Seven Nutrients You Might Need to Add to Your Chess Diet

Over the past several years, my chess diet has not had much variety. Almost all my games have been daily at 3 days/move. I have also played a lot of puzzle rush (both 5-minute limit and survival). This is the chess equivalent of a meat-and-potatoes diet in which absolutely nothing other than meat and potatoes are consumed. 

Daily games are a good way to learn to think about positional chess. However, the skill of developing positional plans does not always carry over well from daily games to tournament chess. Why? In daily games you use an analysis board to examine possible lines. I have come to realize that an analysis board is a crutch. It's a useful crutch for helping your squad in a team match (Go Team USA! Go Team South Carolina!). But of course you cannot use an analysis board when you're playing in tournaments. Just as you can't run your best 5k carrying a crutch, you can't find/develop the best plans in a tournament setting when you're accustomed to using an analysis board.

Puzzle Rush also has pluses and minuses. On the positive side, you will learn to recognize tactical opportunities for an advantage whenever they appear. That's the nature of the puzzles: "White (or Black) to play and win." But how often do you encounter a "play the right continuation and it's game over" situation in your games? If you're like me, not very often! You mostly have to frustrate your opponent's plans, improve the activity of your pieces, look for pawn breaks, assess positional sacrifices.... It takes a lot of good, deep chess skills to even obtain a "play and win" position against a talented opponent. If you're going to move into the upper echelons of chess, you will not encounter chess puzzle situations very often. So why would you spend the bulk of your training on chess puzzles?

Moreover, in puzzles you rarely have to meet a threat. You're looking for the move that wins, not a defense to prevent your opponent from gaining a plus, or a plan to limit your opponent's play, or a plan to strengthen the scope of your pieces. Spend a lot of time on puzzles, and you'll end up overlooking your opponent's threats and your own non-tactical considerations in tournament games.

Well, maybe not you, dear reader. But that is my recent, sad experience.

But I don't have to remain malnourished! Here are the additional chess nutrients I am starting to add:

1. Fast games (15/10, 10/5) - There's no better way to learn to find opportunities, threats, and plans under time pressure. And let's face it, you have to play plenty of games to improve, which can be difficult if you're only playing slower time controls.
2. Slower non-daily games (G60+) - These can be your lab for putting good chess into practice. If you're always playing fast games, you'll have a hard time learning to stitch all the themes and skills together.
3. Post-game review - If you don't learn from your mistakes, how will you improve?
4. Explain what you're learning - If you can't do, teach ... and you will learn to do. That's how it works in chess, anyway. The act of developing good explanations and delivering them will improve your skills far more effectively than a quick post-mortem.  Maybe your chess.com blog will even become a viral hit that garners fame and fortune! Eh, probably not. But you'll definitely learn more effectively.
5. Books and training courses - A good book or training course can help you reach the next level. The mistake many commit here, though, is to consume books and courses mostly on openings. Chess has no simple solutions, just as there is no one magic food that will deliver good physical health. And even if you do gain an edge out of the opening, you still need good positional, tactical, and endgame skills to win the points. So focus on training material that will help you gain those varied skills.
6. Commit master games to memory - This can help in so many ways:
   
   1. You improve your board visualization
   2. You learn to see what a master sees
   3. You learn to plan the way a master plans
   4. You learn typical themes and plans in the middlegame and endgame.
7. Coaching - A good dietitian can help you put good diet principles into action, and a good coach can help you implement a successful chess training plan. At the moment, my schedule is not very amenable to finding and using the services of a coach, but I hope to be able to link up with a good coach after my wife's MFA studies are done.

To add these I will need to scale back my daily games and Puzzle Rush sessions. Time to stop deluding myself; time to "Straighten Up and Fly Right."

Have I overlooked any training methods I should consider? What is your experience with the differing nutrients in your chess training diet? Please leave a comment, and let's learn together!