The Most Overlooked Factor for Improvement in Chess

All the way back in 2016, I began to take chess very seriously.

As of February of 2016, I had a FIDE rating of 1827, and I was determined to do whatever it took to become stronger.

After 9 months of learning from courses online, playing in tournaments consistently, my rating had moved all but a couple inches, up to 1877.

This felt a bit depressing, given all the consistent effort I was putting in, and how much my life revolved around chess at the time.

But, then over the next three months, something crazy happened. My rating leapfrogged all the way from 1877 to 2080!

All of a sudden, I went from a random kid, to one of the top juniors in the country for my age.

So, the secret must be in what I did during those three months, right?

Wrong.

So what is the point I am trying to make here, you may ask.

My Realization

Well, I’ve recently come around to the idea that there is one big thing that separates those who achieve their goals, and those who do not.

Patience.

Despite the lack of gain in rating during the initial 9 month period, the flashy rating gain I made, only occurred because of the struggle I underwent.

Even if things are seemingly not going anywhere, if there is continuous hard work going on behind the scenes, this break could come at any moment.

To some, this might sound obvious.

Yet, everything around us in modern society seems completely oblivious to this.

Instead of doing what works, we all want the sexy shortcuts.

Since most of you reading this have probably found me through my chess-related content, I’ll give a familiar example.

You log on to chess.com to play one blitz game, which you lose.

You are frustrated that your rating has dropped from what it was, so you try to play a couple more games to get your rating back up.

Before you know it, what was supposed to be 10 minutes, turned into an hour (maybe hours).

This subconscious desire to leave the site with a higher rating than you started the session with is in fact extremely damaging.

“Why? Don’t we want to increase our rating?”, one could ask.

This is not false, but we have to understand that increasing our rating by any substantial amount will be gradual.

Some days you might lose rating points, sometimes you might gain. The overall trajectory should be upwards, however.

In other words, you must be patient.

Imagine, if you were actually able to gain rating points after every single blitz session.

You would eventually be rated 3500 and supposedly be stronger than Magnus Carlsen.

Let that sink in.

From a Different Perspective

This is even more apparent in the physical domain. Take, working out at the gym, for example.

Let’s say Bob was able to bench press 60kg for a single repetition, giving it all he had.

If his friend said “dude, go for 100kg!”, and Bob attempted it, he would probably get crushed by the bar (and maybe end up in an emergency room).

That is not to say he wouldn’t be able to lift the 100kg in due time, but that it would require months, probably years of consistent training to build up to that point.

Most people would probably give up though, somewhere along the way.

Why, though?

This actually goes deeper than just patience.

For patience to exist, there must be an even greater desire to achieve a particular objective.

Without that, "patience" may just well be a facade for a lack of effort, and lack of true dedication.

"When there is a will, there is a way". 

That might be a discussion for another time, however

 - Sam