Too Many Choices

A simpler way to clear the clutter and make gains

Welcome Back to Chess in Small Doses! This is a semi-regular blog focused on chess improvement for amateur adult players. Today I’m offering a simplified way to think about improvement at chess. Let’s get into it.

Chess improvement is a simple enough concept, but gets murky when you try and get specific. If you asked the average adult improver what does improvement look like, you’d likely get a wide variety of answers. The litany of options for the improver includes:

Tactic trainers, tactics books, tactics courses, endgame studies, opening books, playing OTB, game analysis, strategy, studying master games, guess-the-move, Reddit communities, chess coaches, watching YouTube videos, watching streamers, playing online, playing OTB and IRL, joining the Chess Dojo… and on and on.

For me this answer was overwhelming and a little depressing. It’s not that these are wrong answers, they’re just not helpful. The evidence is pretty stark that the vast majority of us won’t make Master or Expert. I firmly believe the overwhelming number of options available to people is one of the biggest obstacles to improvement. Rather than enter into endless and largely evidence free arguments over which way is “best” to improve, I’d rather propose to you 3 simple categories for how we might think about improvement in chess (in order of increasing importance):

#1. Gaining Knowledge

#2. Practicing Skill

#3. Reducing Errors

# 1.Gain Knowledge

This is where most adult improvers live. Knowledge includes all the things I mentioned above: Strategy, Opening, Endgame, Middlegame, Tactical patterns, etc… Adults often like to treat chess as knowledge game. We love to study chess, believing it will lead to easy wins and (most importantly) not embarrassing ourselves over the board. Also, when we study we don’t risk ELO.

There’s nothing like the lure of a new book or course. I have lost track of how many books and Chessable courses I own. Most of them sit unused. In his fantastic book The Paradox of Choice, author Barry Schwartz argues that having more is less largely because we have limited time and ability to use the things we have. We end up spending all our time trying to decide what we should do first. Even worse, when we do choose there is a nagging fear that maybe we chose wrong. We get into cycles of doubt, believing there might be an easier way. Weirdly, having too many options is almost worse than having no options at all.

For me this is very true for all the chess resources I’ve acquired over the years. There’s a lot of books, course, and options I purchased but haven’t used. I’d have been better off picking one opening book, one tactics book, and maybe one strategy book and then just playing chess until I outgrew my resources.

Still I understand the allure of the new resource. Just know that while gaining knowledge is important in Chess, it is probable the least effective way to improve in my opinion and experience. I’ve know many bright medical students who could ace the tests but had a very hard time practicing medicine and putting that knowledge to use. I know many highly knowledgeable adult improvers who have a hard time beating the kids who just play chess. It’s the same issue. Knowledge is necessary but not sufficient for improvement. If you do choose to keep adding to your knowledge, intentionally limit your options to one or two resources. You’ll be much happier.

# 2. Practice Skill

There are at least 3 fundamental skills in chess: visualization, calculation, and evaluation (more on that in a later post). Increasing these skills requires focused work over time. In chess, kids are often all about enhancing their skill through play and practice. They have the advantage of greater neuroplasticity than adults so they incorporate patterns faster, but they also greatly prefer playing to studying (adults’ happy place). Experience however has show that adults benefit from the same habit. What is required though is deliberate practice.

I’ve written about it before, but deliberate practice can be essentially summed as deliberately failing… but only a little. Push yourself too hard and there’s no learning. Fail to push yourself and your mind reverts to old patterns and habits, not believing it needs to pay close attention. Adults often don’t like failure, since it’s hard on the ego. Evidence shows that a little failure is a positive thing. I still believe discomfort with failure is the #1 reason adults don’t make it to Expert or Master level, despite impressive amounts of knowledge.

There’s a famous quote we’ve all heard: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” I completely disagree but it’s a great definition of practice. A practice of frequent tactics is one of the easiest ways to improve your calculation and visualization skills. Making this a priority makes sense for almost everyone and matches with my own experience. My greatest gains came when I had the practice of weekly games and daily puzzles. Practice doesn’t make perfect, but it does make progress.

It’s my opinion that practicing skills is the second most important thing we can do to improve at chess. Which now brings us to #1 … reducing mistakes.

#3. Reducing Mistakes

The actual quote I do agree with goes like this: “Insanity is making the same mistakes over and over and expecting different results.” It’s well known that most amateur games end from tactical blunders. According to Jeremy Silman in The Amateur’s Mind, most amateurs repeat the same mistakes. In my own experience I spent a lot of time repeatedly dropping pieces for no good reason. Once I stopped doing that I broke 1400 easily.

Famously, Kamryn Heidi went from 0-2000 partly due to her “Why I’m losing” document. So did FM Azel Chua, author of the Burger Method for calculation. The premise is simple. Play games, analyze each one for the significant mistakes you make. Keep a list of mistakes, then work to directly reduce those mistakes. The only catch is… you have to play and analyze. This takes time and often comes at the expense of studying. But it’s the only way to learn what kind of player you are right now.

Game analysis like this can be done either on your own or with a computer. Whatever you do, just look for the biggest blunders and see if there is a pattern that repeats. What matters more is what you can recognize as a mistake, not what the computer thinks. It’s important that you take this specific knowledge and use it in games to improve. For a long time, one of my mistakes was never really getting my rooks involved. Sometimes I still do that… but at least I’m noticing it now.

This may seem obvious but I’m almost certain that most improvers aren’t really working on this part of their game. In my opinion reducing your own mistakes is the single most important (and effective) thing you can do to improve. It isn’t that you need to be right so much as you really need to not be wrong (more on that in a later post). Chess is an unforgiving game where a single mistake can ruin hours of careful moves. Fortunately for most improvers, the mistakes were making are simple ones. Just look for the big mistakes you make each game and see if there’s a pattern. If there is, work hard to improve that part of your game.

Limiting our choices, on purpose

Chess is hard, it’s a demanding game that can be both brutal and beautiful at the same time. Adult improvers can get better at chess in at least 3 general ways. They can increase their knowledge, they can practice their skills, and they can reduce their own mistakes.

Human nature being what it is, we’re all risk averse. The path of least resistance for most adults is to study and gain knowledge, but it’s also the least effective. Better would be to consistently practice skills (like tactics and puzzles), as often as you can, deliberately risking failure in order to stimulate growth.

Studying and solving tactics is not wrong per se, but it also lands you into the realm of overwhelming options, many of them marketed at us . We’d be better off greatly limiting our choices to just a few.

Lastly, if you have the stomach for it, I suggest you take the road less travelled. Play chess first, study later. Play as often as you can, but slow enough that you have time to think. Then analyze the games for mistakes. Find your common patterns and work on eliminating them. You’ll get a much better understanding of your game than you’d ever get from the first two options.

Whatever you do, try to keep your work focused and simple. Distractions induce the paradox of choice and the emotional spiral that comes with it.

Thanks for reading! Until next time, I wish you all good luck and good fortune in your chess.