Episode 107 - Killed by your own preparation
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Next Level Chess Podcast. As always, I am your host, Grandmaster Noël Studer, and today I wanna talk about or continue a topic been talk, discussing these past two weeks. Now, this podcast is also useful if you haven't listened to the past two weeks. So don't worry about that But if you find it interesting and you haven't listened to the past two weeks, well, then you can listen to this one and then go back and get some more context So I started this series on, ~uh,~ an analogy with a hike where I said that your body for the hike is all the skills in chess, while the things you bring [00:01:00] are your knowledge.

And the problem is that most people over-focus on the knowledge but have a hard time working or ignore working on the skills

And last week I mentioned that knowing too much can lead you astray

And that this extra knowledge always has a weight. So it's not just the more knowledge, the better, but actually the more knowledge, well, ~uh, ~the harder it can be to choose between which knowledge to use. M- and today, I wanna talk about a specific problem with knowledge, which is if you have that extra knowledge, it [00:02:00] tempts you into positions that you absolutely don't have the skills for.

And in our hiking analogy, that would mean that just because you're owning a pickaxe, you feel like, "Well, I should now actually go up a really difficult route, because why do I have a pickaxe," right? "I should use it." And in hiking, that can get you killed. And in chess, it can only lose you games, so it's a little bit less dramatic, but nevertheless, not good So I wanna t- so I wanna discuss this with an example of mine so you see how you can use that to your advantage, that your opponents might know too much, and they might go into lines that they have not the skills for

So from summer 2016 to January 2020, I had 15 games in the [00:03:00] French Tarrasch as Black. So that means that we get the initial French position, E4, E6, D4, D5, and White is playing the move knight to D2. Okay, so that's not the main line. It's not the reason why I stopped playing the French. It's knight D2, and I always played C5.

Okay, and from this position, that's three moves in, I had 15 games, eight wins, six draws, one loss. That's a 73% score as Black. And my plan was extremely simple. Trade both pair of pawns, so fe- C5 against D4, D5 against E4, develop all my pieces, get my king safe, and then push for E6, E5

And that's really [00:04:00] all there was. That was the whole plan

And here's why that matters. My opponents were very strong players, most of them IMs and stronger, and they knew that I was going in this line. So this wasn't a surprise, right? You have databases, you see these games. In every game, or nearly every game, those opponents would prepare a specific sub-line of this French Tarrasch knowing that I would play the c5 move, right?

And if you would look at it with an engine, Stockfish would tell you it's anywhere between 0.2 or 0.4 for white, which is, what, realistically what the edge is that you can hope for in, ~uh,~ professional titled player chess[00:05:00] 

But even for these very strong players, it was too expensive gear quickly and freshly bought, and it lured them into positions that they couldn't understand. Because when you look at these positions, what you'll see is that the engine Stockfish has a very concrete way of always finding ways to stop this e5 push or make it so that when Black would play e5, that there is some problem.

But for a human, this is extremely difficult, and you can see at the results that, well, for them, it was too difficult. So what happened is that just thinking about, okay, can I check with Stockfish, can I find, quote-unquote, an advantage against Noël's line, lured them into a position where they saw, oh, [00:06:00] I, I'm slightly better.

But they had not enough skills to know how to play this position, how to keep that advantage. So they didn't lose because So they didn't lose despite their preparation, they actually lost because of it

Back to our analogy, it pulled them on a mountain that only stockfish can climb And now here's the harsh truth, guys. If this happened to title players, it probably happens to you guys listening to this. Fresh opening prep is really the obvious version of it, but it can be everywhere. It can be a tactic that you try to play because you see the pattern, but you didn't fully calculate it, or you can't fully calculate it.

The plan that you've heard a famous streamer talk about, because you [00:07:00] recognize the name, you're going for it in your own game, but again, you don't fully understand the position and the nuances of this plan

Or the line you're diving into and spending 15 minutes calculating just because you think, "Well, it could be good, right? I've seen something similar. Tal made a similar sacrifice once," when in actuality you should have just played a good enough move, saved your time, and keep the game going And notice what these share.

The knowledge is tempting you toward the sharper move, the deeper line, the more difficult position. If you wouldn't have heard of a plan or didn't know that advanced pattern, well, there would be no way that you'd even think about it

So that can be [00:08:00] really the danger. And I wanna stress how important this is nowadays, because growing up or learning, ~uh,~ chess in an era of YouTube video streams and so on, you've got so much exposure to ideas, and plans, and things that are either slightly or way beyond your capabilities. You store it somewhere, and you have that hope that once you hear it, that you can apply it as well.

And that just makes this problem so much bigger. I think last week I talked about my dad, who has a very simple way of playing chess. And that's just because he was never listening to these extra advices. He was not informed, ~um, ~or watching YouTube videos and all of these things. So he doesn't have that knowledge.

Now, yes, he plays less fancy chess, but it does work pretty well for his level[00:09:00] 

So here is what can protect you

The players who are protected are the ones that know exactly what they can use and refuse to carry an extra load So this is a continuous improvement of your skills and then also your knowledge, but your knowledge is never outgrowing your skills tremendously

And guys, just to give you an idea here, well, it's way easier to learn knowledge, right, than to improve your skills. Let's say you learn a tactical [00:10:00] pattern, you think, "Oh, yeah, that's logical." Well, it might take 100-plus iteration of solving this pattern in different situations to get more comfortable with it, right?

So that means spending a lot of time exercising and doing the things, right, back to your body, and less time scrolling the internet for the ultimate advice that will kind of click everything for you and chess will be easy from from then on. But it's just not how things work.

And so that continuous improvement alongside of skills and knowledge is really what I teach

For example, Simplified Chess Improvement System is really all about drilling home how to actually do the basics, like [00:11:00] doing tactics the right way, analyzing your games, right? All of these things that really matter to build up your skills, and then telling you, "Okay, what are the resources that are giving you this minimum viable knowledge that you need?"

And not overdo it

And for lower-rated players, for example, the Beginner Chess Mastery is really, ~um,~ what I consider the ideal amount of knowledge for players below 1200. And that means stripping down on things, not showing you fancy stuff you can't execute, but just showing you the basics and telling you, "Okay, how can you build these skills now for these basics that you've learned?"

Without overwhelming you with theory, with endgame knowledge, with, stuff that you don't need and that will overwhelm you, bring you onto mountains that you can't climb[00:12:00] 

So if you're taking anything from this podcast, then be it less gear, a stronger body, less knowledge, more skills. And for me, it is the harder sell, but it's the honest truth and the thing that actually works

Hey, guys, just two quick things before you take off. If you enjoyed this episode and want more structured chess improvement tips from myself, check out my newsletter at nextlevelchess.com/newsletter. It's totally free. It will always remain free, and it goes out every single Friday with the best, latest chess improvement tips that I have.

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