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Understanding Plateaus-and How to Beat Them
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Understanding Plateaus-and How to Beat Them

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It happens to all of us. We are going along well, and suddenly we get stuck; it does not matter if our rating is 200 or 2000, or even higher. Suddenly, nothing seems to work. We try and try again and get nowhere. We have reached our tableau. It is frustrating because we feel helpless and do not see any way out of it. Often our methods of studying no longer work, and even our coaches do not seem able to help us. What do we do now?

At this point, many chess players either quit or settle for their rating, accepting that that's how it is. Breaking a plateau can be challenging because it often requires us to step back before going forward. Frequently that means allowing ourselves to lose many of our hard-earned rating points to progress to a higher level. Yet, if we are willing to trust the process and put in the work, plateaus can be broken.

Plateaus are not unique to chess; it happens in all disciplines. Research indicates that the key to breaking a plateau is deliberate practice. But what is deliberate practice?

Deliberate practice differs from regular practice in the following ways:

  • It is designed to address a specific, clearly defined problem
  • It is customized to the student's needs
  • It is challenging but within the Zone of Proximal Development (ZDP)
  • Detailed feedback is provided, starting an improvement loop

Most frequently, deliberate practice is designed by a coach based on specific areas of weaknesses in a student's performance. To be effective, it necessitates a clear understanding of what is required for improved performance, what particular skills the student is lacking, and what steps the student must take to acquire these skills. It also requires understanding how the student learns and processes the information so that appropriate activities can be designed.

There are some indications that highly analytic people and some grandmasters may have the necessary skills to develop their framework for deliberate practice. However, based on expertise research, it requires the collaborative efforts of the coach and the student to work effectively. The coach designs the activity and provides specific feedback for improvement to the student. The student must be willing to exert the necessary effort to master the activity to be effective.

I added the importance that the activity is within the student's ZDP. I think this is especially important in chess because chess advice and instruction are frequently outside of a student's ZDP. I will provide a specific example. But first,  what is the ZDP, and why is it essential that both coaches and learners understand ZDP? Understanding the ZDP and working within it will avoid unnecessary frustrations and maximize learning time.

Vygotsky developed the theory of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZDP). Although a complex concept, it can easily be understood through the diagram below,

Let's look at some specific examples to illustrate this concept in chess. Often beginning chess players are told to consider three candidate moves. Excellent advice, but problematic for beginning chess players who still try to figure out the moves and how the pieces relate to each other. Why is this excellent advice unsuitable for beginners? Because it makes assumptions that beginners cannot meet, namely a basic understanding of a critical position. If you don't understand the critical position, any legal move on the chess board is a candidate move. The advice is above the ZDP of the beginning player.

If the student tries to follow that advice, one of the following scenarios will likely result. The student gets frustrated because of cognitive overload[1] or suggests moves irrelevant to the position and frustrates the coach because of a lack of understanding. Yes, there are exceptions. Some students may intuitively understand what constitutes a critical position; for these students, the request to identify three candidate moves may be a gratifying activity because it falls within their ZDP.

Generally, any learning activity that falls within our ZDP is enjoyable, and often we enter the stage of flow or the Zone because, while challenging, we feel we can master it if we put out the effort. When we think that we can't progress no matter what we do, we get frustrated and tend to quit. When this feeling persists over time, we are struggling with a plateau.

Another way to define a plateau is to say that the skills that have served us well thus far no longer help us to go further. Let's look at this definition in chess and see how and why this may happen.

Let's say that beginning chess players who have great spatial vision can "see" tactical combinations quickly without much effort. They have a significant advantage over the average player because they can immediately see tactics that the average player must figure out through reasoning or the recall of specific tactic patterns. Consequently, they are likely to win many of their games and rise quickly in the rating until they reach 1800-2000. Suddenly, they hit a plateau. Why?

Many chess players at that rating level have the same excellent spatial vision; thus, having an excellent spatial vision is no longer a great advantage. If they desire to progress in chess, they must learn how to use their other cognitive abilities. They need to identify what capacities are required and how to design deliberate practice activities, to develop these skills. For some, this may mean intense calculation training; for others, a deeper understanding of the components of positional chess.

While studying these skills, they may see a drop in their rating due to the implementation gap and feel frustrated with their progress. One way to deal with this frustration is to differentiate between a rating plateau and a learning plateau.

A rating plateau is when you are stuck at a rating range. A learning plateau is when you do not see any improvement in your understanding and cannot identify a strategy to change it; in other words, you feel hopelessly lost with nowhere to go. To use a chess analogy, a rating plateau is a relative pin, an inconvenience that can be frustrating, but you can work around it. On the other hand, a learning plateau is an absolute pin, with a pawn attacking the pinned piece; hence it is the more serious of the plateau, and you will need to find an outside expert to help you to identify the problem. But with hard work, plateaus can be overcome. Be patient, accept temporary setbacks, and keep going. 

[1] Cognitive overload occurs when your brain receives more information than it can process. Like a computer, it freezes.

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Bill Lombardy and Bobby Fischer Poem

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I have decided to start a series of blogs in the new year. As I thought about it, many ideas presented themselves. I may pursue them later, but as it is Christmas time, I thought I would start with a series of blogs honoring three people who have deeply and profoundly affected my attitude toward chess and life. The first blog, today’s blog, will set the background. 

Toward the end of his life, William  Lombardy visited the Mechanics Institute in San Francisco, California. I remember when he came in and sat next to me on the first day of the Imre Koenig event. This was a special two-day round-robin event where invited grandmasters competed against each other. If I remember correctly, there were only four players, Daniel Naroditsky and Sam Shankland among them.

I did not recognize the stranger who sat next to me, but John Donaldson, the MI chess director, did. He greeted him and brought out an old picture of a chess event with Lombardy sitting in the front row. Handing the picture to Lombardy, he asked Lombardy if he remembered. Lombardy smiled. Then John invited him to join us the following day for a special grandmaster luncheon.

After the luncheon, while I was cleaning up, Lombardy and I talked. I asked him what I could do to improve in chess. I told him I studied games by analyzing them, but It was a very slow and time-consuming process. He suggested that I spend 10 minutes a day going quickly through as many games as possible. “That won’t work,” I responded. So he tried a different track; he asked me if I stopped it every few minutes to analyze it when I listened to music. Hmm, he had a point; I do not stop the music every few minutes while listening. Lombardy and I spent an hour or two that afternoon discussing many things. We had a wonderful time.

After that event, Lombardy often visited the MI, especially on Tuesday nights when the place was buzzing with people. Tuesday is the night of the historic Tuesday Night Marathon, which often draws more than 100 players.

As participants finish, they gather in the skittles room, a special room with walls covered with pictures of famous chess players. A tall picture of Tal smoking his cigar is on one side, a photograph of Spassky giving a simultaneous exhibition at the Mechanics Institute on the other side. Over the door to the office is a framed picture of Bobby Fischer on the cover of Time magazine. Additional pictures are scattered over the walls, such as Frank Sinatra and Walter Browne playing chess, giving the room the comfortable feeling of a home rather than a club. The room is filled with solid wooden chess tables, each with its history.

On Tuesday nights, the room is full as the players of the Tuesday night marathon stream in. “What would you have done if I played this?’’ “Why did you play this move?” “What were you thinking here?” “You nearly got me there.”  “Why didn’t you play this move?”

These questions, asked quietly at various tables as players analyze their games at each table, give the room a quiet buzz of fellowship and camaraderie. Lombardy and I were sitting at one of the tables across from each other. He had been talking to one of his friends, who just had left. So I set down across from him, handing him a poem I wrote about Bobby Fischer. I always wondered if my portrayal of Bobby Fischer was accurate, and here I had someone who knew him well. I was not going to let this opportunity slip by.

At first, he was reluctant to read it, but he agreed. As he started reading the poem, I heard him comment, “I like this….” “The wording here needs to be changed…” etc. When he had finished, I looked eagerly at him. “Did I capture Bobby Fischer?” He nodded; there was a pause, and then I heard him quietly say, “It could have been me.”