How i would get better at Chess

This is how I would get better at chess.


In this post I will detail how I got to 2000 Elo on Chess.com and the process I need to improve even more from that level. But what exactly did I do to achieve this rating?



Imagine you are going to start lifting weights. When you begin, you can only, for the sake of simplicity, lift 10 kg of weights, and any weights higher than that are too much for you to handle. After a few months of continuous practice with the 10 kg weights, you will recognize that it takes less effort to lift the 10 kg dumbbells in comparison to before, so you decide to increase the weight to 15 kg. After 10 years of this growth, you are lifting 60 kg dumbbells, a weight your past self probably couldn't even lift a centimeter. This way of getting stronger has quite a catchphrase: Progressive overload

When lifting weights, you always want to pick the dumbbells with a weight that has just the right amount of difficulty. Not too hard, not too easy. Imagine using 1 kg dumbbells; then I would probably assume you are quite dumb. Finding dumbbells that have just the right amount of weight for you is called living on the edge

When learning and improving at chess, you MUST utilize this principle of living on the edge. Let me give you an example from my own chess life.

When I was rated around 1000 on Chess.com, I thought it was a great idea to buy the famous Modern Chess Openings book. It is around 730 pages long and contains long lines in virtually every opening in the world, with small amounts of commentary, which mainly consisted of who played the line and when (like who gives a damn lol). Anyways, this book was WAAYY above my level. It's like trying to bench 200 kg when your PB (personal best) is 50 kg. I didn't enjoy analyzing the opening lines in the book, as I did not really understand exactly why I was supposed to be better in some positions. 

In a nutshell, you want to find chess activities that are just difficult enough. This is why having a chess coach is super duper useful, as he/she can focus on your specific level and give you the right amount of challenge to make you improve.

But what if you don't have or want a chess coach? Well, here are some activities I found enjoyable and absolutely improved my chess using progressive overload.
  1. Play chess online. You play against competition at your own level; you live on the edge.
  2. Watch high-level analysis on YouTube. Gothamchess and Hikaru are not optimal if you are above, like, 1500, since they have quite a big audience who needs big help in order to understand the positions they get into. YouTubers I recommend are Arthur Neiksans, Chess Cabinet, Mihal Marin, Chesscoach Andras, Silicon Road, GM Alex Colovic, and GM Noel Studer.
  3. Buy courses; they are often well made and suited for all levels on Chessable.
  4. Analyze using Leela and other engines. Live on the edge by actually playing against them and trying to understand what they are playing.
  5. General chess stuff you find enjoyable, but just hard enough that you improve.
Hopefully this guide made you think about chess improvement in another way! Really improving at anything requires progressive overload, and quick success is really not something that comes without quick action. Bye for now!

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