Hi there.
In this lecture, I'm going to tell you one of the best ways of improving in chess.
Basically, it's practice, but with analysis of your games, especially those ones that you lose.
So don't just throw them away or take them out memory.
Have a look for them.
Analyze those games.
With maybe a computer, if it's an over the board game, then maybe the opponents in what's called post-mortem
analysis.
Or if you record the game, which ideally is very, very useful, you can go over it at another point
in time with a stronger player.
So when you lose, it's really an opportunity to improve.
So Capablanca, one of the world chess champion, said, you know, basically you learn a lot more from
your losses than your wins.
For me personally, the more painful the loss, in fact, the more serious the game was.
Quite often, like, the longer the time control, the higher the stakes, the more time investment
you played in it.
Not not so very, very quick game online, but say a club game, the more painful it is, the more I
can be motivated eventually to try and learn lessons from it.
So even if you lose a game, you're going to try and take it as a kind of scientific experiment, essentially.
So trying to analyze that with the opponent afterwards, if it's over the board, so it's hard to do
because you might feel upset in chess, you do need a fake skin to basically you need to put yourself
beyond the feet in that immediate game.
Got to treat it as a long term voyage of discovery.
So having a thick skin is really, really, really, really important because essentially everyone's
going to lose when they first die.
It's how you lose.
It's how you learn the lessons for the next game.
So you use the opportunity given by the loss to get a deeper insight into chess.
Generally, your internal quality is your understanding of chess, the external policies, your rating.
They can come later or as a side effect, but you want to build on the foundations given in this course,
in your opening little game and game and other areas.
But especially psychologically, you will have to take sustained efforts to get these lessons in the
skies, essentially.
And even if you think you know, the opponent, you know, didn't offer anything, maybe they were lucky.
You still got to sort of see, well, what caused the lunk was like in a vacuum.
Maybe they had active pieces, maybe they had a lot of counterplay.
Even if you were, like, material up, how did they get such counterplay?
You've got to be good at locking down.
Sometimes the opponents can't play the skill areas, believe it or not, to work on.
You can't attribute things to like chess is not a game of luck.
It's not with a dice.
For example, to a large extent you can't control the outcomes.
And if you feel well, you played all these moves.
But if the acrobat moves, made positions for you much more difficult to play, then maybe you need
to think about that a little bit more, maybe say, well, maybe I shouldn't have gone for that piece.
I should have been more modest than just gone for a pawn instead or something even smaller where I've
still got a grip on the opponents.
Can't find the position.
Still kind of easy to play.
So, yes, each game you lose especially is a lesson.
And for me, yeah, the more painful, the longer the time limits, the more I've I've done searching
for a greater truth and also greater knowledge.
You can also just enhance at least, you know, maybe your opening knowledge, but your mental game
motivations as well, your tactical strength, your positional strength and also your end game.
So each of the kind of essential areas that this course covers, each game is kind of evidence, feedback
mechanism.
How strong are you actually in that area?
Do you need to revisit that area of chess or all areas of chess?
It's that knowledge of your particular strengths and weaknesses as applied to the foundational concentric
circles knowledge that we have in this course.
So I wanted to build you, you know, basic a basic foundation in this course of open little game and
game.
But it's actually your particular strengths and weaknesses which are highlighted by your particular
losses.
So hopefully you get more and more insight into where exactly you might be weak and might need to improve.
So if you lose in a certain way, try and recognize the patterns, especially if you can see the patterns
of loss, then that's even better that there might be some remedy.
And that's a whole type of weakness that you might have and you can try and address.
They might be the wrong conclusions.
But you know what?
You can test that with further practice.
So it's like you create a hypothesis and you go into the next game with that working hypothesis and
you test it and maybe eventually you see well in certain types of positions, OK, this style of play
might work and in this style of play might work.
So the process of improvements is a process of evidence gathering from your game and trying to use a
process of learning an abstraction.
By abstraction, I mean looking at the core kind of patterns, the more abstract patterns that you see
and you try and address and improve those patterns.
So each game is essentially an example.
It's like your training, your own, your network in the brain.
So you need to try and improve fundamentally with each game as far as possible.
So not just the particular insight into that variation.
Hopefully it's not just about accumulating open variation.
You got to try and get as much fundamental leverage.
From that particular game example to improve your game as fundamentally as possible, essentially,
so essentially in a nutshell, you want to try and get absolutely maximum benefit from any experience
that you get.
So the faster you want to improve, basically the evidence is there in the games you play.
Have a look at them.
If they're online, then they're already recorded.
That's convenient.
So look at what the computer says, but take that with a pinch of salt.
Sometimes you might want to get a strong appliance go over you.
There are lots of coaches online now.
It's very, very easy to get a coach on various sites and you might want to go over some losses with
them as part of the training.
So, you know, chess is about the accumulation, ideally, of getting your fundamentals right.
First, not just an endless series of memrise variations.
You want to go to the extreme, the other extreme, get your fundamentals in place in the opening game,
end game.
Hopefully this course, if you master all the material in this course, that's a really, really good
start.
But as you play and practice, you also need a super thick skin and you need to put in on the scientific
hat.
It's not just a sporting event to be upset about.
This is a recorded example.
So if you analyze, draw conclusions, get abstractions, it's like heart in the paperchase.
When he was looking, all the cases he tries to abstract from each case.
What are the fundamental points you use?
The process of questioning, answering the Socratic method to reach the more fundamental truths of each
game.
For me, for example, when I went to Gibraltar, it was a very long time control, massive influence.
I had some of my more painful losses.
Eventually I had whole theory hypothesized about positional exchange sacrifices.
I use that theory.
I won so many games in league games after with positional exchange sacrifices, I wanted to push my
game into a more dynamic level.
I realized I was missing a lot.
So this this process of creating a hypothesis and you can test it in the next game.
That's the beauty of chess.
Practice, but also in a sort of controlled manner, try and play on reasonable time limits, so it's
not just about winning on time, but winning on position.
So don't just playing speed chess, you know, try and try and get the time limit up maybe 10 minutes
with three second increments, sometimes online.
I know there's a there's other risks online, but hopefully, you know, like playing against computer
chips.
Hopefully some of your opponents look at their ratings and their track record.
Hopefully they have lost a few games.
They're not just invincible.
So you do get a decent time control.
We have time to think.
And so it's not just all about time pressure.
So look at the games after draw the conclusions.
It is a kind of scientific process, a treadmill.
He's just going to have a thick skin look at the games after.
Draw the conclusions, draw hypotheses for next time, use the hypothesis, draw new conclusions after
that next game, the process continues.
For me, my historical evolution, I had an initial hypothesis about chess, it's all about using the
best resources around the opponent's king.
I won that national writing in 1999, but junior in 1989.
But it wasn't it was only the start of the story.
Then I looked at ideas of management, the mental game elements.
Nowadays, I just think, you know, chess is about finding the downsides of the opponent's position.
I certainly have had this kind of evolution of my thinking in chess over many, many years.
It's almost feels like sometimes going around in circles, but you don't have to endlessly go around
in circles.
We can minimize that by courses like this.
One of the courses.
That's a good start.
OK, I hope you have great fun on the journey of discovery to get these amazing insights of chess.
Chess is actually a supervised game, so treat it as one big learning experience and definitely have
a thick skin for when you lose.
Those are golden opportunities in disguise for improving.
OK, that's so much.