How to Improve at Chess: Gaining Knowledge

Start with why

Welcome back to Chess in Small Doses, a blog about adults trying to improve at chess. Today we’re diving into one of the 3 ways to improve at chess: filling gaps in our knowledge. Let’s dive in.

Start with why

As some of you know, I’m a practicing Emergency Physician. The advice I’m giving you today is rooted in my experience as a chess player, a doctor, and a teacher of resident physicians. One huge challenge in medicine is that there is just so much to know. We have to learn a large amount of basic and specific knowledge in order to practice at a high level. It takes years in the best circumstances, but still gaps often remain. We have a saying that “The eye cannot see what the mind does not hold.” After 20 years of practice I believe that mastery occurs when you have both your senses attuned and connected to your book knowledge. This I believe works for both chess and medicine. More often than not, we play with the eye we have but miss the fact that we’re missing things.

Just like in medicine, chess players suffer the continual challenge of too much information. No one has a lack of access to information or chess knowledge anymore, we have a deluge of it. In our lives, information is presented to us every day in multiple ways. This excess leads to a strange sort of scarcity in our attention. We are forced to decide if we care enough to pay attention to it. Our brains when overwhelmed just automatically filter out what doesn’t seem relevant to us. The real key to gaining and retaining knowledge these days is finding why it is relevant for you. In other words, finding out why you should care enough to spend time learning and encoding it. This was the entire point of the book Start with Why by Simon Sinek. No one cares until they know why something matters to them personally. Relevancy is the key.

Reality testing

Where do we get that in chess? Where can we find what is relevant to us? I’ve written this before, but I believe we find it in our losses and our mistakes. If we can tolerate failure and understand it’s just temporary, we can turn it into a great gain for us. Losing at chess has such a personal feel of failure it is very hard for people. Critically, losing shows us what our eye does not see. It’s the best form of reality testing out there. It’s only a loss or a failure if we fail to learn from it.

Take this position for example. I played OTB in 2023 against a young Indian girl who played the Jobava London. It was the first time I’d ever played against it and things didn’t go well from here.

What I didn’t know is that a6 here holds equality for Black. Or I could castle and then play Na6… both work. Why do I remember it? Because in 3 moves from here I lost my queen and the game. Painful but VERY relevant to me.

In the same vein (but again very different circumstances) I remember the very first patient who ever died under my care. I can recall all the details of that day even now, 24 years later. The lessons I learned that day are still very clear in my mind. This, it seems, is how we remember. Our brain is good at encoding whatever it finds interesting, funny, or important. Everything else gets lost to time without emotional relevancy. As an experiment, try to remember what you had for breakfast 2 weeks ago on Monday. Now alternatively, try to remember a book or a show you loved as a child. Which is easier?

What I will tell you (and what I tell each resident) is that there is something to learn with each and every encounter. For adult improvers that’s every chess game. The games we play give us the relevancy to seek out more information. My advice is to play games, maybe 20-30 in total, to get a good sample. Don’t mind the wins and loses, we’re trying to learn. Just play your games with your best focus, going one move at a time. It’s ok if you run out of time or blunder, we’re looking for opportunities for growth here. Once that’s completed, analyze each game for both common mistakes and themes. If you use the engine, you’re looking for a big change in the ratings bar showing you missed something. If you do it by hand, look for critical moments you missed. Whatever you find becomes a burning platform for you, the thing that needs to be improved, your “why”.

Of course chess isn’t just one thing. Openings are based on Strategy, but involve Middlegame tactics, and lead to specific Endgames. It’s all connected. However, if you do follow my advice I suspect that you’ll find your mistakes fall into one of three buckets: opening knowledge, endgame theory, and tactical patterns. IMO it is the Tactical Patterns that will be most important for adult improvers.

Take this position for example. Is it safe for Black to take the knight on d2?

What I missed here was that if Black plays Nxd2 (hoping to force the Queen trade) then White has Re8+ pulling the rug out, forcing the rook to capture on e1 and losing the Queen in the process. Oops.

Two paths forward

It can be easy to think that chess is a knowledge game, but that’s not completely right. It’s a game of time based decision making, but better knowledge of common patterns really helps. This of course is the real challenge of chess… so many patterns to learn. There’s not much you can do to avoid this challenge but the way to make it worse is to delay the work. The only way out is through. In general, there two different types of resources that I think help adult improvers learn these patterns.

The first kind of resource involves “learn by doing.” These sort of books/courses simply present you with puzzles sorted by a theme. While you learn over time, it’s more “muscle memory” rather than explicit knowledge. IMO that’s what makes these kinds of resources so useful, because it’s not about knowing or studying, it’s about doing. It’s a great way to directly increasing your skill through consistent practice, even if you’re not fully aware of the knowledge you’re getting taught. The Chess Steps Methods is a great example of this. It’s a series of work books that approach teaching chess by not explaining much but instead asking you to solve tactical puzzles based on a theme. The levels start at beginner (Step 1) to Expert (Step 6). The Steps puzzles give you 12 different thematic problems on each page. The upside of Steps is the quality of the material. The downside is there is almost no instruction, no guidance. There’s just page after page of problems. The answers are online in PDF documents. Ideally you’d do it with a coach who’s trained in the Method. If you can’t find one, then just remember two numbers: <30% and >70%. If you’re getting less than 30% of the problems right, go down a level. If you’re getting more than 70% right then go up a level. (I might also throw the Woodpecker Method by GM Smith and the Chess by GM Polgar as good examples in this category.)

The second options are “explain then train” pattern books. These sorts of books will give you give you prose explaining the patterns as well as images. They often help adult improvers who prefer to have the concepts drawn out for them clearly. There’s a ton of these out there, but a few stand out for me. First is Everyone’s First Chess Workbook by FM Gianopolos (also available in Chessable). Aimed at players <1000 UCSF or <1300 online ELO. He goes over basic and common patterns (mostly tactics) and then gives you examples to try. There’s prose and clear diagrams which can help beginners feel more confident that they’re learning correctly. The same would go for the recent 100 Tactical Patterns You Must Know by FM Erwich (also available in Chessable). This book is harder, aimed at players from 1400-2000. I have the Workbook and it’s been excellent for me. (If you need a bridge between beginner and intermediate, then I’d suggest Chess Tactics for Champions by GM Polgar.) Lastly there’s Chess Tactics from Scratch by FM Weteschink (available on Forward Chess) for anyone higher rated 1800+. All of these books take a similar approach, segregating material by theme with good explanations, then challenging you with variations upon that theme. I personally found that by doing them multiple times, the knowledge really gets reinforced.

Learning on purpose

Whichever you choose, I highly recommend adding to your knowledge intentionally and not by accident. What I mean is there is a ton of content out there now designed to grab your attention. However, there’s no good reason for you to learn about the Bird Opening when you play the London. There’s no good reason to spend time on Rook endgames if you’re dropping pieces in the middle game. Your focus needs to be on what is relevant to your game, to your issues. Before you agree to start a new course or book or video… make sure it covers an area that you need right now.

I believe the best way to determine what’s important is to play and analyze your games. Looking for the simple mistakes or the common patterns. Once you start adding knowledge in these areas, your eye will see better what’s on the board. This is one of the surest ways to improve, but it’s also the hardest. None of us like failure. We prefer to study like we’re preparing for a test. Chess is more like a practice (more on that later). A never ending cycle of growth and learning. Doing this with intent and with purpose is, in my opinion, the best way to improve.

For myself, I’m going to take my own advice. Once I get to 20-30 rapid games I’ll stop to see what the issues are for me. Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading! I appreciate your time and attention. As always I would love to hear your comments. I’ll be back next time with part 2, Improving Skill. Until then!