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  • GM Avetik Grigoryan GM Avetik Grigoryan

How to Multiply Good Results in Chess

Multiplying your good results can mean raising hundreds of points, winning tournaments in a row and much more. Find out how you can maximize your good results.

Improvement Hacks | 2 min read
How to Multiply Good Results in Chess

In the previous article, I have shared 5 important steps to stop bad results.

Now let’s see what to do when we are in our winning season: we win tournaments in a row, win when playing online, raise hundreds of rating points.

Is there a way to multiply our results? Yes, there is! And it’s very simple.
Ready? Let’s go.

Snowball Effect

Do you remember the snowball effect from the previous article?

Rolling snowball leads to a snowball effect

Let me quickly remind you.

When we play poorly, we lose our mood, our confidence, and as a result, we start to play worse. But, when we play worse, we lose even more confidence, our mood becomes even worse, and so on.

Now the good thing! The snowball effect also works when we are doing very well!
Here is how: when we play well, our mood gets better, we become more confident, and as a result, we start to play better. So when we play better, we become much more confident and, consequently, we produce better results.

The key here is: Keep the Momentum!

The Law of Momentum

We just need to keep the momentum. We need to keep it going and push forward!

In such situations, most chess players, instead of pushing forward and keeping the momentum to work for them, take a break… Why?
The answer is quite simple: It happens because of fear.

The inner worm whispers to their minds saying: “I am so happy now and proud of results, what if I continue and I fail?” or “Finally I started to win, let’s take a break and enjoy this feeling.”
All of us have such inner worms, but it's up to us whether to accept such thoughts or ignore them, keeping the momentum.

There is a cool sport – Windsurfing.

Windsurfing is about keeping the momentum!

Here it's all about catching the wind. No fuel, no electricity, no artificially generated energy, just wind. Catch the wind at the right angle, and you set sail.

If you watch competitions of this sport on TV, you’ll often see someone behind others and suddenly catching the wind and outstripping all the participants.

The same is in chess.
When we are in our winning season, and we've caught the wind, we should try to get as far as possible using the momentum for us. Fear should not stop us.

One of the paradoxes I notice in many chess players is that they do the contrary.

When they play badly and lose a lot of online chess ratings, they start to play more to bring that rating back. The following day they go to chess.com again and find out that they have lost 100 points the previous day.

Or, when they are in a winning season, played just 3 games, and won all of them, instead of continuing to play more, they stop enjoying their victories.

Note: This is absolutely fine if you play chess just for fun. But, if you want to improve your chess, your results are important for you, and you are looking to accelerate them, take a break when it goes bad and keep the momentum. Don’t stop the snowball when you are in your winning season.

Success is like a Snowball

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Originally published Dec 26, 2019

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