by GM Noël Studer | May 20, 2023 | Mindset
Since starting my blog in 2021, I’ve answered hundreds of questions from readers. Most of my answers begin with “It depends.” This isn’t a cop-out, but rather what I genuinely believe. It’s incredibly challenging to provide clear-cut...
by GM Noël Studer | May 13, 2023 | Mindset
Every single time I thought I found an extremely sophisticated, “genius” solution to a simple problem, I was mistaken. I can recall dozens of games where I made silly mistakes simply because I wanted to be too smart. I quickly spotted the logical, obvious...
by GM Noël Studer | May 10, 2023 | Beginner, Mindset
Knowing is not doing. I know meditation helps me. Yet I’m not meditating every day. I know playing blitz games without focus isn’t fun or good for my chess. Yet you’ll find some of those games in my Lichess & Chess.com profiles. In the same way, just having some...
by GM Noël Studer | Apr 29, 2023 | Beginner, Mindset, Train like a Grandmaster
Winning 752 points in 6 months. What sounds like a ridiculous marketing pitch is the real success story of my student Tatjana. She managed to raise her chess.com rapid rating from 269 to 1021 points in only half a year. In this article, I want to go through three key...
by GM Noël Studer | Apr 19, 2023 | Mindset
Not enough time, no money, too old, bad memory. Those are just some of the most frequent excuses I hear for Chess improvement. “It is true, that’s not an excuse” you might say. Nope. Only excuses. Just give me 5 Minutes and I hope I’ll convince you. In this article, I...
by GM Noël Studer | Apr 12, 2023 | Mindset, Train like a Grandmaster
If Chess improvement was easy, everyone would be a Grandmaster. What makes improvement difficult is that you usually only see results after a painful period. I recently realized this with my health when my therapist told me: “To get to the Next Level, you will need to...
