How do we take our game to the next level? Let’s say your current rating is X. Here is a nice little exercise: now think of a few players rated X+200, particularly of those whom you know well enough. Why are they better chess players than you? Try to pinpoint as many factors as possible and come up with an objective comparison. Basically, you should compile a dossier about yourself and about them.

Studying has diminishing returns. Improving from 800 to 1000 can be a matter of days. 1400 to 1600 usually takes people months or, for some, even years. The jump from 2100 to 2300 takes ages on average. And 2800 to 3000 is something no human has ever achieved yet. 

After a few years of relative hiatus, we seem to be witnessing a generational shift in the chess elite. A squad of young and extremely talented individuals is quickly rising through the rankings. As of this writing, there are five juniors in the world rated 2700+, and one of them, Alireza Firouzja, has already been rated 2800+ before. 

Anyway, how is a person rated X+200 different chesswise from someone rated X? It’s not easy to come up with such generalizations because each individual has his own strengths and weaknesses. 

For the sake of simplicity, let's evaluate only the three stages of the game - opening, middlegame, and endgame. One 2300-rated player could have a 2400 opening, 2300 middlegame, and 2200 endgame. The other 2300+ player could have a 2200 opening, 2400 middlegame, and 2300 endgame. Even in this example, the difference in opening knowledge for people of the same rating could easily be 200 points. And this is not an extreme case by any means. Some club players out there know openings at IM or even GM level while struggling at pretty much everything else! 

Still, for the lower-ranked players, the job of offering exact improvement tips is easier because the sample is larger and the qualification requirements are simpler. After all, there are books covering pretty much everything an Expert should know, but no step-by-step guides on how to become a top GM. An analogy is the system of education: there is your school, followed by college and even Ph.D. studies, but no guides on becoming a world-class scientist.  I recall GM Alexander Khalifman saying that any master-level player requires a personal approach in terms of coaching and eliminating weaknesses. For the lower level, it's all about building up a certain well-established base. 

From talking to people, I believe most chess players tend to overestimate the role of the opening. 1600s claim that pretty much all they need to become 2000 is to improve their opening repertoire. 2000s say the same about reaching FM level, 2300+. There are even some 2500-rated GMs who sincerely believe that the main thing that separates them from the elite is opening knowledge. However, the truth is that the stronger player is usually somewhat well-versed in a few key departments than the lower-rated opponent. The opening is important, but so is everything else. 

GM Alex Yermolinsky makes an interesting attempt to come up with such a generalization in his book “The Road to Chess Improvement”. Here is a quote:

a) 1800 vs 1600 blunders less frequently;

b) 2000 vs 1800 better understands his set of transitional positions from opening to the middlegame;

c) 2200 vs 2000 better feels the flow of the middlegame, uptrends and downtrends, critical points;

d) 2400 vs 2200 better performs in the transitional stage from the middlegame to the endgame and knows and plays the endgame better;

e) 2600 vs 2400 has much more knowledge of typical middlegame and endgame positions (as a result of the elaborate preparation of one's opening repertoire) and is more skillful in tactics and time management.

Do you agree with his conclusions? Do they support or contradict your personal experience?

Alireza was the 14th player in chess history to join the elite 2800+ club

Another popular question these days is what it takes to progress from being an aspiring 2600+ player, who makes a living by playing club league games and winning mid-tier open tournaments, to a 2800+, who is highly sought in any elite closed round robin. Here are a few observations I have made over the years by observing some of the best players in the world:

While some 2600s play so much they don't have enough time to work on their openings, 2800s do invest a huge amount of time in opening preparation.

2800s face more or less the same people year after year, so they spend less time on "general" preparation and more on targeting their main competitors' weaknesses. At this stage, creating a dossier about the player and his main opponents is essential, whereas it is less important for people who mainly play open events with mixed opposition.

2600s usually work on their own or with a friend. A 2800 can afford to have a second or even a team that helps him prepare.

Your average 2600 probably doesn't have any special devices and analyses on a regular PC. 2800s rent or own chess servers, allowing them to save time on analysis and develop better ideas.

2800s tend to be much more hard-working than 2600s. They generally invest more time into studying chess and can afford this since they don't have to compete as often to make a living.

2800s are fitter and lead a healthy lifestyle. For example, no member of the current top-10 smokes. Most top players pay attention to physical exercise, sleep, and proper nutrition. In contrast, there are quite a few 2600s out there who smoke, drink alcohol, don't do any sports, etc.

2800s are more disciplined and ambitious. The typical 2600 is more or less used to the grind, traveling from one open event to another and not hoping to change his life much. If anything, they are afraid of losing the level they have already attained. The people who hit 2800+ typically invest in themselves and set high goals. Most of them aim to become the World Champion.

Regardless of your current rating, I wish you the best of luck on your chess journey!

Interested in taking your game to the next level? Try out Magnus Trainer, an app designed by 5-times World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen and his star-studded team of experts!

Do you know what it takes to increase your chess rating by 200 points? 

How Do You Improve Your Chess Rating by 200 Points? 

To many of us, tactics seem to be the most accessible and entertaining component of chess to train. Myriads of players worldwide solve exercises regularly, yet few of us become truly powerful tacticians. Why is it so?

I have been asked this question on many occasions. Moreover, I have solved over 10,000 serious tactical problems in my life, yet over the last few years, I have hardly noticed any tangible improvement in my combinational vision. When it comes to my chess friends and colleagues, the situation is quite similar. They have more or less hit a plateu at some point. When I tried to approach experts and torture them for a reason why it's so hard to break the barrier, neither of them had an answer ready. In fact, there are far more open than solved issues for me in chess, and hardly anyone can help. The more you learn about chess or anything else, the more you realize how ignorant you are on this subject. 

In the book "Thinking Inside the Box", GM Jacob Aagaard mentions that while it is relatively easy to make a big jump if you smartly focus on developing your calculation abilities, the propensity for tactics seems to be more on the "either you have it, or you don't" side. From my experience, I tend to totally agree. I have always been reasonably gifted when it comes to spotting unusual tactical ideas and could give some low-tier GMs, especially those who lean towards positional play, a run for their money in this respect. Nevertheless, I am fully aware that I am nowhere near as sharp tactically as, let's say, Nepo or Firouzja. And even if I started drilling tactics all day long, I would never catch up with them since their talent is on a whole different level. 

Let's speak more concretely. My Lichess puzzle record rating is over 9000...sorry, 2800, and on Chess.com, I had 3200+ back when the scores seemed to be lower on average. When I looked at the top list, I was right between two GMs rated about 2650 FIDE. 

Back when Chess.com used to display the average rating of the people who tried their Puzzles tool, it used to be somewhere around 1100. The total number of attempts was a few hundred million back then. The average number of attempts was a meager 44. Clearly, most users weren't serious about their improvement or didn't enjoy the trainer, so they made a couple of tries and quit. Still, the participants' average rating was too low to stick with the hypothesis that people had hit their ceiling at a certain point.

Another idea of mine was that performance depends on several non-chess factors. For example, how fast you get tired. Whether you have the patience to diligently find that mate in 3 or not. And so on. Hence, in theory, one should make gradual progress by solving tactics daily and improving the non-chess aspects that somehow contribute to one's performance. 

For instance, I realized that I play blitz better when I am caffeinated. Also, after losing weight from 105 to about 80 kgs, I felt my endurance over the board increased. Still, such factors account only for slight boosts, while your chess skills play the leading role in the overall performance. 

My current working hypothesis is that successfully solving chess tactics requires some other forms of training. An analogy would be that if you want to bench-press a lot, you don't limit your training to merely bench-pressing daily. Similarly, one may have to resort to other supplementary exercises to improve one's tactics prowess. At first glance, this statement looks counterintuitive, but you never know.

Moreover, do you know what is even harder to train than tactics? The speed at which you solve tactics! Sometimes, puzzle ratings may be misleading since, in untimed mode, the results depend a lot on your persistence. Some club players can sit for half an hour or even more on one puzzle. As a result, they might obtain a rating close to the GM level, even though the GMs in question spend only 10 seconds or so per puzzle. However, when it comes to reaction speed, our brains seem to be wired differently. I have always been more of a strategy/RPG kind of gamer, enjoying the genres where high APM is not the deciding factor. Meanwhile, some of my classmates were into shooters or arcade games, which are about clicking fast and precisely. Even though I have practiced in Tactics Frenzy or Lichess Puzzle Storm/Racer, my skills of "fondling the mouse" (a brilliant expression by Vladimir Kramnik) or furiously tapping on my phone screen haven't improved much. Apparently, my chess software is running on a 36-year-old processor that doesn't seem to get more MHz as the years go by. And I am not proficient enough as a biohacker to give it a decent upgrade! As a result, when it comes to speed and solving simple puzzles, some relatively low-rated kids can leave me in the dust since I am nowhere as good as them in terms of premoving the solution moves.

Finally, you might wonder why the chess community keeps feeding you with all those mantras like "some tactics every day keeps the patzer away" if it is unclear whether such a strategy yields any long-term benefits? The answer is that it is known for a fact that if you don't work on his tactics, you will be degrading in this area. Meanwhile, if you practice it, you will likely experience rapid progress in the early stages and at least maintain the status quo after a long training period. The truth is that, as you can see from the abovementioned data, most people quit too early. That's why, from my experience, most people tend to overestimate at what rate they would improve if they started taking chess seriously. Since they have never practiced chess consistently for a few hours daily, they have all sorts of illusions of what will happen if they go all out. In fact, hard work is a must for any aspiring chess player, but it is by no means a guarantee of success. Sounds motivating, doesn't it? 😉

Don't miss your chance to learn tactics & other aspects of chess from Magnus Carlsen while he is still the World Champion!

Why do some people see tactics much better and faster than others? Can you close this gap? 

Anyone who has been part of the chess community for long enough knows that quite a few chess players are superstitious. How large is the number, however?

Here are the results of a poll conducted at Pogonina.com regarding mascots:

As you can see, almost half of the respondents have a mascot, and about 6% used to have one in the past. Please note that this only concerns mascots, whereas many other superstitions are popular among chess aficionados! Let's review some of the most prevalent ones.

Quite a few chess players use the same "lucky" pen for every round. 

Another widespread approach is to wear the same clothes as long as things go well and change the outfit once you lose. Therefore, when you see a chess player in a greasy sweater, it may be due to this superstition! Alternatively, some players sport chess-themed clothes, probably also hoping that it will boost their results. Former Women's Chess Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk is one of the fashion icons in this sense. 

Here is another remarkable outfit, this time by GM David Navara:

Also, a lot of players bring special mascots to the tournament. For instance, in her junior years, Judit Polgar (whose Zodiac sign is Leo) used to carry a statue of a lion with her wherever she went. If you ever got a chance to play against Judit Polgar, Age 9, in the Play Magnus app, you would surely know this interesting fact!

Or, another related example, Teimour Radjabov revealed during his room tour in Moscow that he carries a statue of Napoleon with him when traveling. 

Similar to wearing the same clothes, many chess players choose not to shave their beards/mustache until they lose. For instance, in the World Cup in 2021, Sam Shankland progressed to the ¼-finals, where he was eliminated by former Candidate Sergey Karjakin, without shaving. 

There are plenty of examples of this type; it is one of the most popular superstitions among male chess players. 

A prime example in this category is the legendary Garry Kasparov. Born on April 13, he became the 13th World Chess Champion in 1985 (8+5=13). Throughout his entire chess career, he believed 13 to be his lucky magic number. 

Also, he was notoriously serious about thinking that the age gap between him and Karpov (12 years) and him and Kramnik (also 12 years) was a sign from above. According to this theory, the next World Chess Champion was supposed to be born in 1987. When Teimour Radjabov, who was born in that exact year, defeated Garry Kasparov in Linares with Black in 2003 and received the best game award, Garry was mad about the judges' decision. At that time, the prospects of Radja becoming the next WC were widely discussed in the chess community. However, as you probably know, the next Challenger will be Ian Nepomniachtchi, while the hottest guy on the block is 18-year old Firouzja Alireza, who recently became #2 on the live ratings, crossing the 2800 mark. Still, Radjabov is expected to compete in the following Candidates, so we shouldn't write him off yet. 

In this video, Magnus Carlsen addressed another popular chess superstition – the birthday curse. Since many pros have to play tournament games on their birthdays, there is a certain notion that more often than not, it results in suffering losses. Quite often, the players feel low when they approach their birthday eve, and their thoughts wander elsewhere, so it is hard to focus on chess. However, when on his birthday Magnus Carlsen convincingly won the playoff against Sergey Karjakin in New York in 2016, he waived this superstition off:

In chess, it is said that you should not play chess on your birthday; that it's bad luck. So far, I have yet to experience that.

Let's hope that these words won't become prophetic and bite him since on November 30, 2021 Carlsen will be playing Game 4 of the World Chess Championship match. Unless you are rooting for Ian Nepomniachtchi, of course! 

This item stands out from the line a bit. Let's consider Viktor Kortschnoj, who played two World Chess Championship matches against Anatoly Karpov. Viktor was highly superstitious and genuinely believed that Anatoly Karpov's assistant, a parapsychologist, could hypnotize the former by staring at him from the playing hall. Later Kortschnoj half-seriously lamented that Carlsen must possess hypnotic powers to defeat other Grandmasters so easily in drawn positions. 

Also, Kortschnoj played a correspondence match against the late Geza Maroczy, earnestly believing that such a feat is possible to achieve. 

Numerous articles and even books have been written on this topic. One of the most recent and interesting ones, in my opinion, is this column by GM Genna Sosonko who knew Viktor The Terrible quite well. By the way, it opens with a mention of the fact that Viktor considered 19 to be his unlucky number.

During tournaments, the routine of most chess players reminds the Groundhog Day movie. They eat at the same places, take the same walks, prepare the same way and at the same time, etc. In part, this is similar to having a wardrobe full of identical black t-shirts: you save time and mental energy by not having to make a choice. However, some players stick to their rituals since it is their way to get into the right state of mind for the game and to convince themselves that they will do well, especially if the ritual has worked well in the past. 

Let me share one of my personal secrets. I try to show up for the round earlier than my opponent. Then I take my pen and pretend to fill in the result on the scoresheet. 1-0 if I am playing White or 0-1 if I am Black. From what I have seen, if I manage not to be late and perform this feat without my opponent catching me red-handed, I do win. Just kidding, of course. This is more of a way to shake off the tension for me than something I genuinely believe in. 

Finally, since the Carlsen – Nepo match is about to begin in Dubai, it is quite relevant to hear what Ian Nepomniachtchi has to say on this matter. Let me quote his recent interview for Chess.com:

Are you superstitious? Do you have any lucky items?

I used to be like this, and one of my first coaches told me "ok, it's very normal that you get to play wearing the same shirt if the tournament is going alright, don't change anything in your daily routine." But in general, I have found a lot of arguments for both takes on superstition.

If a tournament is ok, if it's going great, I would say you can do whatever you want. Just don't try to harm the way you work, the way you play, the way you prepare. But if the tournament is bad, it's very likely nothing will help you [laughs]. You can change your clothes 10 times, and change your pants or something, but it would hardly ever have any serious effect. So, in general, you have to be more realistic. Yeah, it's easy to talk like this when you're not involved in any tournament, but during the tournament, it can be very different. Well, let's see what happens.

What is my take on chess superstitions? The fewer things your mood is dependent upon, the better. I've seen people make quite a fuss about forgetting a favorite teddy bear at home or losing a beloved pen. You don't want your confidence level to depend on such things. Better trust in yourself rather than in the magic items or circumstances. 

Are you superstitious when it comes to chess? Let's talk about the most popular chess superstitions and use world-class Grandmasters, such as Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi, as role models! 

How Do You Improve Your Chess Rating by 200 Points?

Why Are We Not All Tactical Geniuses?

Chess Superstitions