“A wise person knows that not all advice applies universally; it must be filtered through the lens of individual context.” — Quote from ChatGPT

I’ve listened to a lot of chess podcasts. The guests give great advice. The problem is that their counsels are for higher-rated players who play in tournaments, aiming to increase their ratings. Though none of these characteristics describes me, my fascination for chess induced me to try to follow standard chess advice such as:

• Write down the moves and analyze your games
• Play slow games
• Study and practice a lot of tactics
• Learn enough about a few openings to get a good middle-game position

I’ve been fortunate to meet a retired NM. We played several games together, and he identified my biggest problem: I miss one-move threats at least 90% of the time. During our first few meetings, he and I played slower games while I wrote down the moves. He’d then go over the game with me and identify which moves were blunders and the best move. We could only play one game in the 90 minutes we had available. Not the best use of our coaching time.

My new strategy is to play hundreds of 5-minute games. Doing this will subconsciously build pattern recognition. I’m no longer writing my moves during my OTB games at my club. I can get in more games that way whether or not we use a clock. My coach and I met for two hours today and played about a dozen games with the…