I spent a very long time in the low to mid 2400s (FIDE) and getting to 2500 was a grueling process. Even though I became an IM in Fall 2017, I broke 2400 in October 2016. After a long struggle of fighting for every point I eclipsed 2500 in April 2021. Even then it would take me another 15 months to make all my norms and qualify for the GM title. Looking back at my games from the beginning of this journey, there is a lot I recognize, but even more that I don’t. Below are 4 things I altered which tangibly helped my results.
1)I started to like and appreciate opening theory.
My friends laugh when I tell them now my prep is using Chessable lifetime repertoires, but let’s compare to where I was 6 years ago. I used to read portions of the occasional Avrukh d4 repertoire book and that was the sum of my opening knowledge. My chess training had always focused on endgames and tactics and it was something I really prided myself in. I got to 2487 live in Spain (August 2019) before ever thoroughly studying theory. I knew some lines here and there, but I had no files. I rarely studied GM games in such lines. And many positions I would get during classical games, I had no experience in whatsoever (never having played such positions even in online blitz). While this had been good for developing a more resourceful independent creativity in my games, my results were undoubtedly hurt by not having adequate knowledge of the positions I got. By move 6 or 7 I would often be at the end of what I knew. There was always a pride attached to this approach which made it very hard to remedy. The chess friends I had grown up around looked down upon those ‘geeks’ who would waste time studying opening theory. ‘Why memorize when I can just use my understanding to outplay them later?’ I would often boast.
While training in Brazil in March of 2021 I came across Giri’s Najdorf course and was really astounded by its depth. 1000 variations all for one opening(?). I had never worked on any opening even to a third of that degree. I studied it voraciously and since then have become a real opening junkie. I now believe opening lines are critical for developing a nuanced perspective. I want to be clear, of course mainstream opening ideas and basic structural motifs are important, but what I’m referring to are more subtle relationships. An example of this is how the b8 knight in the Najdorf often waits to commit itself in case white plays a4 and weakens the b4 square, thereby enabling Nc6. Such strategies don’t fall under the umbrella of standard knowledge; they won’t be found in the well known manuals such as Flores Rios’ fantastic Chess Structures. When studying the Najdorf I began to appreciate the deeper level, that of opening-specific knowledge and culture. To my pleasant surprise studying openings never became the dull mind-numbing memorization I had expected. There was a little bit of that, but it was mostly improving my knowhow and intuition over a specific subset of positions.
2)I began to manage time better, and rarely ever get into time trouble.
In 2016 I would often get into time trouble. I would spend most of the opening trying to ‘figure things out’ with a great expense to my clock. I would rarely ever get to move 20 with more than 30 minutes on my clock. Time trouble would often lead to terrible outcomes. I would draw better and winning positions and lose equal ones and drawn ones. Even so, my results in general were decent which made me ignore this problem for a very long time. I thought winging it in some time scramble wasn’t too bad and I would just have to get better at managing those tense situations. It wasn’t until I did some basic analytics that I realized how bad it was hurting my chess.
Below is an example of what time trouble did to me.
I only had one particularly bad result (the draw in round 6 only lost a point so is more neutral than bad) not involving time trouble. It’s true that one of the losses in time trouble was to a 2600 but that doesn’t change the fact that I had a winning position and threw everything away. In fact I had a big advantage in the game against Cobic as well. In the end poor time management comprised the vast majority of my bad results and cost me 10 elo. If I only consider the games I managed time well, I gained elo. But those two atrocious results negated the other good 7 and then some.
So beginning recently I committed to playing much faster and much more intuitively. Occasionally I play something too fast. But now that I know openings better (see #1) the risk of my intuition going astray is much lower. I can think of only a few examples over the past 100 games, where playing too quickly has dug me into a clear disadvantage early on. And most of these were remedied by the ample time I had saved in the process. Opportunities would arise later and now I would have the time to find them. This change in my game was a big part of the 100 point turn around I experienced in April 2022. That was when I played a month in Hungary making sure to play faster chess for good. I gained 41 elo back over the month and my confidence was restored.
3)I learned to be confident in equal, simple positions
I used to have no confidence that drawn or equal positions could be won. I believe most FMs and IMs have this attitude which leads to the enormous amount of agreed draws in games between 2400s and above. I realized this comes with an assumption -- that your opponent knows as much as you. Solutions are only basic if you’ve worked on them before. Recreating even the most basic endgame ideas such as the Philidor position are very hard if you’ve never done that type of training before. Multiple times over the past year, I’ve pushed for more in equal positions (where the opponent’s solution seemed simple) and been gifted the full point. You can’t assume your opponent has already seen everything, especially if it’s no risk to you to ask him some questions. To paraphrase the hackneyed Gretsky quote, ‘Your opponent will solve 100% of the problems you don’t pose him’.
And this is ever more important as most coaches think it’s enough to only teach students openings. Countless times I've faced youth who have perceptible gaps in their endgame and middlegame understanding.
Below are a few examples of my opponent’s messing up positions that my chess culture had told me were simple.
4)I learned to be content with draws to lower rateds, especially with Black.
While fighting is good, I was dropping too many points taking enormous risks. Most of these losses were to lower rated opponents. The diagnosis was simple: I was too averse to drawing lower rateds and so would often play for a win in obviously worse positions, which would lead to frequent losses. Drawing such games isn’t good of course but it is minimally bad. It will rarely cost more than an elo point while a loss can ruin an entire tournament. A win to a lower rated is 3 or 4 points (on k-factor 10) so 1 win can cancel out 3 or 4 draws. Meanwhile a loss is as bad as 5 or 6 draws. An important nuance to this is that if you’re playing Black against someone who knows their openings well, getting winning chances is a tall order. So either surprise them and get them out of their knowledge or be more content with a draw. You could say this isn’t optimal long term since you might lose points every game as black. But keep in mind playing a game with the black pieces means you’re due for one with white. And if you can’t win the following white game against the lower rated (which would more than negate the prior draw) perhaps you don’t deserve the rating you currently have to begin with…