What obstructs 95% of players?

Hello,

I have read another impressive article from our GM - Igor Smirnov in his blog,

The post is about "What obstructs 95% of players?". Read that article below....

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There are literally millions of chess books and tutorials that are available to us these days and all chess learners study from this same pool of material.
However, only a very small group of players (less than 5%) will experience any significant progress. The majority of players (95%) will unfortunately experience only slight advancement, or worse, no progress at all.

How to deal with such a sad situation? There are 2 typical approaches:

1) The 1st group of players is a little confused and ask themselves the question (or send the question to me  ), “Why am I not progressing despite all of my desire and efforts?“

If you are in this group, please, accept my congratulations – you have very good chances for improvement!

2) The 2nd group of players prefers to believe in what they want to believe. They think that they are “experienced,” “advanced,” “experts” or that they “know all the chess basics already,” etc.

However, there is a well-known refutation proverb, “If you are so smart, then why are you so poor?” In regards to chess, this proverb basically translates to: “If you know so many things about chess, then how come your rating is so low?”

In reply to this obvious question, this 2nd group of players will start providing various lame excuses such as:
“ I’m a good player, but only have problems with tactics (or opening repertoire or anything else)”.
“I don’t want to memorize opening lines, because I like creativity.”
“I have problems with concentration, and sometimes make blunders.”

Being under the delusion of their “advanced” level, such people produce a lot of lame excuses for their poor practical results.

They also start blaming chess books, authors, teachers, etc.  OK, maybe a certain book was bad, but it’s quite unlikely that all of them are bad, right? So maybe the problem is not there?

All in all, if you are a 2000 rated player and honestly believe that you’ve learned all of the main strategic and tactical motifs – you are in this 2nd group.

In this case, I wish you good luck, because there’s nothing else that can help you.

Yes, I’m not here to say pleasant things, but to tell you the REAL situation.

Now let’s get back to the 1st group of people who wonder, “Why am I not progressing despite all of my desire and efforts?“

Please, think about this question. I’ll give you the answer in the next lesson, but in the meantime your independent thinking is very important. Perhaps you’ve learnt A LOT of chess books (or other tutorial materials). Why didn’t it bring you A LOT of a progress?

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Thank you!