mark Manson said in the book "The subtle art of not giving a f ** ck":
“When we learn something new, we don’t go from “wrong” to “right.” Rather, we go from wrong to slightly less wrong”
Life is better with examples, we have a player named Bobby, he is phenomenally exemplary in tactics and difficult positions in general, is blessed with incredible intuition. One day, when he was playing a difficult position, he calculated all the possible lines, but still did not know what to move, so he established that the first move he analyzed should be the best. He won the game and the reward for being the best in the tournament.
The consequence / reward makes Bobby repeat the same behavior (make the first move that he analyzes), so in the following games he tried the same idea, obtaining in general more bad results than good.
But it is worse than we might think, Bobby got the idea that since he developed a strong intuition at chess, the problem was not really that he made the first move he considered, creating a judgment on other areas or skills of chess, making exhausting his development.
There are many bad habits, and it is everyone's job, as chess players, to find and fix them. Here are some of what I have experienced as a chess player and coach:
- DO NOT consider the opponent's tactics
- Fall in love with just one move
- Pawn moves
- Don't develop the pieces
- Overconfidence and lack of confidence at all
- Playing too fast, playing too slow, playing too much, and not playing at all.
5- What's next?
If you get to this point in the article and are still thinking about playing chess, congratulations! You are as demented as I am. Hopefully, you already know how difficult and sad this world can be, however, the best is yet to come, now that you are aware of all the obstacles along the way, you can drive it in a better way, not with the expectation of being successful but thinking that you are not going to do it so badly.
Now that you have decided to start your path to become a better chess player, there is nothing else that I can say that, Caissa is with you! I hope you can take and use all these notes in this article.
In regards to me, I don't think it's pleasant to ask about my future just on this specific day of my life, I'd better go find something to drink and then play some games, but one thing is for sure, I'll be here forever, not just to improve as a chess player but also to help other people as a coach, I don't want others to repeat the same mistakes I made in the past, and I want to turn the hard experience of improving into at least something more enjoyable.
I am FM Gabriel Salazar, available for new students (but not for today, pls)
