Is Focusing Too Much On Advanced Concepts Hindering Your Chess Growth?

I don’t know if anyone out there can resonate with this, but sometimes it feels like reading a lot of chess theory (in a short timespan) can actually hinder your practical gameplay. One of the things I do whenever I learn a new theoretical concept is, I’ll try and apply it as much as possible in my upcoming games. I have found that there can be a potential downside to this. Is it because I am trying to apply GM concepts that I don’t fully understand at games I play as a player rated around 1350? In doing so, I sometimes forget to apply the older concepts I had learnt, probably more relevant at my rating level that I should master first.

Theoretical development in chess has happened for 100s of years and in any given position there can be multiple concepts that come into play, every move you choose has a tradeoff  (a concept that explains the positive side of things and a concept that explains the negative side of things). It is your responsibility as a chess player to assess the pros and cons and make a decision, and if you happen to make the assessment incorrectly then you basically made a blunder. These blunders are different than tactical blunders, which are mainly a result of miscalculation. These blunders are more like a blunder in ideas…. conceptual blunders! I feel like I am not able to weigh the pros and cons properly and I end up giving way more importance to things that I most recently have learnt.

I think an example will better illustrate what I mean.

This is just one such example where focusing too much on the positional aspects of the games have actually, made me miss out out the very basic tactical stuff which I previously would not have missed.

*Disclaimer: I am in no way suggesting that you should stop reading advanced chess theory, as not learning I believe guarantees stagnation. I just feel like fundamentals should be mastered first before attending to the finer details of the game. Again I am not trying to give advice to players in this blogpost. In fact, I would love to hear what you guys think about this and how you deal with it.

Originally published to PawnPush.com