I became a Professional Chess Player for 6 months. Here’s What I Learned...

On July 2023, a friend from the chess club of my teen years asked me a random question.

“Are you going to be around this summer?”

He was participating in the Amateur French Chess Championship just one hour away from home and this was our opportunity to catch up.

I didn’t know it at that time but his question was going to embark me on a 6 month journey into the world of professional chess.

My journey with chess so far

My relationship with chess had always been on and off.

I learned the rules at 13, and it was love at first sight.

Then with studies and work, it became increasingly difficult to dedicate enough time to train and participate in the standard over-the-board (OTB) week-long tournaments which are time-consuming but also necessary to improve.

 

When I rekindled my interest in chess in 2018, I gained 35 points in 39 games which was not exactly a great progression. Source: Fide

My Elo rating had always been between 1800 and 1900, which makes me your average club player, very far from the level of professional players.

How I came up with the idea

In the past few months, I had been following with great enthusiasm the journeys of French YouTubers Julien Song and Joachim Mouahamad in their quest for chess excellence and I secretly dreamed about undertaking a similar journey myself one day.

I had just quit my job as a Lead Product Manager and the idea grew upon me as I reflected on my friend’s question.

What if I took some time off from work to put myself in the shoes of a professional player?

Let’s be real, I knew I would not become a professional player in a few months.

But what if I pretended to be one anyways?

I loved the idea of organizing my whole life around a single goal and giving it all. What would I learn from the experience?

How I decided to go for it

It had been 5 years since I had not played an OTB game so I had a lot of questions I wanted to answer before committing to the project.

I would participate in the Amateur French Chess Championship and consider it the Minimum Viable Product of my project.

Would I still like to play 5-hours-long games every day for 10 days? As a 32-year-old, how would I manage the fatigue, the stress, the disturbed sleep? Would I still enjoy the experience overall?

It turns out I still did. And on October 28th I started the first tournament of my journey.

The results

Fast forward 6 months, 7 tournaments, and 50 classical games later it was time to look back, and could not believe what I had achieved.

I improved faster than I ever had in the past:

• I gained 159 Elo points, even boasting one of the swiftest Elo progressions worldwide during this period.

From November 23 to April 24, my Elo progression (1862 Elo to 2021 Elo) ranked 1st among the 1500+ French players above 20 yo rated between 1800 and 1900 Elo on November 23, and it ranked 7th among the 22,000+ players within this cohort worldwide. Source: Fide

• I beat a FM and an IM in a classical game for the first time in my life
• I racked up the life-changing amount of 175 euros in tournament winnings (and a bottle of wine)

Most importantly, I had a lot of fun training, playing, and immersing myself in the community of French competitive chess.

Here are the 5 takeaways I wish to remember from this experience:

Takeaway #1: Create feedback loops

Feedback loops are cycles of continuous improvement where data is collected and analyzed to imagine and implement actions that are going to be tested in the next cycle.

As I had work experience in product management I was already convinced by the framework's efficiency.

I therefore carefully planned my year so that I would alternate tournaments and training periods, leaving enough time in between to make adjustments in my training to influence my play.

It was also important to start playing competitive games before I felt ready.

By playing the Amateur French Championship with almost no prior training, I was able to get data very early that helped devise what I needed to work on.

Here’s the spreadsheet I filled in after my first tournament. Credits to Ramesh for the analysis framework

It became pretty clear that I had a lot of room for improvement in my calculation skills and my opening repertoire. So, I ended up focusing on that for the next tournament (and as it turned out for the next 6 months).

I could have waited and worked on a master training plan for months before signing up for a tournament but it would have been difficult to know if my training was efficient.

After each tournament, I would repeat the process and take some time to reflect on the event and carefully review each of my games.

For that matter, I organized 4 training sessions with a GM coach who helped me understand my mistakes and my top training priorities.

Takeaway #2: Prioritize the work with the most impact

Over the years I collected a fine collection of chess books.

One of the hardest challenges I faced during my project was accepting that I wouldn’t be able to open most of them.

In the beginning, my inner voice was trying hard to convince me otherwise.

With so much time available for chess I could finally indulge in reading all those books.

I could work a little bit on endgames, study games from the 1953 Zurich tournament, practice mates in 2 with Polgar’s book, review games from Petrosian to work on my prophylaxis, get inspiration from AlphaZero’s games, etc.

Unfortunately what I wanted was not what I needed.

What I needed was to work on my calculation skills and my opening repertoire, so I put all my chess books away except for 3 of them.

I worked on my opening repertoire with Lichess studies and 3 Chessable courses from top players.

Committing to this simplified training helped me remove context switching. I also stopped worrying about the optimal training plan.

So it freed a lot of energy.

But it was also super hard because once you remove complicated training plans and sophisticated tools, there’s nothing more to be done than hard work.

I noticed how I unconsciously tried to make my routine easier.

For example, after my good performance at the Marseille winter event, I became a bit lazy in my training and it hit me back like a boomerang at the next tournament.

I felt less sharp in calculation and forgot ideas of my opening repertoire very early in the game.

Before the next tournament in Cappelle-la-Grande (and the last tournament of my project), I focused on the fundamentals again and finished strong with a 2192 Elo performance.

Takeaway #3: Prepare your mind for the upcoming battle

People often don’t realize how tough competitive chess really is.

There is a lot to deal with: the tension of the fight, the time pressure, your inner dialogue, the emotional rollercoaster, your ego, the long wait between games, etc.

It’s overall very taxing and from the start, I knew I wanted to be better prepared for it.

I quickly realized I tended to make stupid mistakes in time trouble that would cost me the game. So I decided to work on that first.

In addition to working on my time management to avoid getting into time trouble in the first place, I enrolled in a 2-month Meditation-Based-Stress-Reduction program (MBSR) with weekly 2h30 long group sessions and daily exercises.

Our teacher Aude was amazing, and week after week it became easier to include more space between external stimuli and my reactions.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. Viktor E. Frankl

It helped me achieve an overall much better concentration state during my games, from start to finish.

I also realized that I tended to get influenced by my opponent’s Elo.

When my Elo was higher I tended to underestimate my opponent (the worst thing you could do in a game of chess, especially if your opponent is not old enough to drive...).

 

Focus mode against a youngster at the 2023 Amateur French Chess Championship. Credits: FFE

When my Elo was lower I tended to put my opponent on a pedestal and not believe in my chances.

I followed an online course from International Master (IM) and chess coach Alain Genzling on that topic and worked on identifying my limiting beliefs.

The main takeaway I got from it was to deconstruct the limiting beliefs and reconstruct them with logic.

From that moment onwards I had a process in place to deal with my limiting beliefs on Elo:

• Identify when the negative inner dialogue kicks in
• Put some distance with it
• Remind yourself what Elo is

Lastly, I also realized that I tended to lose focus when I had an advantage or when the position became equal.

It cost me a few games against stronger opponents. Right when I thought the game was about to end I made a mistake and lost.

I improved in talking myself back into the game when I was losing focus or interest but I am still struggling with it.

Takeaway #4: Take care of your body

Another thing people often miss about chess is how important physical fitness is to performance.

Top professional players all include physical training in their routine and for good reasons.

On November 2023, at the end of the event in Cap d’Agde, I had 3 more games to go but I felt I could not play anymore. I was exhausted from the previous 6 days of the tournament and ended up quickly drawing the last 3 games in order not to lose them.

I realized that I needed to learn how to maintain high energy levels till the end of the tournament.

In between tournaments, I went on to develop a habit of working out 3 times a week, tracking and improving my sleeping habits with an activity tracker, and carving out time for recovery.

During tournaments, I developed the habit of a morning walk or run, taking a nap at lunchtime, and planning nutritious and easy-to-digest meals.

 

Morning run view from the Notre-Dame de la Garde basilica in Marseille. Is there a better way to start the day?

Takeaway #5: Be kind to yourself

Finally, here are 3 tips from Ramesh, India’s legendary coach that were helpful to me in setting up a mindset I was comfortable with:

• Focus on the process not the outcome. Chess is hard and progression is not always linear so don’t get too obsessed with short-term results as you cannot always control the outcome. Instead, you can control how you train and where you direct your attention, so focus on that instead
• Think in terms of absence of skills rather than in terms of weaknesses. Most of the time when you consider yourself “weak” at something, you haven’t really taken the time to get better at it.
• Results do not happen overnight but if you work consistently you’ll get results, so be patient

And lastly, try to enjoy the moment. Have a friendly chat with your opponent at the end of the game, visit the towns you go to, and have fun while playing.

On April 1st a new kind of project started in my life 🐣 and it was time to end my 6-month journey into the world of professional chess.

I had a lot of fun training and playing and I hope you enjoyed reading too, cheers!

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