The internet is full of these lofty promises that make you feel like improving your chess will be easy. If you only watch this video or buy this course, you’ll improve immediately 300 points.
As you might have found out the hard way, that’s not true.
But you might wonder, why does online chess content suck that much?
It’s pretty simple. Because big lofty promises make money. And creating valuable content is hard. Just as improving anything meaningful.
This tweet explains it all:
You Are In Control
There are two ways to get rid of clickbait content:
- Expose clickbaiters and hope everyone will play fair.
- Just stop clicking on clickbait content.
As an idealist, I’d love to get all YouTubers to stop making lofty promises and have honest titles. But let’s be honest. That’s not going to happen.
Instead, I’ll try sharing ways for the viewers to stop watching low quality clickbait videos and start finding more in-depth, useful chess advice.
Two weeks ago I shared a way to get away from the algorithm. Today, I want to share a more mindset-based way to avoid bad content and get high-value content instead.
Decide To Stop Being Lied To
As you can see in Housel’s tweet above, the way to make a fortune requires two things.
- The creators’ readiness to lie
- The viewers’ wish to be lied to
So, the safest way is for you to decide that you want to stop being lied to. This involves accepting one simple, harsh truth.
Chess Improvement Is Hard – And That’s Good
The quicker you accept that there is no way around this harsh reality, the more you can focus on what matters and actually improve your game.
Read this through as many times as you need to:
Chess improvement is hard. Achieving anything meaningful involves doing hard stuff. Anybody trying to convince you otherwise is at best wasting your time.
Reframing how you see this truth can help a lot. For many, this can be an annoyance. “Why does it have to be so hard?” is something I also catch myself asking from time to time.
The answer is: it is hard because it is meaningful. And if it were easy, everyone would achieve it, and thus it wouldn’t be meaningful anymore. This also means that if you succeed at improving your chess, you can actually be proud of yourself.
And when you see a title like (real title):
Give me 8 minutes and I will make you a great chess player
you’ll simply smirk, click “don’t recommend this channel” and find a valuable video instead.
Keep improving,
GM Noël Studer
PS: This article was initially sent out to my Newsletter list. If you want to get chess improvement advice for free in your inbox, join 17,000+ chess improvers by signing up for Friday Grandmaster Insights here.
Whenever you’re ready, here is how I can help you:
- Want to know How to train chess well? Check out The Simplified Chess Improvement System. This course taught 800+ students the How of Chess Training. Create your high-quality chess plan and learn how to study each part of Chess, from tactics to openings & endgames. Click here to learn more.
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