How Less Practice Made Me Better At Chess (This Applies To Anything)

After watching Queen’s Gambit on Netflix, I wanted to know how to play chess.

Although I had played a little in childhood, all I really knew was how the pieces moved. By the time my kids were 7 or 8, they could run rings around me at chess. I downloaded a chess app for my phone and started playing puzzles.

I was soon playing 30 or more a day, over 1,000 a month.

There are obvious winnable positions in chess

Certain situations play out to a win every single time with a set of moves, like a recipe for winning.

With practice, I could see some of them. I could solve a lot of puzzles without thinking, on autopilot. In October, according to the chess scoring system, I had a rating of 1,631 in puzzles.

But I plateaued and stopped seeing new patterns. I wasn’t improving.

To switch things up, I tried deliberate practice

Despite playing a lot, my rating fell back by 200.

The problem was that I had stopped thinking about puzzles, I just raced through them. It was too easy to play puzzle after puzzle without really thinking.

Chess is a thinking game. To keep learning, I needed a new strategy.

So I slowed right down. Now I do just 3 puzzles per day. But they are not on autopilot. My score has improved, and I’m enjoying it again, too. Less is clearly more.

Repetition can only take you so far

If you want to improve at something but have hit a plateau, maybe try the same. Practice less, but do it with full concentration.

Perhaps you’ll find that less is more, too.