What is holding you back
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Next Level Chess Podcast. As always, I am Grandmaster Noël Suter, your host, and I wanna talk about finding out what is holding you back in this episode

Now, this comes because recently I made an episode on how I changed my mind a little bit on knowledge, and that sometimes, yes, there is knowledge holding you back. So I'm always raving about, like, skill, skill, skill improvement, but yeah, there are some people that, , knowledge is kind of the biggest issue in their game.

And today, I wanna share a simple method you can do yourself to figure out if that applies to you, because realizing what is holding you back is kind of a huge thing for your chess, [00:01:00] right? And definitely something that is hard if you don't have a private coach

So what is this self-diagnosis?

Before I get into it, I just wanna share that the goal really is to get to one point that is the biggest mistake, right? One huge problem I see with many is that kind of you have big lists of mistakes, which is fine if you have a big list of mistake, but you need to focus on one at the moment, because otherwise you just get overwhelmed.

"Oh, I have these 37 things I'm doing wrong. I should tackle all of them at the same time." No, that's not going to work, right? So the goal here is to find out, okay, what is your biggest leak? And then you can work on that, hopefully change it, and you'll have a new biggest leak, and so on and so forth And the answer, as so often is the case, lies in your own games.

So you don't have to do something new. You don't have to, [00:02:00] you know, fill out a test or something like that, but you just go back to your games. So take the last 10 games that you lost. Now, in every of these games, you wanna find the moment or moments that cost you the games. It's not about small incremental changes, but really the big swings.

Mostly I say bigger than plus minus two according to the engine. So,, let's say you had a position, it was 0.5 for your opponent. You made a move, it was plus three for your opponent. Okay, that is a moment you really wanna investigate. And if you don't know how to properly analyze your games, then I highly recommend listening to this podcast episode, going to the description.

I will put a link to a video where I share how to analyze your games. Um, it's a YouTube video, super actionable, and then you learn how to analyze your games, and you can apply, , the method, that you learned today, and you both learn how to analyze your games and how to figure out what is your biggest [00:03:00] leak

So once you figure out from these 10 games, these moments, , where you made the big mistakes, you wanna figure out why your move isn't good and try to understand the engine suggestion

And you ask yourself this one single question for every mistake. Do I clearly understand why my move is a mistake? Now you can just, you know, add a list and for every yes you make, one point and for every no you make point

If in the majority of your cases you can understand your mistakes, that means you have the knowledge, but there is a skill gap. If in the majority of your cases, even after having looked at it with the computer, you're going like, "I don't get why this move is better than mine. I really don't understand it," then you have a knowledge gap

And here's the tricky thing. For many of us, we would prefer having a knowledge gap because it is easier to digest, especially [00:04:00] if you are used to, you know, being a logical thinker, a well-performing, , human in your, you know, business life. It is hard for us to kind of be at a moment of saying, "I understand what I should do, but I cannot do it."

That is very frustrating, but that is actually the reality of a sport, and that's why I think it's so important that you see chess as a sport more. You know, it's closer to a physical sport like, football or baseball or whatever sport you're into, where, well, hit the ball or pass the ball to your friend, you know, is kind of a very clear task, but executing it well is the difficulty.

Chess is very much the same, right? Well, you shouldn't hang your piece. Sounds so logical, but you keep hanging your pieces, which is super frustrating. But, that's just how the game of chess works So the reality is that while we would like to believe that there is a knowledge gap, for most of us, I would say [00:05:00] 80%-plus of you doing that test, you should get a very clear result of, "Oh, yeah, I have a skill gap."

Okay? And so if that is the case, well, basically 95% of, my teaching, my writing, my podcasts, my courses are about closing that skill gap, so those things are for you. And this episode was just about figuring out if you are part of the exceptions, right? So this test was for you guys. If you feel like, "Yeah, no, I had a knowledge gap," then actually that is nearly an exciting news.

Because if you've done the test correctly and you really truly have a knowledge gap, in my opinion, fixing a knowledge gap is easier than fixing a skill gap. What you need, and this is super important, you need a good book, you need a course, you need working with a coach, you need human input for solving knowledge, gaps.

You don't need random knowledge from some YouTube videos, and you just pray and hope that , you know, it somehow fills your knowledge [00:06:00] gap. You really need dedicated, clear knowledge. So if you are, let's say, below 1500, focus on beginner knowledge, right? Maybe an all-in-one course or something like that.

Okay, if you have a knowledge gap in a specific pawn structure, then focus on knowledge from that specific pawn structure. Okay? If you have the means for it, then go get a coach that is above you and ask them, "Hey, I have a knowledge gap in that specific thing." Or maybe ask them, "Hey, if you look at my 10 games, do you agree with me that I have a knowledge gap?

And if yes, you know, share with me that knowledge that I seem to be lacking." So you can fix that knowledge gap. And then you know you will have fixed it when you go back and do the same test in a month or two and you're like, "Oh, yeah, now I actually get why, these are mistakes. So I have the knowledge now.

Now I just need to turn them into skills." Okay? And then you rinse and repeat. That's the whole, , spiel of, chess improvement. It's just, learning some new [00:07:00] knowledge , and that's taking a much longer time, turning into skills so that you are able to put into practice what you know about chess.

And then you learn something new, and you turn it into a skill, and so on and so forth. That's it for this one. Make sure to actually look at your last 10 games that you lost and realize, okay, is it a knowledge or a skill gap? And then get to work 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.

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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 [00:09:00] from me. Thank you for listening, and see you next time.