One Good Game - Improving Chess Results by Focusing on Quality of Play

While the focus of a chessplayer is usually on the quantifiable aspects of the game, such as rating, points, prizes, the quality of play is often not paid much attention to, and for no good reason. Rather than aiming for a certain result, such as 75 % of points, I’d like to recommend another approach.

In a given tournament - try to play one good game that you can be proud of! 

But what about the rest of the tournament? The reason for my advice is simple. If in a single tournament, a player is able to have one game where they play consistently well in the opening, middlegame and endgame – I believe that a good overall tournament result will follow along, and one would not have to worry about it. It is also easier to focus on playing strong moves, rather than trying to calculate your expected post-event rating after each round. And as it happens in life too, we can only be responsible for our efforts and actions, not for their outcome.