The Minimalist Chess Workout

As a parent, it’s tough to find time to work out. For a while I was going to the gym three times a week, and it was working great. But at some point t I felt like I could no longer afford the time investment of going to and from the gym in the middle of the day. I wanted something I could do at home after the kids have gone to bed. (I tend to get my best work done early in the day, so those late night hours are less valuable.)

I decided to try out Brad Stulberg’s minimalist strength workout.

This has a few advantages:

• I can do it at home

• I can do it at night after the kids have gone to bed (my gym wasn’t open that late)

Is it as effective as going to the gym, where I could use the squat rack and other equipment? I don’t know. Maybe not. But I’m a big believer that the best workout is the one you’ll actually do. “Simple beats optimal,” as one strength coach said.

So I started wondering, what would a minimalist workout for chess look like? This is what I came up with:

This incorporates what I consider the three core chess improvement activities – playing games, solving puzzles, and reviewing your games – into a single streamlined session.

Doing everything in every session really reduces the logistical overhead of planning. Whenever you sit down to work on chess, you know exactly what you’re going to do, because it’s the same thing every time. Would it be more optimal to split these activities out into different sessions? Maybe, but it’s more important to just do them. You can also do the whole workout within a single platform, Chess.com or Lichess, whichever you prefer.

Once you’ve made the decision to include all three activities in one session, the order is pretty obvious. In addition to being valuable on their own, tactics serve as a good warmup, so they go first. Then playing (the single most important chess activity) is the meat of the session. Finally, review has to go last, after the game.

You might be surprised at some things that are NOT in this workout; namely, reading books or studying courses. While these things can certainly be useful, I don’t consider them as central as the core three activities. To put it a different way, if you do this workout consistently three times a week for three months, I think it’s very likely you’ll see tangible improvement. If you read books and don’t play games for three months, I don’t think you’ll improve much at all.

In this sense I agree with this post by Nick Vasquez: “play first, study later.” That is, playing is the most important thing, so prioritize it. And only by playing can you identify which areas of your game you need to work on.

In the rest of the article, I’ll go into more detail on each part of the workout.

Tactics

Do your tactics in whatever platform you’re planning to use to play your game. Chess.com or Lichess both work well. Some people claim that the tactics on these sites aren’t as good as those in books or other sites. Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not. In this case we’re going for simplicity and it’s easiest to keep it all on one platform. The best tactics are the ones you actually do.

It is, however, extremely important to do them right. This means above all avoiding the “guess and check” method. This is where you play the first move that comes to mind. If you guessed wrong, the computer corrects you, and you carry on from there. The problem with the guess and check method is that in a real game if you guess wrong on the first move, there’s a good chance you just lost the game.

For that reason, it’s essential to visualize your whole solution, including the opponent’s best defenses, before making any moves on the board. This might make you go slower, but it will form much better habits for real games.

Play

If you want to get better at chess, you have to play chess. It’s as simple as that, yet it’s amazing how many self-identified chess players don’t play regularly. Perhaps because playing incurs the risk of losing. But in fact it’s those losses that will help you get better.

I decided on the 10+0 time control because I really wanted to fit the whole workout into 45 minutes, and longer games can eat up a lot of time if they go the distance. But if you do have more time to invest, I’d suggest using it here, in a 10+5 or 15+10 game. The increment really helps prevent the endgame from becoming a clicking contest and I do think most people will get more value out of those games. However, for the time-tight, you can still get a lot out of a 10+0 game.

A few tips:

• As much as possible, remove distractions. Close non-chess windows on your computer. Get the kids out of the room. This is designed to be a short workout so you can approach it with 100% focus.

• Play to win within the time control. For many players it’s tempting to play slowly, since their end goal is to improve at classical chess. This is a trap. Play fast enough that you can finish the game within the time limit.

Review

Reviewing your games is essential if you want to improve. You could even argue that the main purpose of playing is to gain fodder for review. But how do you review your games?

Some will disagree, but for this quick-and-dirty workout, I saw using the engine is fine. With only 15 minutes to devote to review, it’s going to be very difficult for most players to draw meaningful conclusions from their own analysis. The upside of using the engine is you get quick and accurate feedback (this is typically understood to be a key part of deliberate practice***). The downside is the engine won’t explain it to you…unless you really know how to use it.

How to extract insights from the engine could be a whole other article, but for now let’s just stick to a few tips. Using the engine well is a skill well worth developing, because ultimately it’s the most powerful tool at your fingertips.

• Focus on the biggest mistakes. If your biggest mistake was a ?? move, don’t worry about the ? moves. If your biggest mistake was a ? move, don’t worry about the ?! moves.

• Force the engine to explain itself by making your own moves. The engine’s top line is what it considers best play for both sides. But typically, you will have intended, or be curious, about a different move. Make that move on the board. The engine’s line will now update to reflect best play from there. Often, that will be enough to see why your intended move doesn’t work. If not, keep making moves and seeing how the engine reacts until you can understand what’s going on.

If you want a more specific review routine, check out my article on the OBIT method.