I’ve spent the last 3 weeks showing the difference between knowledge and skills.
A big part of my teaching is: forget about knowledge and focus on your skills.
Today I want to share where I took it too far, and how I’ll change that in the future. But first, a fun story of my Padel adventure that illustrates this best.
It Is (nearly) never the material
Just like in chess, many padel players focus too much on the knowledge + equipment.
- They buy fancy rackets.
- Only play with perfectly new balls.
- Have the latest grips and sprays.
Aware of this issue, I am going the opposite direction. I bought a beginner racket, play with most balls and focus on my own skills. When I make a mistake, it is me, not the material.
Then, last week I played a match and I had the same problem as the past few months: when hitting certain shots, my racket would slightly move in my hand and the shot was imprecise.
I always put it on my lacking control.
Then I changed rackets with another player and he looked at me in shock:
“What are you doing? You can’t play like this!” he screamed at me.
Turns out, having a proper grip on your racket is rather important. I just never bothered putting one on, and especially when sweating, the racket was instable in my hands. Which led to a lot of unnecessary errors.
This was a 5 minute and $2 fix that I ignored because I was so convinced the material is never the issue. Lesson learned.
Minimal viable knowledge
This really made me think about my chess teaching.
Seeing how much others push knowledge in general and mostly opening knowledge, my stance was: just don’t do it.
And I’ve realized it was too extreme.
When you have a very clear leak in fundamental knowledge, it can cost you a lot. Just like the racket grip cost me a lot in Padel.
The problem is, amateurs have a hard time understanding what this fundamental knowledge is. There very often is a rather quick fix (opposite to skills, where the fix is long and painful), but if you don’t know what it is, you might waste dozens of hours.
And many great coaches will think that basics such as putting a grip on your racket are so obvious, that it is not worth mentioning it.
I realize this from other sports I improve at. There is so much information, and even though I’m a great learner, I can’t fully know if I focus on the essentials, unless someone tells me what they are.
That’s why I decided to spend some time on presenting the minimal viable knowledge in different areas and different rating levels.
Covering it all
My goal is to be able to say: if you know X things at Y rating, knowledge is not your issue.
Focus on your skills.
That exists for players below 1200 with BCM. But I want to expand it to cover the full 0-2000 spectrum, and also include openings.
Instead of just saying “don’t buy these huge opening courses” or “this isn’t for your level” I want to offer a small, much more practical alternative.
Because here is what I finally realized: the better and quicker I can help you solve your knowledge issues, the more time you have for what truly matters.
Keep improving,
GM Noël
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.
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