How and What to Train in Chess

Most chess players dedicate quite a bit of time beyond playing to trying to improve their game. However, knowing how to make the most of your time is crucial. Well, if you regularly think about these things, then you are probably closer to considering chess a sport. And how do people improve at sports? In one word: training.

Training can be described as the acquisition of a skill. Here we need to draw a clear distinction with another relevant process for chess improvement: Studying, which means incorporation of knowledge.

The difference is likely clear to you already. Training is more active than studying. Think of solving a tactical puzzle vs watching a YouTube video on some opening.

Want to see how active your current learning process is? There is a very simple experiment you can run. Try to do another thing while you learn chess. Can you solve math while you calculate a mate in 4? Can you do it while you play blitz? And while you watch a video? Aha... The more impaired the process is by another simultaneous one, the more active it is.

Most chess improvement comes from training. Maybe at the highest level of chess they do more studying than training, but for most of us, training will always yield gains.

There is a huge overestimation of the value of studying, mostly because you can sell content to be learned, but it's harder to sell training. And there is already enough training material in any open website like Lichess for all our life.

Knowing more about the way we should conduct our training is then crucial for improvement.

There are three key questions.

How to train

If you take one thing from reading this article, let it be this: the effectiveness of the training depends on how much it resembles the game situation. If you train while doing something else, intermittently, and then play with everything you've got, you are very likely to get frustrated.

Curating the context you train in will definitely increase what you get from it. The context includes not only your environment, but also how you feel. Again, the more this resembles the game scenario, the better.

What to train

Chess is a game of patterns. There are patterns you can study (for example, some early opening moves, or some technical endgames), and there are patterns you need to train. No one ever read up on every tactical motif and went on to gain 500 rating points. If you are just starting out, trying to be aware of every possible capture is already a challenge, and one to be proud of accomplishing! Nothing to be studied there.

Who knows what to train better than anyone else? The (ever) current geniuses of chess improvement, kids. Look at how many tactical puzzles the best under 10 years old player ever had been solving before playing any tournament: Faustino Oro's chess.com stats.

For most of the readers of this article, I want to say that you won't stop improving from systematically training tactics for at least the next couple years (if you do, let me know and I'll take responsability).

There is a lot to be said for trying to learn from our own games, specially the losses, which show us the patterns that we are missing. But in most cases this requires some supervision, as the fish doesn't know what water is.

How much to train

The training needs to be regular. Creating training habits is absolutely key for improvement in any sport. There's a phenomenal work you can read about creating habits: Atomic Habits, by James Clear.

My name is Juan Cruz Arias, I'm a FIDE Master and FIDE School Instructor, and I run ChessHabits: an online training academy based on the scientific principles of improvement outlined in that book.

Once you sign up, you start gaining points in our website by solving tactical puzzles (which you should already be doing!). Puzzles can be done at lichess.org, chess.com or chesstempo.com (which is our general recommendation, due to better puzzle quality). You can later redeem those points for rewards such as one-on-one lessons, diagnosis of your weaknesses and strengths, training games, among many others.

For the price of 10 USD per month, you can start your journey towards stable chess improvement. Our system is aimed at creating daily habits of chess improvement that will help you steadily over time. It’s a minimalistic progressive approach, at first you may feel that it’s not very demanding, but the goal is to first create the habit. It doesn’t matter how successful or frustrating each specific day of training is, what matters is continuing the habit, which will put you on the path towards long-term guaranteed improvement.

Still not convinced? Read these reviews by our top ChessHabits improvers:

It is not totally shocking that solving puzzles and training your calculation and pattern recognition every day will make you better at chess, however that does not mean it is easy (otherwise everyone would be good at chess!). ChessHabits is really amazing in that it makes chess training a bit easier to approach and forces you to have structure, and with enough time a handful of correct puzzles a day will absolutely pay off. For me, before I started I was really good at short, simple tactics and pattern recognition, but I found in complicated positions I would only calculate one or two lines, and then get immediately surprised by my opponent and often quickly lose the game. I was stuck in this pattern for about 5 years, and after working a lot on ChessHabits, I am now losing more and more longer games because of strategic mistakes, not because I miscalculated or didn't see a variation, which means I can continue improving! I would also highly recommend spending your points on the motif recommendations/weakness/strength recommendations, as those will allow you to find new ways to train and improve (with themed puzzles!). Cannot recommend ChessHabits enough!!

- @lc69 (+140 in Rapid and +90 in Classical in the last year)

ChessHabits gave me the confidence in knowing how to select the right moves, rather than encouraging me to memorize the right line.

- @IshmaelKissinger (+70 in Rapid in the last year)

I’ve always enjoyed puzzles but struggled to find the discipline to solve them consistently. As a full-time employed adult, I had plenty of excuses to skip my chess training. Chess Habits has given me the motivation and confidence to simply focus on 'showing up daily', and I am definitely reaping the rewards. I feel sharper and can easily maintain my tactical level even when not playing games. It's all the sweeter that I can get rewards like full game reviews by an FM for doing what’s best for my chess anyway!

- @Check_Fold (+150 rating in Rapid in the last year)

Send me a message here in Lichess and I'll help you sign up. Also, feel free to check out our Instagram, our Facebook or our webpage.