At the end of July, I set myself a challenge: 30 days, each day 6 games of 3+2 Blitz with full focus. The goal: reaching my new all time high online rating.
Here is how I failed this challenge but still won 224 points in the process.
Win 100 points without training.
Tactics, Endgames, analyzing games, working on strategy, learning new openings… there are so many ways to train. If you know my work, you’ll know that I am a big fan of simplicity. You really don’t need to train that many things to improve your game. You just need to do the right things.
More recently, I’ve become even more drastic. I formed this new belief that anyone can win 100 points without chess training. Read this again:
I firmly believe anyone (except maybe the top 10 players) can win 100 points without chess training.
I understand this is pretty crazy and that’s why I set out to do it on my own to proof a point.
The starting point
As I didn’t put a big emphasis on my own chess, I often played mindlessly. When you saw me play a game of chess, most likely, I was procrastinating on something hard. Due to this way of playing, my chess.com rating dropped all the way down to 2476 on February 14th, 2024. I got tilted by this habit and quit playing in April, rated 2516. This is a terrible rating for a GM who is World Number ~300 in classical chess and has a highest Chess.com rating of 2776 (still rather low).
The goal
I had one main goal: stay consistent with 6 games per day for 30 days, which means 180 blitz games in a month. With this process, I hoped to reach a new all-time high. As I failed both goals, I never wrote about the experience. Now that I wanted to show a student how good focus can make a difference, I checked my stats and found the differences pretty impressive.
My stats
I played a total of 171 games in this period, which is close enough to 180. The sad part is that only on a handful of days did I really stick to my 6 games. I even started the challenge by playing 14 games the same day (2×7). I won 97 games, lost 55, and drew 19. Most importantly, I increased my rating by 224 points (2516 – 2740).
Since this challenge, I lost back roughly 100 points… because I started playing mindlessly again.
The takeaways
- The difference between playing mindlessly and actually focusing during a game is insane. Even though I failed my 6 games per day, just having a challenge and actually trying to focus made an enormous difference.
- Sticking to a regular schedule is hard! This experience made me more empathic for my struggling readers and students. Knowing what to do is one thing; putting it into practice is another.
- Clear guidelines are essential. Even though I didn’t manage to stick to my 6-game interval, the experience I had on days where I played up to 15 games wasn’t great. I’m an even bigger fan of planning your serious blitz/rapid games now.
- Setting a reward/punishment would help. I could have increased my chances by betting on a certain outcome or…
- Holding yourself accountable is a great motivational tool. I should have mentioned the challenge in my newsletter and thus held myself accountable. The thought of people going to my profile and seeing I can’t stick to my plan would have helped me stay consistent.
- Good habits need to be consistent. A challenge is a good way to start, but you always need to be mindful to keep good habits in place.
My recommendations in a nutshell
If you struggle to play with good focus, do the following:
- Take at least 7 days off playing. Do other things for your chess, and get rid of impulsive playing habits.
- Set yourself a clear goal and daily limit. I like 6 games for Blitz and 2 games for Rapid.
- Commit to analyzing your games. Playing is nice and fun, but if you want to learn, make sure to analyze your games.
- Plan your playing sessions: take 10 minutes on Sundays to plan your playing sessions for the upcoming week.
- Set a reward/punishment and hold yourself accountable. The goal is to make success easier than failure.
Challenge round 2?
I would like to do the challenge again at some point. I’m currently working on many other projects, so I prefer to use my energy elsewhere. But I’ll do another round of 30 days, 6 games a day, sometime in the next 6 months. And then I’ll share it with you guys ahead of time. For now, I challenge you to play with better focus and see the difference for yourself, either with a challenge or a better awareness of your playing habits. Even if you might fail your challenge, you could still win more than 200 points in the process.
Keep improving,
Noël
PS: This article was initially sent out to my Newsletter list. If you want to get chess improvement advice for free in your inbox, join 17,000+ chess improvers by signing up for Friday Grandmaster Insights here.
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