How to fix your skill gap
===

Speaker: [00:00:00] Hey, and welcome back to Next Level Chess Podcast. As always, I am Grandmaster Nils Sueder, your host. Today, I wanna talk about how you can step-by-step fix a skill gap that you might have realized you have

So maybe you heard last week's episode where it was about analyzing your last 10 games and realizing, do you have a knowledge gap or a skill gap, right? Now, let's imagine you have a skill gap. So there is one skill that definitely needs improvement. What we're looking for here really is the lowest hanging fruit.

That is super important, okay? So it's really, like, one skill. Obviously, there are so many skills you could improve. Let's fix one skill that is costing you the most points, [00:01:00] and here is how to do it. And for this podcast episode, I will use the example of missing opponent's ideas because it is a skill that so many of you struggle with.

And here is the framework I want you to remember. So you have one focus point, okay? Then you do it in puzzles, you do it in tests, you do it in real games. The goal is to take a skill that is currently your biggest weakness and to even make it a strength through that training, or at the very least, just not your biggest weakness anymore

And as I mentioned already, it is super important that you have one core skill that you work on this way. Because yes, there is so many things that you could work on in chess, but it's just too complex, right? The whole framework of first doing it in tactics, then doing it in tests, then doing it in your real games, is really only [00:02:00] working if, you focus on one thing.

If you ever tried to apply my thought process, for example, which is T-I-P-S, so tips. If you try to do all four things at the same time during a game, it's just, like, such a big step, you're not going to get there. So pick one and then do the three steps in tactics, in tests, in real games

Because the common training really looks like what I already imagined. Maybe you have several points, or let's imagine you just have one point. So you do that right, but you solve tactical exercises, right, where you know there is a solution. And then the next step is kind of, oh, yeah, in my real games, under pressure, when it counts, I wanna apply that skill.

And even if you put a focus on scanning on your opponent's idea first, that is our example, right? The jump is just too big. So you're looking at a puzzle, and you try, you know. You try your best. You're saying, "Okay, let's look first at [00:03:00] opponent's ideas." This is the right approach to do it, no matter if this is your weakness, because it is what you should do in your game.

So always train, the same way as you wanna think in your games. That is super important. But when you only do puzzles, you do that habit, but you're not punished for not doing it, right? So you might scan through it. You wanna shortly think, "Oh, what's the threat?" And then just move on because you know in a puzzle, well, you won't be punished because there is something for you

And so as you're not applying this habit so structurally properly and you know, with the right intensity, bringing it into your games is so hard. And that's why you need a step in between, from puzzles to the games. And that's where, for example, a test like, Real Chess Training, my membership that goes out every single week, and it's six tests.

You get 45 minutes, and these are positions without hints, so it could be anything. It could be that [00:04:00] you have to spot an opponent's, idea and just avoid it. That's all you have to do in one position, right? So When you solve a test like that, you get punished for missing opponent's resources. You have limited time, just like in a game.

You don't have any hints, just like in a game. But what makes it a little bit, you know, the in-between step is that it's not a real game, so you don't get as stressed as you would be during a real game that is rated

So once you have this, okay, this is my weakness I want to work on, the skill is opponent's resources, right? You think this is my main focus for my training and my games. Every tactical exercise you solve, you say, "First, I wanna check for opponent's resources." Then you do RCT puzzles, right? So you have tests, six position, and before you look at every position or before you look at your own ideas in every position, your focus point is, I wanna look at my opponent's resources.

Is there any [00:05:00] threat? And then when you play games, you can now try to apply this habit as well. You've trained it in tactics, in tests. Now, in your games, you're also saying, "When my opponent makes a move, the first thing I wanna look at is, are there opponent's threats? What is my opponent's idea? And then I move on to my own things"

Now, what is super important when you do this process this way is that you rate your training and you get the feedback. You analyze your games accordingly. What I mean by that is you're not just looking at, did I get the puzzle right or wrong? Did I get the test position right or wrong? Did I win the game or not?

What you're trying to do is score yourself on how well you did the skill that you are training at the moment. So in a tactics exercise, even if you spot the right continuation, you're like, "Oh, yeah, I actually forgot the habit of checking for opponent's resources," so that is, you know, a slightly negative, touch to [00:06:00] that position.

When you're doing a real chess training test and you get a position correctly but you completely missed an opponent's resource, you can sometimes get it correctly, right? You can sometimes do the wrong process, get the right result. Then you're actually noting for yourself, "Well, that's wrong. I didn't do what I wanted to do."

You gotta be strict on yourself in this sense because if you always, you know, bail yourself out, "Oh, yeah, I got it correct anyway," then you don't train the habit well enough, and in your games it will cost . One game after another, you will miss opponent's resources, which you definitely know that will cost you the game very often

And there is a hidden huge benefit of this, because once you finally don't score yourself based on results, result pressure can also go down a lot. I felt this myself when training, I feel this a lot with my students, that when you have a clear focus point, you're kind of curious about this focus point at the end of training, [00:07:00] at the end of a game, and you can finally see a game that maybe you lost, but you were very good at spotting opponent's resources.

You can see that as a win. You can see that as something positive. So you're not just obsessed of, "I won, I'm happy. I lost, I'm unhappy," but it's like, "How did I do my process? Did I apply the skill that I'm training at the moment?" And if the answer is a yes, okay, that's a positive experience. If the answer is a no, it's not just, "Oh, my God, everything is bad," but, "I have something to learn.

What can I do better next time?"

And one point that is very important that I mention it, is that once you have a clear focus point like that, right, so you're looking at your opponent's resources, you know, all the time, no matter what you're doing in chess, other skills might get a little bit worse in the moment because you just don't put the focus that you would usually put on them at the moment.

That's okay. That's the price, that is worth paying when you focus on one single skill at a time. Because at some point, [00:08:00] as you make this, effort of focusing on opponent's resources, that will become a little bit second nature to you. And so you will need to spend less energy on that, and you can take a new focus point and kind of repeat the same process.

Once you do that for several weaknesses, right, all of your floor is raising because all of your weaknesses got much better. You will always have one biggest leak in your game. That was the same, like, for me as a grandmaster, nearly 2600, I always had one biggest leak, right? So it's not just you don't have a leak anymore.

That's not really realistic. But the leak will be way less bad than it was before, right? It's costing you way less games, and that's what we, talk about when we talk about raising the floor, right? So your, lowest possible performance is getting much better because you work on your weaknesses like that

And you can even add another extra step in between to make this application of a habit or [00:09:00] this skill improvement even smoother. So what we have is pick one, tactics, test, games. And now what you can do is pick one, tactics or puzzles, tests, unrated games, and then rated games. That just makes the jump from tests to the real games that matter a lot for you, even simpler because when you play an unrated game, right, you still have the gaming, playing experience, but you have less pressure, on the result.

And so it is easier to say, "Okay, on every single move, I really wanna, you know, drive home this habit." And then again, the step to the most important games will be even simpler For those that play over-the-board chess, this is really what you can just do with online chess in general. That's what I did in my career.

I really only cared about over-the-board chess in general for the, results. And online chess for me [00:10:00] was just a training tool, right? So whenever you play online, you can play rated online games, but you see them as a training game. You see them, you know, with much less pressure, and that's where you train your habits.

And then hopefully for your over-the-board game, you already created all the habits. And that's why it's so important that when you play games, online, even if you don't really care about the results, you need to play the same process that you want to be able to play in your over-the-board games

Now let's talk about how you realize that this is actually working, right? So you're working on your weakness, you're working on your skill. When is it time to move away, right? And the answer is pretty simple. Because the end goal is that when you look at your last 10 losses, right, you do the same thing that you did to realize, oh, it was opponent's weaknesses that cost me the most games.

You're looking at these 10 games, and you don't have the same biggest weakness anymore. [00:11:00] That's when you basically know, oh yeah, this really worked. But that can take a long time

And on this journey, when you rate yourself, right, that's why it's so important not just, just look at results, but rate yourself, how well did I try to apply this process, right? And there will be ups and downs. It's not just a straight line as with everything in improvement. It's not just every single time you do tactics, you're getting better at, looking for opponent's resources.

Or every time you solve a real chess training test, it just gets a little bit better. That's not how improvement works. But what you can do is, like, every month or so, you can check in and see, , okay, is the habit getting better, right? Because if you really, put the time and energy and effort on a habit like checking for your opponent's resources and improving that skill, looking at opponent's tactics, right, , then that skill should get better, both during your training and during games.

But until it really results in, oh, [00:12:00] I basically don't lose any games anymore because of that, that is a huge step. And also basically not losing, to be honest, we all have difficulty spotting opponent's resources. But maybe out of your last 10 games, you lost seven before, and now you're only losing three because of opponent's resources, and something else cost you five games.

So it's like, okay, fine, we have something else to focus on

I'm saying that because it's so important to not expect perfection Chess is a super difficult game, and there will always be mistakes, right? Otherwise, it would be boring. We would all just make draws all the time if there was no mistake anymore

And so it's really about changing your biggest weakness. As I mentioned, maybe 7 out of 10 games was missing opponent's resources, and then it's only 3 losses out of 10. That's great. You know? You kind of saved 4 losses out of 10 games, which is very positive. So we gotta see the positive change and not think like, "Okay, I will work on opponent's resources until [00:13:00] I see every single one in every single game on every single move.

I always check for every single opponent's resource." That's not going to happen. It's never going to happen, right? That's important. We have, a certain thought process that we wanna go after, but we also need the understanding that even though we understand the thought process and everything, it won't be completely perfect

So if you wanna fix your skill gap, it's super important that you have a resource that tests you, right? It's what I call these tests is real chess training, six positions, 45 minutes. Something similar to that is super important or real chess training. So if you're 1,500 to 2,000, real chess training is for you.

There is a link in the description of the podcast to try out a completely free test. And you can see for yourself, and you can apply already the skill that you realized was your lowest hanging fruit. And you think, "Okay, I wanna do win every position. I wanna really focus on that." And then you score yourself [00:14:00] also with that.

For players between 1,000 and 1,500, there is a real chess training version for you guys coming soon, which will be simpler, a little bit easier just according to your rating. For everybody above 2,000, what I recommend is checking out Jacob Aagaard's Killer Chess Training homework. Um, if I understand it correctly, you need a membership of his whole Killer Chess Training.

So check out if that is for you. But that would be interesting. Aagaard is really, really, really great for testing players that are stronger, especially if you're going into the titled, FIDE titles and so on and higher than that. Aagaard is really the guy for you. And if you are below 1,000 rating, there are some online tools, , like tactics or not, which at least test you on the fact that it might not be a tactic, right?

So first, you need to decide if there is actually a tactic and then finding the tactic. It's not perfect, but it is already a little bit better than just [00:15:00] doing tactics. And as for, below 1,000, really what matters for you is basically spotting hanging pieces for yourself and for your opponent, and simple tactics for yourself and your opponent, right?

That is it. There's not so much, , positional chess and sophistication in there. It's really just about doing these basics very well. And so you can also have a little bit more simple way of training that works. And then playing games especially is important for everybody. But, the lower rated you are, the more playing games and analyzing only the most important parts of these games is really going to drive home a lot of improvement

And for those curious, next week I'll talk about more options of working on such tests, on, you know, best move positions, so positions in your training that are not just, hey, this is a tactic, white wins, so that you can train better for the real [00:16:00] circumstances of a game. See you then. Hey, guys, just two quick things before you take off.

If you enjoyed this episode and want more structured chess improvement tips from myself, check out my newsletter at nextlevelchess.com/newsletter. It's totally free. It will always remain free, and it goes out every single Friday with the best, latest chess improvement tips that I have. Most of the podcast episodes that I record are based on a previous newsletter, so getting the newsletter, you'll get the advice earlier, and you'll get it directly into your inbox every single Friday.

It's totally free, as I mentioned, and you can unsubscribe any time. So go to nextlevelchess.com/newsletter to sign up. And one last thing, if you enjoyed this episode and if it helped you, then please take a few seconds and [00:17:00] review this podcast. This helps a ton. It helps other people see, oh, yeah, many, many people profit from the advice given in this podcast.

Let's give this podcast a try. And if you can, if you know anyone in the chess world that would profit from this episode or any other episode, make sure to share it with your friends, with your people online. That's super helpful. Podcast growth is really just working through mouth-by-mouth recommendations.

So thank you, thank you so much for listening, and thank you for spreading the word about the Next Level Chess Podcast. Now, that's all from me. Thank you for listening, and see you next time.