I Know Why You Suck at Chess!

I know, I know. You play all the blitz and bullet you can handle, you solve tactics puzzles, you go through the occasional GM game and you tell everyone you know how much you love chess. Trouble is, you aren't getting any better. Why? Well, I have a few ideas that I’m sure you and most of us are guilty of, at least time to time, if not constantly.

You aren't playing longer games.

Right. Five-minute, three-minute, and one-minute chess is fun and there is no doubt, quality games can arise within those time constraints. But is playing one-hundred-percent fast chess any way to improve? It is not, in my opinion. Wanna know how Naka got so good at speed chess? How Danya did? How the Chessbrahs did? They mastered slow chess, first. Speed comes with time, not repetition.

You don't study.

Oh, sure, you have the books. You own videos and have a document full of links to more. You watch streamers on Twitch and YouTube and you can do the bishop/knight mate with your eyes closed. Well, I say: So what! Do you truly immerse yourself into a position for as long as it takes? Do you relentlessly study your own losses? Do you read every page of every book cover to cover, only moving on once you've turned and devoured the last page? Nooooooo, you do not. How do I know this? Because I don't and I, too, am getting no better.

You don't play OTB.

Oh, you might have a set, sure, and yes, the pandemic is preventing OTB play, but do you really play seriously with a real chess set and real humans you can see? Or do you bang out blitz once a week down to the local coffee shop against other players who suck? Because that’s no way to improve. I remember when I first started, I didn't know what a mat was, what a clock was, etiquette rules, nothing. Then a friend asked me if I wanted to play in a real USCF tournament. The rest, as they say, is history. After a year of in-person tournament play, almost nobody in the club could touch me anymore, save for the actual experts and masters. And I mean none of them.

You study openings, but not endgames.

Do I have to embellish on this one? At all? Come on, when is the last time you opened an endgame book and did ten, twenty exercises? I rest my case. Yes, openings are a good way to get into a usable position and stay alive past move fifteen, but they aren't helping us learn triangulation, opposition, counting king-walk squares and et cetera. Nope. They do not.

There are countless other reasons (and you already know them, dear reader) as to why we generally do not improve. I mean, some of us are just old and new information isn't processed like it once was. Jobs take their toll, severely limiting study and playing time. Blitz and bullet are straight-out addictive. Slow chess takes too long. Books are boring. Good videos cost money, as does a good coach. Yadda yadda and blah blah blah. You wanna break into the next rating category? Put in the work now so you can enjoy and increase fun for the future.