You lost 728 rating points. FIDE considers taking your title, even if you don’t have one, because you played so badly.

Now you are upset, because you know you could have done better.

I totally get you. I’ve been playing chess for more than 20 years, so I’ve been through all of the above. During my career, I’ve noticed that sometimes we get so busy licking our wounds that we make things worse than they have to be.

Frustration is part of the game. Unfortunately or not, we cannot get rid of it. But I think learning how to deal with this feeling is one of the most underrated and most important skills in chess (and life).

Accept the mistakes

Easier said than done, thank you Fruzsi. You’re right, I agree. I’m not perfect at this. I questioned myself through tears about why I keep playing in tournaments after they had gone horribly. Not even that long ago.

But does being this harsh with ourselves help? I don’t think so. That’s why in this article we’ll talk about how to take poor performance seriously without taking it personally. However, for that we’ll need to make peace with our mistakes, so that we can look at them honestly without destroying ourselves. So, let me tell you what helps me make it easier.

Knowing that no one is immune to mistakes

You will always have bad times with chess. It doesn’t matter if you are 500, 1400, 2100 or 2700 rated, this rule applies. We suffer at every level, just maybe a bit differently.

But you know what? If someone who dedicated their entire life to chess, someone who likely studies chess 10–12 hours a day, can play so poorly that they resign after 15 moves, mess up +5 positions, and miss obvious tactics, then so can we!

You will always have bad tournaments, even when the stars are supposed to align for you. But not only you. Have you heard of Magnus Carlsen? Yes? :) Well, for instance, he finished 9th out of 10 with only 4/9 at Norway Chess in 2017. He had already been the World Champion for years by that time, yet he didn’t perform well against players he normally beats.

Everyone will lose rating points periodically, maybe even plateau for a while. Good news: there is light at the end of the tunnel. One of my favourite examples is Radjabov’s story.

In 2012, he peaked at 2793 and he was world number 4 at the time. Pretty good, right? Then things went badly wrong, because by 2016, his rating had fallen to 2696, which is almost 100 points lower than before! Fun fact: as a GM, it’s even harder to win or lose huge amounts of rating points than at lower levels, so it’s a pretty big deal. (Luckily, he managed to climb back. :))

I already hear some of you think: “alright, but 2696 is already high enough, I’d kill for that”. Let’s say you get there now. You might be ecstatic for a while, but eventually the magic will fade, and you’ll get back to the same annoyance of not being able to reach a higher number. I imagine professionals feel upset about the setbacks just like we do.

“But they can afford these slips, they’re already good”.

I’ll sound very cheesy, but these strong players likely made more mistakes than you and me combined throughout their whole career, even when they weren’t successful yet. Still, they became great despite continuing to have failures. Why not us, then?

“Setbacks and losses are both inevitable and essential if you're going to improve and become a good, even great, competitor.“ - Garry Kasparov

Remembering my own comebacks

Before I fall into a deep hole of self-pity after a horrible chess experience, I like to remind myself that something similar has happened before, and that I managed to stand up again.

One of my worst tournaments happened 3 years ago, in 2023. I went there with the hope to gain some FIDE rating, so I could have the chance to participate in the 2024 Budapest Olympiad. Guess what? I ended up losing 60 rating points against opponents rated 200–400 Elo lower than me, making it 100% certain that the dream was crushed. Needless to say that was a huge punch in the stomach.

I got annoyed with myself, and after I went home I did my best to find out what I was missing, and where I needed to improve. Sadly, there was too little time to make it to the Olympiad, but I finally got back above 2100, while consistently scoring half or whole points against 2200-2300+ rated players in multiple events. I count that as a win. :)

I’d like to think that if I hadn’t gotten that big slap, I likely wouldn’t have realized how much more I needed to take my own chess seriously. If it was a neutral or slightly positive/negative result, I’d have kept swimming in lukewarm waters.

Regardless of your level, you likely have your own success stories as well. That tournament where you recovered after a terrible start? Or that game where you were completely lost, yet you won? The time when you plateaued for a while, then you had a big jump? The game where you (almost) took down a stronger opponent? These are all proof that you’ve done it before.

“My own philosophy is simple: every time I lose, I remind myself, ‘This is not the first, nor the last time.’ Somehow, this works like magic.” - GM Vasif Durarbayli

Talking to myself

It’s so easy to turn our bad performance into a verdict: “I played horribly, I’m so untalented” or “Dudevic Randomski started only last year, but they’re already better than me”. There’s really no point in saying these things other than to hurt yourself. But I know it’s easy to get into this spiral. At times, I also have similar ugly thoughts, but I try not to let them take over me.

Instead, when disaster strikes, I imagine that a friend or a student is going through what I’m going through, and I try to offer them comfort. I use the same words with myself, and if my tantruming side attempts to disagree, I play devil’s advocate and argue against her. :)

“Okay, I know you’re upset about this blunder. It really stings. But the game is not over yet, there is still hope. Imagine how proud you will be if you save this position. Let’s see how we can make the most out of it.”

The first few times I used this method, it wasn’t easy. It took some time, and it was more of a “fake it ’til you make it” process. You might feel the same way, but I believe if you keep practicing a kinder inner voice, eventually, it should become easier.

If you’d like to take some of these ideas further in your own games, I also offer one-on-one chess coaching. You can find more information HERE. :)

But there’s an important distinction: being kind to yourself doesn’t mean pretending you played well...

Acceptance doesn’t mean ignorance

Now that you hopefully feel better about your own flaws, there are a few more things I need to tell you. Feeling upset about our poor performance can actually be good. It can help us move forward. So why did I spend so many words on seemingly trying to convince you otherwise?

Because, on the other hand, beating yourself up could backfire. If you can’t manage your emotions, you might resign too early, or you might not be able to turn a bad start into a good or okay tournament. If you learn to accept your mistakes, you’ll have an easier job recovering from them and actually fixing them.

I find it crucial to be forgiving with ourselves in chess. It can make us more resilient, and in the long run, resilience will make us better players. Maybe the game isn’t as lost or bad as you thought, and after all, your opponent isn’t Stockfish 18 either. :)

“Now that I don't give up so easily after my blunders, I realized I'm not the only one who sucks.” - My student, Damiano

However, like we’d say in Hungarian, “don’t fall over the other side of the horse”. Accepting that you’ll make mistakes doesn’t mean you have to be completely chill about them. I don’t want you to say, “I messed up, but it doesn’t bother me”. Don’t become a chess monk.

I think it’s healthy to be frustrated. However, during a game, you don’t really have time to ruminate on it. The important moment is the one between realizing what happened and deciding how to respond to it. Pay attention there. Take a deep breath. You can acknowledge what happened, but then return your attention to chess. The psychological and technical analysis can wait until the game or tournament is over.

Once it’s over, you can let the steam out. Be angry. Be sad. But try not to let yourself go deeper into the spiral, and try to practice a calmer response (maybe even while you play, if you need it!). When the next game starts, don’t waste your energy on thinking about the past.

But also don’t fall into the ‘It was just a dumb blunder’ trap. I hear this so often, but we learn nothing from it. Instead, I want you to ask yourself a few questions about your performance, so you can understand what went wrong (and well!) and what you possibly need to change.

“What did I do wrong?” Blundered? Underestimated the opponent? Didn’t understand the position?

“Why did I do it?” Not focused enough? Bad time management? Being too emotional?

“How can I avoid making it again?” Improving calculation? Learning theoretical endgames? Sleeping more before rounds?

“Is there a recurring pattern in my mistakes?” If you notice a pattern, that should be your biggest priority.

Our personality can also play a huge role in our chess, both in good and bad ways. For example, I tend to be indecisive in my life outside of chess, too. I know where it comes from and I’ve already worked a lot on it, which also helped me in my chess. Sometimes, the things we need to work on as chess players aren’t really chess problems at all. :)

When you look inside yourself, be serious about your answers.

Personally, this analysis excites me sometimes. I picture how much better I’ll be once I fix those problems, how much better my games will be, and how much stronger the opponents I’ll be able to face will be!

“Imagine playing at exactly the same level you do now, but without making any mistakes. You wouldn’t know what you needed to improve, and you’d be stuck at that level forever. So how could you become better then?” - My former coach, FM Erno Dede

So the next time you blunder a mate, lose 33 rating points, or end up last in a tournament, try to remember this.

You are not the first person to play badly, and you definitely won’t be the last. We all struggle with this game, no matter our level. It hurts, and it will often hurt. Feeling disappointed is fine, but don’t dwell on it. Once the dust settles, look at what happened with a little curiosity instead of contempt.

Maybe you find something to fix. Maybe you notice a pattern. And maybe, by learning from your mistakes, you’ll come back stronger.

After all, a bad game is only a bad game. A bad tournament is only a bad tournament. They don’t get to decide what kind of chess player you are. Keep going! :)

Do you remember these steps and the color codes? If not, or you haven’t read the previous article yet, I’d recommend reading it first, because otherwise this analysis might not make so much sense.

I played the following game during a Twitch stream against a player in the same rating range mentioned earlier. You might not find the game brilliant, or particularly exciting, but many games we play don’t contain spectacular sacrifices or great attacks. That’s just how real life is, and that’s fine. I’ll show you how the thinking process helped me decide what deserves my attention, what I can ignore momentarily, and what I should do next.

During the analysis, I won’t color every piece, only when I think it’s necessary. Just like I’d do in my own games, I’ll always check out the moves that were made and the potential effects and changes they might have on other pieces. You may notice that I sometimes highlight a yellow piece and then remove the coloring a few moves later. This is intentional. I want to notice every piece that could potentially become relevant, but once I've checked that it cannot currently be exploited, I can take it off my mental list.

How can you decide if a vulnerable piece is irrelevant? You can ask yourself how likely it is that you or your opponent could exploit them within a reasonable time. It’s sometimes unclear though. At times we see ghosts and overprotect something; at other times, we disregard a vulnerable piece and blunder it. We all make a lot of mistakes in this, even at higher levels.

This method wasn’t meant to solve chess. My whole idea was to make you more mindful about your decisions by making the scanning process more manageable, and to help you notice vulnerable pieces, recognize what is urgent, and avoid overlooking things that could cost you material. And hopefully, by becoming more aware of these things, you'll blunder less often.

In the game I’m also not looking for the best engine lines. Honestly, I don’t care much about them here. I want to show you sensible moves that you could realistically find too with the color system and some basic principles.

Now that the opening officially ended, the next chapter is the middle game. Here it’s even more true that our main goal is to either checkmate or win material, everything else will be decoration for that.

I will slowly start letting your hand go with the extra explanations. I will still be thinking about the same things, but I will only express them if I find it necessary.

Hey, you! Instead of sitting so comfortably in the back seat, go through the mental list now! What would be your plan as Black?

STOP. Your turn! So far, we've seen positions where the weaknesses were relatively easy to identify. But what happens when there aren't any immediate threats, and our own King starts making us uncomfortable? I invite you to go through our mental to-do list, and try to come up with an idea for Black.

This time, we had to prioritize King safety before worrying about the opponent's vulnerable pieces. But once the Queens are off the board, our priorities change again.

In endgames, checkmate is often less likely to happen, at least with a similar material-count. So instead, we focus on creating passed pawns to promote, and of course, winning material is still on the table.

So what should we do in this seemingly less complicated position?

I think it’s really interesting to see how the thinking method in the “Board Vision First, Strategy Later” article was applied in this game.

Whether you are only paying attention to the red pieces, or both red and yellow pieces, the colors are basically a tool that makes the scanning part more manageable.

The colors also help you understand your and your opponent’s threats better. The red tags let you know what the immediate material-winning (or checkmating) possibilities are on the board. Don’t capture these blindly though, you will still need to calculate a bit. These are the things you very likely need to fix or exploit first before even thinking about strategy. If you can be up a piece, your strategic skills will matter less. :) You can also leave your own pieces red, but you have to be absolutely sure they will be okay if you don’t deal with them right away.

The yellow tags are a bit different in the sense that you don’t necessarily need to do anything with them, nor do they all require the same attention from you. BUT! It still helps you a lot if you spot them all (or at least most of them). There is more danger in not noticing them at all than in seeing them and deciding they aren’t that important. They can be used, for example, to improve a piece with a tempo (when attacking them), attack several of them at the same time (it can be hard to protect them all) or even to make a plan related to them, as happened in the game.

If there is nothing urgent to solve, that’s usually when strategy comes into the picture. Principles and strategic knowledge can help you with your decisions when the color system is not enough. The line is a bit blurry, because ideally you want to be aware of both strategy and the emergency events, and combine the two. But that can be overwhelming. So, first try to identify what deserves your attention before trying to understand the deeper positional elements.

Also, your opponent’s move can make your original plan irrelevant, or create a new or even better target(s). Keep your eyes open for these changes, don’t force a plan that no longer works.

Talk to yourself about these changes during the game (not out loud, if you are in OTB :)). I find it much easier to remember if I make a conscious effort. Also, concentration is crucial. If you don’t give your full focus to the game you’re playing, then you’re gambling, and no method will significantly help you.

In the future, I plan to show you how to navigate in more eventful positions with more red and yellow pieces present, since this game didn’t give us much opportunity to talk about those. So if you found this thinking method useful and would like to see more educational content like this, I’d love you to follow along! :)

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If you’d like more personalized help with your chess, you can find more information about my coaching HERE. :)

An example: “Don’t castle too early, so your opponent will not know where you will put your King”. True? Absolutely. What will happen if a beginner player follows this advice? In my experience, disaster. Or another one: “Exchange pieces if you don’t have enough space”. Again true, but if you’re less experienced, first you should probably notice that your Queen is hanging.

An issue with so much information is that there are a lot of things to pay attention to and think about in chess, and if you try to do all of them at once, you’ll just get overwhelmed. That’s why I believe that if you are below a certain rating, you shouldn’t consume a lot of content intended for higher-level audiences.

This article is mostly aimed at players roughly below 1200 rapid Chess.com rating / 1500 rapid Lichess rating, and anyone who has accumulated lots of advice but whose board vision and basic threat-awareness haven't caught up with that knowledge yet.

So what should you focus on instead?

I think it’s much more useful to concentrate on a few things really, really well than to worry about every advanced concept you come across. Your games will not be decided by a good Knight outplaying a bad Bishop, nor by suffocating your opponent when they play too passively. They’ll be decided because someone forgot a piece was hanging, or that a vulnerable piece required more care.

Once you get past this level, you can gradually start adding more advanced concepts to your thinking process. However, until that, let’s pretend that material is “everything.” Of course it isn’t. You can see strong players sacrifice material for activity and for other alien positional nonsense, but the difference is that they know why that is fine (or not, and mess up as well :)).

I have seen surprisingly many players tell me they gave a pawn, because “it’s just a pawn” and they “didn’t want to pause their plan to defend it”. Or sacrificing for a “better attack” or a “better center”. No. With extra material one’s life is so much easier, so first you need to learn how to get free pawns and pieces, and just as importantly, how not to lose your own.

What are the vulnerable pieces?

Vulnerability is a bit complicated, because what will be vulnerable for a lower-rated person is not necessarily weak for a master, and vice versa, but we still need to identify them to the best of our ability.

Before we begin with the thinking method, we need to discuss what makes a piece vulnerable. I like to use markers during a game:

• I mark a piece with red, when it has either more attackers than defenders or it’s attacked by a less valuable piece. These are the first things you need to look at, as they can lead to winning or losing material if you are not careful.

• There are also yellow pieces, meaning they have the same number of attackers as defenders. This doesn’t necessarily mean they are certainly secure at the moment. They appear safe (no checkmate or material loss) and solid, but they can become a problem any time, maybe even in this exact moment! Even if not, keep an eye on them until they are vulnerable.

• Lastly, a piece is green, if it’s completely safe: it has more defenders than attackers, and it isn’t attacked by a less valuable piece. These don’t require immediate attention, and you don’t need to spend too much mental energy on them, nor do you need to actively search for them and identify them all.

These are guidelines rather than pure definitions; it’s all about whether you can lose or win material. You still need to consider if the pieces can really capture each other.

Vulnerability is dynamic though, these colors aren’t permanent, they change as the position changes. The board doesn't stay the same, so your priorities shouldn't either. The colors are there to help you reassess after every move, not to provide a fixed plan for the entire game. To avoid misunderstandings, these also don’t mean “good” or “bad”, instead they are information. They represent attention priority, letting you know what you should likely take/attack or defend/move away or keep in mind.

Let’s see these positions. To not make you more confused, I didn’t highlight everything with colors, only a few examples.

In the first position, White’s b2 and c4 pawns are yellow, because even though they aren’t attacked by anything at the moment, they aren’t defended either. Black’s c5 pawn is vulnerable (yellow), because despite being defended by b6, it’s also attacked by the e3 Lady. I colored the Queen yellow, because high-value pieces always deserve a little extra attention (if something attacks them, their number of defenders won’t matter).

They’re fine for now, but they’re worth remembering. Why? Imagine you play this position as Black, and say, yeah, c5 is no problem at all. In your mind it will go into an “all good” box, and you will likely never look at it again. A few moves later, you want push the b-pawn to b5, and check out if the move is safe. Great, the pawn on b5 is ok, so you play it. Then at your worst surprise, White takes the c5 pawn for free, and you just can’t understand how you missed that. You did, because you didn’t think it was important to remember your possible problem pieces. :)

Back to the examples. The c3 Knight is green, because it’s defended by two (b2 and Qe3), attacked by one (Bg7). The c6 Bishy is green too, because it has zero attackers, and one defender. Until that changes, don’t worry about them.

Now let’s examine the second position. White’s last move was Nc3-d5. What changed?

White attacked the Queen with the Knight, making it red, which deserves the attention first. Unfortunately, White missed that the b2 pawn was unprotected, and by moving the Horsie to d5, it got exposed to the g7 Bishop, making it red. Now that could be a painful material loss (after Black deals with her Majesty on c7). Notice how a move doesn’t affect only the piece you move with.

White’s c4 and Black’s c5 pawns are still possibly weak. Nothing happened to them now, but we don’t forget them. The c6 Bishop is still safe, and so is the Knight on d5 (it can be captured, but it’s simply an equal trade, so we don’t care much).

The thinking method

1) No matter whose turn it is, scan the board.

Look at the whole board. The real action isn’t where you think it is, it’s happening on all 64 squares, all the time. Be aware of the material count at all times. Even the small ones. Pawn lives matter too, many a little makes a mickle.

Keep a mental list of the potential problems (red and yellow pieces) of each side, again at all times. Don’t forget these, and watch out for changes. Your King? Their King? Your pieces and pawns and theirs? Found something? Great, keep them in mind until they change. It will be much easier to know what you and your opponent should be doing with this information, as these colored pieces can become potential targets for either side. However, not all of them deserve the same level of attention. This is something you need to understand based on the position.

2) Your opponent made a move. What changed?

This contains two smaller steps.

• Start with your rival’s ideas, so you don’t get too absorbed in your plan. Questions that can help: “Why did they play it?”, “What are they threatening?” or “What would they do next if they got another move?”. Really try to think like them here, and like you genuinely tried to find the best idea for them. Recall the vulnerable pieces you identified earlier. Can/did your opponent attack them with a forcing move (checks, captures, threats)?

• Now you look for your side. What would you be threatening if your opponent wasn’t doing anything? Which of their pieces are exposed? Can you attack them with a forcing move?

Don’t calculate more than 3 moves ahead for now. You’ll likely just get lost, miss what’s happening on the board, or waste unnecessary time. Also, you mostly need to do it when there are forcing moves on the board, otherwise not really.

3) Comparison

Now that you have the information, which side has the stronger threat? Whose plan is more dangerous? Your opponent is about to checkmate you and you can only attack a weak Pony? You will need to defend first. You can fork their King and Queen, while they can only take your pawn next? We don’t have to care about that. :)

By “more dangerous”, I mean concrete moves that lead to checkmate or material loss. “Scary” shouldn’t impress you. If you don’t see an actual threat, assume it’s not there (great life advice too). There is a chance you will be wrong, but that’s fine. High-level players are not always right about their opponent’s ideas either. You need to learn to trust yourself, you’ll be more successful this way.

In both positions Black’s last move was Qa5-g5. In the first one, it might look spooky, but I don’t see how I will get checkmated, therefore I am not scared, I will not defend yet. In the second one, I am concerned, because I could get mated on g2. Now that’s a real threat, I need to act.

... Wait, but what if nothing is happening?

If neither side has anything serious, don’t worry. Improve your position: bring your pieces toward the center, put your worst piece to a better square, and so on. Be patient and wait for a mistake. You need to become comfortable with not always knowing what to do. Titled players don’t know the right ideas all the time either.

At these levels, your opponent will likely make a mistake or blunder sooner or later. If you consistently protect your pieces, notice your opponent’s threats, and take the opportunities they give you, you’ll improve much faster than someone trying to play like a grandmaster. Board vision first, strategy later. :)

4) Safety check

You found a move you want to play, awesome! Don’t play it yet. Visualize the piece in its new spot and look for changes that will follow. Does this move make anything red or yellow? Does your opponent have any forcing moves that can exploit these? If yes, reconsider the move. If no, but it created a new vulnerable piece, don’t just put it into a “no problem” box in your head. Add it to your mental list instead. You may not have to deal with it immediately, but you’ll want to remember it until the position changes.

Also, it’s better not to leave too many pieces yellow or red. If you are about to make a move that is technically safe, but it leaves something exposed, maybe reassess your choice. You don’t want to end up having to remember 5-6 vulnerable pieces for a long while, because the more there are, the more tactical possibilities can exist on the board. Slow down in such cases. One different sequence that you didn’t calculate, and these can easily become red and hang. Is it really necessary to keep so many things in mind? Complication is not always better.

Even if you find an answer after the first few questions, still go through the entire list. You need to see the whole picture before deciding what to play. Just like in life, you cannot make a good decision if you don’t understand what’s happening, or what’s at stake. :)

Also, notice how these steps are built on each other. If you immediately start looking for your move, you might completely miss a hanging piece. If you only focus on your opponent’s plan, you might miss that you could have taken their Rook for free. In this thinking order, you dramatically reduce the chance of blundering, while still giving yourself opportunities to attack.

You are right, this is tiring and takes a long time at first, but you’ll become much faster as your board vision improves. If remembering every red and yellow piece feels overwhelming, start smaller. Focus on the pieces and the King first, worry less about the pawns. Or if that’s still too much, pay attention only to the red ones. As your board vision improves, gradually include more.

One way to internalize this thinking process and speed up your improvement is to solve loads of easy tactical patterns such as forks, pins, skewers, etc. Play slow games, so you have time to implement this thinking method, and go through this list every move. Analyze both your own blunders and your opponent’s after the game. Dive into positions with many defenders and attackers, and practice seeing which side benefits materially from the exchange! Eventually you will realize it no longer takes conscious effort anymore.

Let’s finish with a small exercise. Pretend this is one of your own rapid games. White’s last move was Qe1-h4. Before looking for a move, go through the previous thinking method, only then find a move.

Keep reading only after you’ve thought about it for at least 3 minutes.

By the way, in my next article, I will take a real game and apply this exact thinking process move by move. If you enjoyed this post and would like to see how it works in practice, don’t forget to subscribe! :)

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Solution

Scan the board
Material is equal. At first glance, neither side has an immediate emergency (red tags). White’s yellow pieces: Ng1, f3 pawn, Kc2. Black only has one: the b7 pawn (hard to access, but still :)).

What changed?
White played Qe1-h4, they are not trying to do anything dangerous, so now I can focus on my own opportunities.
First I turn to the most valuable one: the White King. I don’t see a direct checkmate, so I am not yet convinced about the attack on his Majesty. Maybe I will later, but what about the other vulnerable pieces? Do I have any forcing moves related to them? Nxf3 and Bxg1. I pick one that seems the best to me: Bxg1, Rxg1, Nxf3 fork! Oh, that looks promising!

I still need to see the other forcing line. What if I start with Nxf3 instead? Nxf3, Nxf3, Qxe4+, Rd3! defends both the check and the Knight on f3. Less promising. It’s okay if you started with this line first, not even advanced players calculate the best line first sometimes (before calculating, you can’t know what’s right). This had to be analyzed too, since it’s forcing, and could have been better than the Bxg1 line.

As you can see, yellow doesn’t mean safe, but worth spotting or remembering. Sometimes nothing happens to them for a long time or at all (like the b7 pawn). Other times, one of them can suddenly become the center of a tactical sequence like the f3 pawn and g1 Knight. That’s exactly why we search for them, and keep track of them.

Comparison
White doesn’t have anything concrete, while we can win at least a piece. That’s an easy comparison then. :)

Safety check
You didn’t forget about this part, right? :) We want to play Bxg1. We took a Knight, so White really needs a strong forcing move as a reply. Do they have anything? No. Okay, so we are good to go.

Did you notice that I didn’t find this tactic because I magically “saw” it? (If I did, it would be thanks to the endless easy tactics that I have solved during my life... :)). I found it because I knew where to look. The thinking process narrowed my search.

I hope this thinking method makes your games feel a bit less overwhelming. If you try it in your next games, let me know in the comments how it went. I’d also love to hear if there are parts of the process you found difficult or questions you’d like me to cover in future articles.

If you’d like more personalized help with your chess, you can find information about my coaching HERE. :)

“Until you are at least a high Class A player: Your first name is ‘Tactics’, your middle name is ‘Tactics’, and your last name is ‘Tactics’” - Ken Smith

Some time ago, I read an article claiming that the internet is full of advice like “just solve puzzles and you will become better” and how that is not true. The author had spent a long time doing tactics without seeing much improvement and concluded that chess requires far more than tactics practice.

I understand why they reached that conclusion. I've seen many players struggle with the exact same thing. To some extent it’s true, but in reality, the correct tactical training can give a huge boost.

Why harder isn't always better

Just to simplify things, I will divide puzzles into ‘easy’ and ‘hard’. Easy tactics are the ones that you can spot quite easily, less than a minute or two. Hard puzzles are where you usually have to spend long minutes to find the solution. These are the ones that you likely find when you click on the average “(Solve) Puzzles” on any chess website or application.

I noticed more difficult puzzles are praised by most players. These are the ones that “challenge you”, that will “help you raise your rating”. After a certain level, yes. These are excellent if you want to improve your calculation and your visualization, which are important skills, but if you don’t see threats and hanging pieces in one move, then it is useless to calculate even 3 moves ahead. So, until you see the board without bigger issues and you are familiar with most patterns, they shouldn't make up most of your training.

But how can easy puzzles be useful?

Regardless of rating, they can be valuable for anyone. How?

First of all, up until 1200-1400 chess.com/1500-1700 Lichess rapid rating, people mostly lose by blundering pieces in one or two moves, or miss it when their opponent does it. Strategy matters far more on higher levels, when your rivals no longer blunder that much anymore.

“But Fruzsi, how do I make a plan? That’s important too, not just tactics”. Yes and no. You can find the perfect plan, but if you blunder your Queen in 2 moves, then it was all for nothing. On the other hand, even if you are unsure of what your plan should be, but you play an okay and safe move, and you watch out for your opponent’s blunders, you will be much more successful on the long run.

This is where easy puzzles come into the picture. They will help you learn the main motifs in chess, will strengthen your board vision, leading to fewer blunders. Also, during a match you shouldn’t spend all your time and energy unnecessarily on finding a simple fork or a pin, when you should focus on things like plan making, strategy, and so on. Practice the patterns beforehand, so you can notice them far faster in your games.

To improve your pattern recognition, do hundreds (or thousands, if you have the time :)) of easy tactics for each tactical motif (like; mate in 1-2, skewers, annihilation, discovered attacks, etc.). It might sound like a lot, but since they are simple they won’t take that long, and you can do them whenever you have a couple of minutes free or when you’re too tired to do something more demanding. I have ~2400 blitz rating, but even I jumped up 100-200 points in the past few years partially thanks to going through easy tactics with my students.

Another time when they could come in handy (even for high-level players) is when you are about to play a chess game. Your brain is probably not in ‘chess mode’ yet when you sit down to play after a long day. By solving them you won’t only get some confidence boost but you will also warm your mind up for the battle!

Also, if the majority of the games you play are blitz and bullet, then doing these will especially help you. In these time controls, you simply won't have time to calculate very much.

Whose job is it to find the best continuation for your opponent?

Yours and the opponent’s. Yes, you read that well; both of yours :) In order to become a good chess player, in most cases you will have to calculate and find the best moves for your opponent as well.

“Isn’t it their job to find the best move for them? I do my business, they do theirs.”

Nope. If you are not aware of your rival’s possible best responses, then your calculation will be shallow. I remember the good old times, when my coach would send my homework back to me, because even if I found the right move/idea, I didn’t find the best defense for my opponent, and I had to spend even more time on the position…

If you can’t stop this bad habit, work through tactic books where you will be forced to do this!

Puzzles are not like games!

Another huge mistake I see is that certain chess players treat the online puzzles like they were games that they had to play out against the computer. Most sites even reward you for speed, but go against the temptation. Before making a move, try to calculate everything out until you are sure of your solution. Why? Because this is how you can properly practice calculation and visualization. If you can see almost perfectly until 2-3 moves, you are already better than most players, let alone being able to see even further.

This can be tiring, but it’s worth the time and effort. Remember: your goal is to get stronger, not finding the solution quickly, nor increasing your puzzle rating. It’s better to solve 3 puzzles slowly and correctly than 10 carelessly. High puzzle rating is fancy, but unfortunately it means close to nothing.

Don’t draw arrows, you are not Hikaru

Talking about mistakes… you are not the kind of person who is drawing arrows in positions to calculate better, right? Don’t listen to the dark side, you don’t want to develop lazy habits. When you play over the board, there will be no arrows to help you, nor when you are short on time.

‘But Hikaru does it too!’

Yes, but not for himself, for YOU, so you can understand better what he is thinking. Don’t send your visualization skills to retirement this way!

The absolute worst mistake: not doing puzzles at all

“Puzzles are pointless. Why would you solve positions that will never occur in my games?”

The position won’t happen, that’s true. But the patterns will appear, and you will also need to practice how to calculate and visualize, so once you have to do it in your game you will be much quicker and more accurate.

I would even go so far to say that tactics are the muscles in chess, you always have to train with them to be in shape. A couple of puzzles a day will keep the blunders away!

Just kidding. You will always blunder, everyone blunders, we are only human. But it does matter how often; every second move? Once in every game? Twice in every 50 games? There is a difference :)

Where to find good puzzles?

I might sound like a grandma, but nowadays everything is digitalized, and I think there was some beauty in studying from physical books, because they really taught us valuable habits. They taught us patience; you couldn’t just play whatever you wanted when you got annoyed with a position. Very often the tactic was only from White’s perspective, even if you had to find the solution for Black. We had to be able to see the right moves also from the opponent’s perspective (if you are up for a challenge, try to flip the board when you do tactics online, and search for the solution for the other side!).

There are many great resources on the topic, here are some of my favourites:

• CT-ART is one of the best collections ever, it’s mostly based on old classics.

• As a child I did my fair share of exercises from Maxim Blokh books.

• I also liked 1001 Chess Exercises for Beginners.

• For advanced players, The Woodpecker Method looked like an interesting way to further level up one’s skills.

• I love the wide selection of ChessMood’s Tactic Ninja and Mating Matador courses (they have other great materials too, and if you decide to subscribe to them, you can get 20% off with my LINK)

• If you prefer practicing for free, Lichess also has a good database of themed puzzles. If you hover over Puzzles > Puzzle themes and scroll down to Motifs/Advanced/Mates/Mate themes. You can also set the difficulty level to “Easiest (-600)” for pattern training, in which case you don’t need them to be rated.

I also made a video on YouTube about the topic, please feel free to check it out and subscribe! :)

Don't give up on tactical training just because it hasn’t helped you yet. Your pattern recognition and tactical vision won’t develop overnight, so you need to keep practicing patiently and thoughtfully. One day you'll start spotting combinations that used to feel invisible.

Now, before go and get your puzzle training done, let me know in the comments what book, application, website or method helped you the most in this matter!

If you’re looking for more personalized help with your chess, you can find information about my coaching HERE. :)

Here is one of my favourite mate-in-two exercises from Susan Polgar's 200 Checkmates book, White to play and mate in 2! Can you find it?

In serious tournaments there is usually a very strict rule: if you’re more than 15 minutes late, you will lose. When I sat down at the board and started the clocks, my opponent was still nowhere to be seen. I think arriving on time and giving yourself a few minutes to “get in the mood” is a really underrated element of tournament play. It helps you get your thoughts straight and start focusing on the game before you even begin. I can’t say I’m completely innocent when it comes to this either, I struggle with time management even off the board. Whenever this happens, I like to spend a few minutes to recover from the rush and get into the right mindset before I make my first move.

After my rival arrived in a hurry, we shook hands, and they quickly answered 1.e4 with c5.

Let’s stop scrolling, and let’s look at this position for a moment! What do you think was wrong with this seemingly natural move (Qc7) that gets out of the pin?

Likely to catch up for the few lost minutes after being late, my opponent blitzed out their first few moves (after each move we got 30 seconds). If you catch yourself doing that, remember to slow down, no one is chasing you. It might seem like a good idea or completely harmless, but it can cost you the whole point. Things can go wrong in the opening.

Let’s do a quick evaluation. Equal material, both Kings are in the middle, but mine can still hide easily. My pieces are developed, I almost finished with the opening stage, and can start attacking almost immediately. Black still needs a couple of moves to bring out their army and has to spend several more moves fixing their issues. But don’t be mistaken, this is only a temporary advantage, as given enough moves, all these issues will be solved.

How would you continue after g5? Taking on g5 with the Knight seems tempting, but do you think it’s worth it? Let’s find out!

Although my play was not 100% perfect, and my opponent gave me a few opportunities, I think we can still draw a few important conclusions from this game:

1. Poor development is a temporary disadvantage, which means that with enough time (moves) it can be resolved. You will need to be quick.

2. Look for active moves that keep improving your position (if you can, try doing it almost every move), so you can further delay or limit their improvement and get an even stronger attack!

3. Open the position with pawn breaks and pawn exchanges if their King is stuck in the middle! You need open lines, ranks or diagonals so you can bring your pieces into the attack more easily.

4. Try to avoid exchanging Queens if the enemy King is exposed! Otherwise you will not be able to take advantage of their situation.

5. Don’t sacrifice unless you clearly understand the compensation you’re getting! Many players fall into the trap of sacrificing to make the position even more exciting or “beautiful”, but be careful. Sometimes these sacrifices just make your job harder, and you can easily lose your initiative. A boring but solid win is far better than a flashy, “brilliant” game that you almost won but ultimately lost.

6. Don’t be upset if you can’t give an early mate. In positions like these, checkmate is actually quite rare, and that’s perfectly fine. What matters is that you win enough material or get so ahead in your plan that they can no longer catch up.

Have you ever had a game where your opponent fell behind in development, but you weren’t sure how to punish it? Or maybe you managed to convert it successfully? What principles helped you the most? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

If you're looking for more personalized help with your chess, you can find information about my coaching HERE. :)

In my first post, I’d like to tell you more about myself and my chess career, so you can get to know the person behind my future articles a little better (and I hope to get to know you better too along the way!).

As a little child, I often saw my family members play a strange board game against each other, and I couldn’t resist placing my little head on the chessboard to examine what was going on. Unfortunately, my parents thought this game was not for children, so they sent me away. This went on for quite some time, until one day in kindergarten, a kind lady came and introduced chess to us, and explained how each piece moves.

Following that, I went home proudly, convinced that I finally knew how to play *that game*, and that my parents would have no choice but to accept my challenge. Eventually, after a couple of eye rolls, my father gave in, and, as expected, he won our match while reading the newspaper and watching TV.

It wasn’t until I was 8 years old that I went to my first competition. My mother came home one day and excitedly told me that a small (rapid) chess tournament was being organized in the central park of our town, asking if I wanted to play. Of course I did! :)

After some consideration, my mom realized that since I’d be playing against adults, I needed to be a bit more prepared than I was. So she taught me a nice little trick: the Scholar’s Mate. Imagining how cool I’d be with my unbeatable new weapon, I sat down for the first round. You can probably guess how successful I was, naturally, no one fell for my early checkmate attack. However, one man (my first coach-to-be) told my mom that he saw “the fire in my eyes” and that he would like to teach me more about chess, if I wanted to as well. This is where my chess journey began.

From then on, I had weekly coaching sessions and attended blitz, rapid, or classical tournaments in the region or around the country almost every month. It didn’t matter whether they were for girls or boys, children or adults, which certainly made me a stronger player, especially since I was often facing stronger opponents.

Since school wasn’t too hard for me, my teachers allowed me to miss classes and were genuinely supportive about my extracurricular interest. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about most of my peers. Chess was definitely not the coolest activity back then, especially if you combined it with good grades. Nevertheless, I found good, lifelong friends at tournaments. I still look back fondly on chess camps and competitions where we had tons of fun, while playing chess or other games or staying up late discussing life, even though the adults had ordered us to sleep long before.

These friends helped me stay motivated even during harder, uninspiring days, especially since these were the only times I could see them, and because as they were progressing, I had to keep up with them.

As I climbed the rating ladder, I often won or finished on the podium at the National Youth Championships, qualifying for the Youth European Union-, Youth European-, and Youth World Chess Championships. Sadly, I didn’t have the chance to represent my country at the latter, but I did win silver and bronze medals at the Youth European Union Championship and finished 6th (tied for 3rd) at the Youth European Rapid Championship.

Before high school, due to some difficult personal events in my life that affected my performance and confidence, I was left without proper guidance, working with teachers only on and off. This changed after a couple of months, when my school’s team was preparing for the National Team Student Championship, and another player’s coach, FM Ernő Dede, came to help us.

After we won the gold medal at the competition, he took me under his wing, helping me regain my motivation and love for the game. Soon, I was back on track with my chess improvement. This period was probably the most fruitful of my chess career, as not long after getting a new coach, I earned a Woman International Master norm and a Woman Grandmaster norm, and went from approximately 2050 rating points to 2266 in a short time.

Ernő was not only a coach to me, but also a mentor; someone I could talk to about almost anything, shepherding me through both chess and life. Thanks to him, I was given multiple opportunities, acquired new skills, traveled, and learned more about the world, all of which helped me grow both as a player and as a person.

Ernő also gave me a little push to teach chess. On one occasion, he organized a chess camp for his students and ordered me to teach them one morning. I reluctantly accepted after a couple of “I can’t do this!” — “Yes, you can” exchanges. I ended up enjoying it so much that later on, I even accompanied a few of those students to the National Team Student Championship as a team captain, when I was too old to participate as a player.

As the graduation exam was approaching, I found myself at a point in my life where I had to decide whether to pursue chess or become a doctor, as my teachers and family were insisting. Chess is an amazing game, but making a living solely from playing is brutal, and the amount of sacrifice one has to put into it may never pay off. The world is far too big and interesting to focus exclusively on one subject, giving up everything else (at least for me).

After realizing that neither of these paths was truly for me, I ended up submitting my application to psychology school, with sport psychology in mind as a possible direction. This way, I could continue studying and playing chess without fully abandoning either.

I had a promising start at university, as I was invited to a chess camp with the members of the Olympic Women’s Team, which piqued my motivation for a while. At the same time, being exposed to a completely new environment after flying out of the nest, missing my chess friends as they began their young adult lives, and my favorite coach, Ernő, falling seriously ill (he sadly passed away a few years later) caused that motivation to gradually fade.

Things might have been different if I had found someone new to learn from, but due to a terrible experience with a former teacher, I was less keen on doing so. On top of that, going on Erasmus to Italy and dealing with performance anxiety in tournaments only added to this process. After all, chess is far more enjoyable when you play it for fun, without constantly worrying about results, ratings and prizes. :)

The first time I coached professionally was during my higher education years, when I got the chance to teach chess to groups of little children in a kindergarten and in an elementary school, later individually as well, both offline and online. It definitely had its funny moments, except for when I was mistaken for an eighth grader in the elementary school at the age of 20, or when a 7-year-old wanted to bite me. However, once I went on the previously mentioned Erasmus and later moved to Greece, I had to look for other prospects.

Years passed, COVID struck the world, and a year later I decided to give chess streaming on Twitch a try. I didn’t have too much hope for it, considering that I’m an introvert and it was far beyond my comfort zone, especially since I was also much shyer at the time. Yet, I ended up enjoying it, talking and getting to know my audience really cheered me up while I was trying to finish my thesis and exams at university, in the Work and Organizational Psychology department, which I had continued with after my Bachelor’s degree.

Once I graduated, I realized coaching was what I wanted to do, but this time with adult improvers. I completely fell in love with this profession; I love getting to know people from different countries and learning more about them and their cultures, joking around during lessons, and, most importantly, seeing them grow their understanding of this game. :)

As for my chess career, it turns out the tables have turned. As a child, I enjoyed playing and sort of hated studying, but now I am more fond of learning than actually participating in tourneys or games. I still do these from time to time, and I even set some goals for myself (like finally earning the WIM title), but I take part in them less frequently.

Looking back, chess has never been just a game for me. It shaped who I am, tested my limits, and offered refuge when it was needed. Even though its role in my life has changed through the years, thanks to chess I met some of the most important people in my life, and it also gave me some of the most beautiful memories.

Through this blog, I’d like to share not only practical advice about chess improvement and psychology, but also the thoughts, struggles, and lessons that come with this journey. My main goal is to help you improve as a player, but also to feel more at ease with the ups and downs that come with this frustrating yet amazing game.

If any of this resonates with you and you’d like to follow along, don’t forget to subscribe! :)