Swing Above Your Weight

Afternoon chess world! Nick here 🫡  Last night I was going to my first local chess tournament, when I showed up… there was ZERO parking spots. None. I got there about 15 minutes early… only to spend that time trying to find a place to park. 

It was held in a local community center with many businesses in the surrounding area. I show up… 6 spots in the parking lot for the event were already taken (umm.. 6??).  

The rest were all reserved for other business and in the area and/or had time limits under 1 hour. With signs posted that cars would be towed! 🙈

Umm.. come on! After 15 minutes looking and asking around.. I gave up and went home. lol 

Anyway… after this brief rant, why is my title “swing above your weight”? 

You Need to Challenge Yourself 

How do you improve? You can read books, take lessons, watch videos, practice.  But nothing actually beats playing against someone. 

One key to playing against someone else is to PLAY BETTER PLAYERS compared to you!  That’s right, seek out higher rated players! 

It’s easy with chess.com. You can create a filter with all your games to seek out players whose elo is no lower than 25 and no higher than 400, compared to you. It’s in the settings and under the “new game” tab on the home screen. 

But Nick, Wouldn’t I Get Crushed? 

Nope, not really. In my experience, I started doing this with my daily games and then rapid (I’ll explain why I like daily and rapid for beginners like myself).  

And you know what?  I was about 700 elo when I beat someone almost 1100! No joke!  And this didn’t happen just once… but so much more!  I often beat people 800-1000 elo.  I draw 900 elos. 

Do I lose? Of course! But my skills are getting better, why? 

I Challenge Myself 

Player higher - if not much higher elos than me serve the following purposes: 

1- You see/learn new openings:

I admit I’m a huge London fan. And I love the Caro Kann as black. But playing better players forces me to play against many different openings such as the Vienna, Italian, Indian Game, Scotch, just to name a few 😉

And you’ll see new lines to play against - even if you’re playing the Caro Kann and London. Some things will jump out at you… forcing you to learn! 

2- Challenge yourself with new middle game and end games:

Just like the openings, you’ll see new middle game and end games patterns. You’ll get into and see new end games and patterns that you wont experience with lower rated players. 

After all, Jose Capablanca’s book “Chess Fundamentals” starts out with end games.  Because like the golf phrase “drive for show and putt for dough” the end games are the most important part. Openings aren’t as important. 

3- Weaker players teach you nothing:

Weaker players blunder, bring out the Queen early, Queen bully, or just play bad. Sure, maybe you’re better than them and beat them… maybe you crush them…

But that’s not teaching you anything. At some point you’ll plateau. You won’t improve. 

Ask yourself this, do you really want to be one of those players who have been on chess.com for 10 years and never got any higher than 900 elo? 

I played one of them recently… I mated him in 12 moves (and he totally missed my checkmate when it was obvious). 

4- You can ‘game’ your elo points to rapid growth:

I know how that might sound, but it’s not something bad. It’s simple math!   

Weaker players give you less elo points when you win. And cost you more when you lose. Playing higher elo players lose you less points and give you much more when you win!  Even a few wins can offset many losses! 

You can quickly rise in elo points by playing better players! And of course, learn more and play better. This all leads to more fun! 

And isn’t that why we are all here? Whether you’re a beginner or GM… if you’re not having fun… then something is seriously wrong.  Why even bother playing?