Do it like John

I saw a Chessable ad recently which is so hilarious that it really deserves a post. Inadvertently, they have created the perfect parody of modern chess marketing.

I recommend you to watch the short video below, because it shows what can happen to you if you believe the marketing stuff.

So, what do we see in the video?

At the beginning, there is John, the "traditional method" guy.

✅ He uses a physical board - beautiful.

✅ It seems like he has a separate place for his studies - even better.

✅ He studies some serious, advanced level books, like Kasparov's My Great Predecessors - perfect, makes any chess coach drool.

Then we have David, who is apparently as lazy as heck. He literally wakes up at noon, and all his subsequent actions radiate lazyness.

His training? It is solving one-move checkmates on his phone while swinging in his armchair. 

And the end of the story? David's lazyness proves to be contagious. He passes it on to John, who abandons his advanced level books, and starts to solves mates in one happily, regressing to a beginner level.

As we learn from the video, this supposed to be hard work which pays off. 

OK, that video might be ridiculous, but it actually shows what happened to the chess world - and as a coach, I see it happening at the individual level. More and more chess players buy into some kind of "modern methodology", "scientific approach", start to use some kind of hacks and shortcuts - and they abandon traditional training completely. As a results, their improvement stagnates or slows down drastically. 

Sorry, but the bad news is that effective chess training is just as hard as it used to be, and books and chessboards are still indispensable. Don't fall for the marketing trap: if you want to be really good at chess, you have to toil for it. 

I hope you enjoyed the post. If you are looking for no-nonsense coaching with a professional coach, feel free to send me a private message here or on hogata11@gmail.com, and we can arrange a non-committal video call to discuss your goals and get to know each other.