Theorizing Improvement

What's the best way to get better at games like chess? The usual answers seem too obvious. Practice, solve problems, complete courses. But someone who really wants to improve has already tried these things. Does the answer consist of finding the right balance of time allocated to play and study? It's alright to try to fine-tune that, but not key.

I have a few recommendations based on coaching--mostly bughouse, but also helping friends a bit with standard chess and Go (pictured below).

As a coach, I'm interested in improvement in general. I try to work at games I'm weaker at, in order to appreciate the concerns of students and learners. I'll offer some non-obvious suggestions, while generalizing--hopefully not too much.  

1) Most of us are suffering not from scarcity, but clutter. I don't really mean clutter in the sense of too many books and videos. 

I mean we have cluttered theories. It's not a matter of acquiring new knowledge--it's a matter of letting go of the junk thought-processes which clog up our play and prevent the expression of our knowledge. 

We study puzzles and endgames, but we never get to apply what we've learned. 

The two most common signs of a cluttered theory in a person's play: Haste and hyper-aggressiveness, and fear and hyper-passivity. It's not always that we don't know how to play well--it's that junk blocks our own path. Sometimes the junk is habit or muscle memory. 

Instead of asking what we're missing, we might ask what's blocking or inhibiting us from using what we know. I usually notice that someone's opening is cluttering their middlegame. They are good fighters, but they force themselves to fight from disadvantageous positions. Often the clutter is an overriding desire to avoid the main lines. Perhaps due to the overwhelming amount of theory, or perhaps from a desire to bring something original. 

Sometimes haste and fear aren't really psychological--it's just that the moves we make are hasty or fearful, because we don't know what the alternative looks like. 

Here's a fearful move that will cause you to immediately lose in bughouse. 

This might be playable, if inferior, in standard chess. In bughouse, it's pretty much just losing. Black wanted to cover g5, but weakened the light squares too much. The result is that people who play this way can almost never win when they have the black pieces, and this holds them back. I've seen many players below 1200 who play reasonably well if they don't get into this position, but they unfailingly do get into it. What's better? Just cover g5 in a non-weakening way. 

2) Fixing problems may involve taking out, rather than putting in. Either way, the best way to fix problems is to slow down, and I mean this both during games and between games. A few months ago, I was playing a lot of blitz. Eventually I realized it was unproductive. I was only practicing according to a theory that I wasn't refining. Slowing down from 3-0 and 5-0 to 10-0 forced me to focus long enough to win without lamely resorting to flagging. It made me conserve the will to win. It also made me think seriously about how I was entering the endgame. I made some modest rating gains. I think one game of 10-0 is better for me than three games of 3-0. 

3) Your theory carries a certain amount of weight. If you really concentrate, you can carry more weight. But if you solve fundamental problems in your game, you can carry much more weight. You can struggle mightily to overcome a certain rating barrier using a lesser theory and lots of willpower and concentration. Or you can adjust your theory, and breeze past the barrier. 

It helps to try on a different theory. Force yourself to try a different strategy. Try to understand why a strong player likes a certain position. Discomfort is a good sign. Get the key position on the board, and then worry about how it works. We often settle down in our identity as players, and try so hard to keep things familiar, that we inhibit our own future growth. 

Chess suffers from the personality quiz type mentality. What sort of chess player are you? Positional, or tactical? Even worse, who is the greatest of all time? These are backwards, malformed questions. They can cause impressionable players to hold on to their playstyle too rigidly. It's better to hold your identity more freely. 

4) Let the position be equal. Sometimes we lash out desperately because we don't realize how good our position is. This advice is useful even in games where draws are rare. It's about having the confidence to wait for the right time to act. Often we over-extend out of a desire to be doing something. Why not do nothing? Maybe your opponent will be the one to try to hard to do something. 

5) It's really about how we hold our attention. If we appreciate small points deeply, simple moves mean more. Moves that look routine or slow turn out to have strength. A move that makes no threat, but controls a square, or opens a line, seems more viable. 

This less-is-more approach has been my research project for a while. Let me know if it sounds plausible or not.