How to Become a Grandmaster
The following article is really all about the difference between amateur players and those who are more experienced, like professional players and grandmasters.
Chess coaching (particularly online chess coaching) has really taken off in recent years. I started doing YouTube, which has led to taking on more students. Sadly for my bank balance, keeping hold of these students is a serious challenge, partly because the chess world is permeated with professional chess players trying the same thing, and partly because I have not yet developed a more regimented set-up that could compete with something like Jacob Aagaard’s killer chess training, for example.
One thing that strikes me when working with students is how they tend to over-generalise when discussing positions. When grandmasters or master level players looks at a chess position they will first look at variations. It is all about the specific concrete details of the position.
If I ask an amateur player to describe what they think about a particular position, I am quite likely to get a lot of waffle about some of the general features of the position, with very few concrete variations mentioned. All this waffle is doing is getting in the way of what is important, which is to break down the position by sheer brute force calculation. The amateur players overload their chess brain with too much information.
So how can the reader aspire to grandmaster level calculation?
The following tips should help:
1. Annotate your games. Very few amateur players bother to annotate and analyse their games. If you look at the 16 individuals playing in the Candidates currently taking place in Toronto, they will all own a copy of ChessBase on their laptop and have detailed files of their own games, as well as their potential opponents. This is the level of professionalism you need to aspire to if you want to achieve a level of success in chess. You might say, I don't have the time to do all this - I don't have the time to analyse my games. This brings me on to point 2.
2. Manage the time you spend on chess effectively. There is nothing wrong with spending many hours online playing blitz chess, because recently this has been the path to many younger players getting very good very quickly. However, if you are spending 20+ hours every week playing blitz chess, then you clearly have enough time to analyse your games, which we have already discussed is an important part of the self-improvement method. You also have enough time for more focused elements of chess improvement, like solving puzzles and tackling training positions.
3. Play longer games online. I think for juniors it is one thing, for adult improvers it is quite another. For adults with limited time, I would recommend restrictingthe number of blitz games you play online and replacing at least some of these with rapidplay or even longer time controls. Analyse these games afterwards, either by yourself or with an engine, or by a combination of the two. That way, the games will hopefully make more of an impression, and you'll start to see more candidate moves than you were seeing before.
4. Solve chess puzzles and studies. This can be Puzzle Push, puzzles on Chess.com or Lichess, or puzzles and studies that you see in books or magazines. I recently learned that one of the best young players in Europe, Daniel Dardha from Belgium, tries to solve at least 100 Lichess puzzles a day. That is the kind of work ethic that will pay off in the long run.
5. Work on your calculation. A similar point to number 4, it must be admitted. When you look at the younger stars like Pragg and Gukesh, all they will do is work on their calculation. I had a promising position in the late middle game against 2541-rated Adhiban in the recent Alicante tournament, and felt I had decent winning chances. But he spent some time working out how to nail down the draw, and he figured it out concretely. You can only do that if you train your calculation, which you can do by solving studies, training positions, buying books and courses on calculation, etc.
6. Don't over-rely on chess engines. A lot of amateur players (and many professionals) make the mistake of thinking that the best way to train their calculation is to use chess engines. Wrong! The best and most rewarding way is to use your own brain in the trial and error method. If every time you get stuck on a position you turn on an engine, you aren't really going to improve.
7. Buy chess books. If, for example, you live in or around London, then you probably have easy access to the Chess and Bridge shop in London, as well as Waterstones outlets which are likely to sell a wide selection of chess books. There is also the opportunity to buy books online. When I was going through a funk a few years ago it was because I had become over#dependent on using chess engines, and my laziness meant it was becoming difficult to use my own chess brain. Recently I started buying chess books again, and it reminded me of why I had become fascinated by chess in the first place, namely the way in which chess positions and the personalities behind them would come to life. For me the most fascinating part of chess is the analytical process, and how you problem solve your way to the best move. Although sales of chess books are on the wane, at least partly because they are forced to compete with other methods of improvement like those offered by online websites, it is my belief that chess books are still one of the best ways to access this analytical method.
8. Play as much as you can, even if this means online. I know this possibly contradicts one of my earlier points, but one of the things I noticed recently is how people like Nakamura would play a lot online, and how that would benefit him because he is constantly training his brain. OK - I can't compare myself with Hikaru Nakamura, but I have noticed that when I've come off a long chess break I've often played badly, so I've tried to consciously force myself to play every day, and I think it is paying off. If you think about it, it makes sense. If you were a middle-distance runner and didn't train for a month, you would most likely be terrible. Why do we think it's any different when you are a chess player?
9. When training your calculation, work on captures and checks. David Howell mentioned this in one of his recent columns in the Sunday Times, and it is very good advice. If amateur players worked on these basics, they would be amazed at the improvements in their results. Also, train yourself to look further and not give up on lines too easily. Many players struggle to improve, as they have a tendency to be too superficial with their analysis and skimp through lines too quickly.
10. Play against engines. Although I'm slightly negative when it comes to chess computers because I've seen the downside, there is also an osmosis involved when you train with them a lot. I actually had my big breakthrough as a player when I was in my mid-teens after purchasing a Nigel Short Saitek chess computer. Although it was fairly feeble compared to today's monsters, I found that playing it a lot improved my tactics exponentially. I heard a similar story about Anand in the early 1990s. Because he was friends with Frederic Friedel from ChessBase, Vishy used to practise with Fritz a lot. He was already a tactical genius before this, but it made him more or less unstoppable, and he went on a long run of winning tournaments. So it always amazes me when I speak to amateur players who tell me that they can't be bothered to play against engines. You have an entity that is stronger than the best human player on your phone or your laptop, and you can't be bothered to take advantage of that?
11. Look out for opponents’ mistakes. This also relates to number 10, because when you train with computers a lot you start becoming more alert to blunders inherent in a position. I recently read an article about a chess engine developed by Google’s Deep Mind technologies that can play to grandmaster level without calculating even one move ahead. Apparently, it just survives on evaluations alone. When they tested this engine against human players it preformed much better than it had managed in matches against its fellow engines, because we humans weren't taking advantage of its tactical errors. That made me realise that we don't spend enough time thinking about whether our opponents have made blunders or not, preferring to focus on our own play, so in my last two tournaments I've seen an uptick in my results as I've put this watchful approach into practice.
12. Focus on the technical side of chess. When I watched the recent Vera Menchik Memorial in London, I was surprised at some of the basic mistakes in endings that some of the players, who were often quite experienced, were committing. But that can only be down to a lack of study and experience in those specific endgames. About two years ago I didn't know how to mate with king, knight and bishop vs king, so I'm in the same boat. If you take the time and effort to study endgames deeply, it is obvious that you'll put yourself ahead of your peers. And one of the benefits of studying endgames is that you won't feel the need or desire to do too much too soon, because you'll be confident in your ability once you reach the technical phase.
13. Remember, hard work pays off! Chess players have plateaux and periods where they don't improve, but if you follow some of the advice given above I am certain that your hard work will pay off in the long run. Good luck!