This is a part three of the interview with Andrzej Krzywda, in which we talk about how his recent success changed him, how he deals with bad results and finally get to know him off-the-board.
You can read the first part of the interview here.
You can read the second part of the interview here.
THE AFTERMATH?
Q: This success and the Reddit threat created some stir in the chess community. First of all, what did the „doubters“ and the „haters“ say?
A: I’m not sure there were many haters here. Or maybe that’s just my skill of ignoring them. I’m already familiar with being “public online” from my programming activities. I learned how to deal with haters, I think I have a thick skin already. I just don’t care about them.
Some people express their doubts in less-skilled ways. It’s especially popular among programmers and chess players – both those groups are over-represented with people who are not always best at communication skills (myself included). It’s important to assume positive intentions and not to look for the hidden message.
Most people seem to be surprised with my endgame studies focus. That’s fine. I wasn’t a big fan of those too. If not for GM Socko, I’d never discover this. It works for me, but doesn’t have to work for everyone. When people ask me for advice, I do recommend at least trying endgame studies. They are the most underrated chess technique.
Also, my whole lifestyle helps me in working on chess. This is a luxury not everyone has. I work with great people, I have a wife who is a chess player. The family on my side is very supportive, but also my wife’s whole family are my big fans too. This is so helpful. Not everyone has this luxury so some doubters are right – it’s not that everyone can get the same improvement.
I’ve been contacted by scientists and researchers. I don’t think a single case like mine can help the science much, but it seems like my results do fit some existing patterns. My interview on Perpetual Chess Podcast was also the start of the “adult improver” series, which led more people to go public with their achievements.
From business, I learned about marketing and sales so I’m aware I can “sell” my result well. There are people out there who’ve had bigger successes than myself and my example encouraged them to talk about their results too. That’s great!
Some people worry if maybe that was just a 1 tournament thing. Maybe it was just pure luck condensed into 9 games. That’s a valid worry. I don’t want to become that 1-tournament-star. Such a big success can also be a problem – at the motivational level. I’ve set myself the bar very high now. Not so easy to beat it.
Q: Did you start feeling different in chess playing halls in Poland? Did the people start recognizing you in tournament halls? And respecting you more?
A: Yes, I think I got some recognition. Some people talk to me and thank me for the inspiration. This is very nice. Some other people, the more shy ones – I see that they recognize me, but they don’t come and talk, that’s fine too – I know it’s a world of introverts mostly. It’s usually the weaker player who feel inspired obviously. However, also some strong GMs sometimes come and talk to me. This is flattering.
Q: You also inspired a whole bunch of chess players worldwide? Did you receive any fan messages? How does it make you feel when you know you have been an example for numerous adults wishing to improve?
A: Yes, people from different parts of the world write to me.
This wasn’t really “expected” from my side. It all happened very quickly. Before Katowice 2018 I was no one in the chess world. Then I suddenly became part of a bigger story. I’ve had to adjust to that in a short period of time.
Some people seem to have big expectations for me. Others feel very inspired and share their stories. That’s fantastic – I love those.
I like to stay in touch with those people. I know some of them require just a little bit of motivation to get their chess ball rolling. I’m happy to help.
How does it feel? There’s some responsibility involved here. I’m OK with that. I never promised anything to anyone, but I’m OK with people rooting for me and expecting me to get good results.
It hurts when I have to share bad news, but I’m trying to be honest also when bad things happen.
Q: Unfortunately, the aftermath was not that rosy. After another successful tournament, which elevated your rating to 2296, the last quarter of the year was really heartbreaking. You lost 130 points in just two tournaments and as of December 2018, you are again rated below 2200.
I really admired how you handled these failures – you decided to talk about them openly. You even recorded a short audio clip in which you expressed your thoughts. It really made me sad – your voice was trembling and you sound like you are on the verge of tears.
Do you mind talking about these tournaments? What exactly went wrong there?
A: First, let me just quickly cover the other successful tournament. It was a team competition. I played on board 1, my wife on board 4. We play in these competitions every year and I was very motivated to play for the best result. I was aiming for 1st place, as a team.
I took the responsibility as a leader and tried my best. My result was really good – 7/9. I only wish we were paired with another team in the last round, as a win against a lower rated player didn’t get me to the 2300 level, which allows for FM, a milestone in my plans. In the end, I got to “only” 2296.
I played good chess overall. In the end, my team was second – a great result, but not fitting my ambitions. Next year! 🙂
On my board, I was clearly the first one. I also made the second National Master norm. I did lose one game, though. I’ve had a good game, my opponent had to give up an exchange. But later I wasn’t converting well and got a counter-attack…
Another game was actually very lucky, I played against a legendary Polish IM – Zbigniew Szymczak, who overplayed me. I could probably give up like 15 moves before, but then crazy things have happened. I noticed that my opponent seems to struggle with the position and eventually he blundered a queen, what a stroke of luck!
So, two fantastic tournaments in a row. Also, being able to play together with my wife at the same tournament was great. She also had a great result.
Being 2296 was surreal. It all happened so quickly. At the beginning of May, I’m a 2160 player, 8 weeks later I’m 2296. Crazy stuff! That was the end of June 2018.
July was a bit chaotic. I was meant to go for another tournament (Naidorf in Warsaw), but family stuff (cousin’s wedding) made it more complicated. In the end, my next tournament was Warakomska Memorial in Suwalki, early August.
Meanwhile, we were meant to have holidays, but the plans were canceled and instead we’ve got family over to us for holidays. Which was great, but probably I was too relaxed with my training discipline. Needless to say – I didn’t even analyze all my games from June, before the Suwalki tournament. Also, at that time, we’ve had a break with the coaching sessions – the summer time didn’t make it easy. But I did attend one training camp with my coach, which was fantastic overall.
I felt well before Suwalki and I didn’t predict such a disaster to happen.
Before the pairing in Suwalki, I knew I was close to that FM title. I was ranked somewhere in the middle. So either I’m on one of the first boards against a GM and a draw would give the missing 4 Elo points. Or I’m playing one of those 1900 players and possibly a win gives me the 4 points. This was also a tournament which many chess friends. This is great to have friends around, but one of my hypothesis is that it’s not really helping my results 😉
Anyway, the pairing of the first round appears – I’m playing Black against my coach, GM Socko! On the first board. How crazy is that?
It was a very interesting game where I got the initiative but eventually, he’s making this simple trap and I fall into it. The weakness of 8th rank, how hurtful. I lost.
OK, still not everything is lost. Second round, I’m paired against another student of my coach. A ~2200 player. I play White and we go for that complicated line in Naidorf. In the complications he’s becoming with a better position – I got too creative, for no reason at all. Luckily, in the endgame, I manage to hold well and there’s a tactical trick I can apply to simplify and draw. Instead, I’m not trusting my calculation and try to hold without the tactics. This is typical when I give up on endgame studies and don’t trust my own calculations. I lost that game. What’s worse I lost trust in my skills.
Here I am, a “rising star” of the chess community, having 0/2 at the beginning of the tournament. Next game, I’m playing a 1970 player, a young talent, but all he dreams of in that game is a draw, even when he’s clearly better. 4th round, I’m going all-in, against my good friend and I win. 1.5/4 so still some chances to get out of it. Next game, another 2100 player and a loss. Then 2 draws – again 2100 players.
I somehow felt into this spiral of bad results and I couldn’t get out of it. A pattern which will appear again in Vilnius. What’s common is that I’m playing more games against lower-rated players and I can’t even get to 50% result.
However, between those 2 bad tournaments, I have a decent one too, where I earn some ELO, at the Polish League.
One problem with chess is when you never analyze what went wrong. But there’s also another problem – overanalyzing what went wrong. I try to find a balance between those two.
Sometimes it’s hard to find an answer. Sometimes the answers are not fully rational. I mean – we’re playing this game in our heads. Between calculating the lines, other thoughts come to our minds. Maybe the GMs can disable other thoughts, but mere humans probably have the problem of thinking about something else during the game. Is all good at home? Is the company doing fine when I’m not there? I have this programming conference talk next week, am I prepared?
This is all distracting, but it’s there. It’s a good skill to be able to turn it off while playing. I think I have still a room for improvement here.
Talking about pure chess – I think the second part of the year was not great in terms of doing endgame studies. My calculation suffered. Certain chess things can stay in our memories forever – some opening lines, some ideas – they do need some refreshments, but overall after some repetitions, you just have them. I find it different with calculation – this is like a muscle, you need to keep working on that regularly. Every day. Otherwise, you still get the memory-stuff, the lines and the ideas, but it’s hard to calculate. Without calculation it’s really hard – you don’t trust your thinking, so you choose “safer” lines. Or you go crazy, trusting only your instinct. Both options are not required when calculating is fine.
The nice things – training calculation is not that difficult – for me it’s just the discipline of endgame studies + Kasparov’s games.
Q: Do you think it had something to do with you relaxing after all these successes you enjoyed earlier in the year?
A: Yes, it could be this too. Getting successes in chess is something that I just wasn’t used too. It was new. I didn’t know how to deal with that. I mean, it’s classic first world problem – but still, I find it hard.
In chess, we need to accept there are ups and downs. Also, with improvements – what was “up” before can be “down” later. Getting a rating performance of 2200 at a tournament was a moderate success for me, 2 years ago. While now, it’s a failure.
Q: As you mentioned – you played mainly against lower rated opponents. We all know it is more difficult to play such games. Did you underestimate them? And how do you plan to change your approach to such games in the future?
A: Those 2 bad tournaments are different, in the second one, I played against even lower rated players, often below 2000 and not being able to beat them. However, they were juniors – they have it all different with their ratings. I’m not looking at this as an excuse for my results, but I also don’t want to overinterpret it. Some of those young players will be 2300 very soon. Actually, I’m pretty sure, one of the juniors will become a GM before he’s 18.
In that second tournament, my game wasn’t that bad overall. Even my coach, who is not eager for giving compliments (which is good) said it was not bad. Sometimes I tried to win so hard that I crossed the line. Sometimes I was worried about risking and played overly safe.
In the end, I think it comes down to the calculation – I just didn’t see enough.
In that second tournament, I experimented with my extended repertoire – introducing 1. d4 with White, and CaroKann + Benoni with Black. While short-term it may have helped with the bad result, long-term it gives me new perspectives, new ideas. For example, the Caro Kann already paid off – I won two games with Black in Caro at the most recent tournament.
My knowledge keeps growing, I collect new ideas, I feel more confident with my chess. Even if short-term results are not showing it, I’m OK with accepting this for now. I was through it already, right? Before my Katowice 2018 result, I’ve had several bad results, but then the light came, bam, IM norm.
Most players represent more stable growth – like getting +10 per tournament. Maybe, given my chess past and my chess improvement, or maybe it’s just my personality, I’m more like +60 one tournament and then -60. It’s OK. I’m accepting this 🙂
Q: After my last tournament in Greece, in which I lost 40 points, I was on the verge of giving up classical chess. Did such thoughts enter your head? Did you ever feel like giving up? Like it is not worth it?
A: I can understand that this kind of thinking can appear.
In my case, I wasn’t close to giving up on classical chess. One thing I care about is having fun while being in the process. If it’s not fun, then I need to correct something. I learned enough about myself to know what makes chess fun for me, even if the results are not there.
Even after a -60 tournament, when I’m supposed to be sad – just show me a new idea in Hedgehog and I will be sitting on the chessboard for hours.
Q: How do you plan to recover? What would you say to chess players who experienced big tournament failures? How do you deal with a terrible tournament?
A: Observe yourself, see what makes it all fun for you. The goals can be fantastic. Visualizing IM Andrzej Krzywda is great – but it’s the process of getting there that should be fantastic too. All those rapid/blitz tournaments that happen between classical tournaments are fun to me. The travels to tournaments can be fun too – I love trains, I learned to enjoy flights too.
When I learned that bad hotel conditions influenced my mood – I started taking care of it more – now I try to find good hotels with good food. If a tournament is in a location where there are no good hotels, I don’t go there.
For each of it will be something different.
Also, a chess tournament is often not only just chess.
When I was in Vilnius, I lived in one apartment with 2 great chess friends. We often went out to sight-see or just have food or walks with a bigger group of chess players. I made new friends, I learned about the history of Lithuania more, I saw some important historical places. I learned a few words in a new language. It was a disaster results-wise, but it was a great time overall.
Seeing new places/countries/cities is another goal in my life, so a tournament is not just chess to me. Maybe this perspective can help too?
Chess-wise – it’s important not to rely on emotions too much. Look at the games, try to categorize the mistakes. In my case, I recently have a group of mistakes where I don’t look at the opponent’s “going back” moves seriously enough. Interestingly, it also showed up in my endgame studies, where often I missed some lines which were about the opponent going back. It’s now a part of my training to care more about this.
ANDRZEJ KRZYWDA OFF-THE-BOARD
Q: Last, but not least, I would like to find out a bit about Andrzej the non-chess player. As an engineer, I am quite curious about your programming career. When did you first start coding?
A: There’s something in programming that similarly to chess gives me a lot of pleasure. There’s a similar “looking for truth” aspect here and there are so many ideas around it. I started early, probably when I was ~10, but that was a time when I had an Atari and my coding was just rewriting code from magazine to the computer without understanding much.
The proper programming started when I was 18 at the University. Meanwhile, I was close to programming all the time but didn’t really understand much of programming. Also, before the uni, chess was more important for me. Only later it has changed.
Q: When did you get your first job? What were you doing there?
A: There is this part of my story where I was involved in a family business when I was 13. It’s only now that I realize I was a CTO back then. I was responsible for specifying requirements for software which was then used almost only be me. Here is the full story.
A proper programmer’s job – I started when I was 19, in 1999. It was just after the dotcom bubble – really bad time to look for a programmer job. Hard to imagine that, given the current, great job market for programmers.
At the beginning, it was only HTML, but quickly it got to PHP and some more serious Java backend development.
Q: You are a CEO today. When did you find your own company? How many years of experience did you have at this point?
A: The whole “starting my company” thing was kind of random in my case. I’ve had like 7 or 8 years of experience. I lived in London for 2 years and worked for a small startup. I was employee nr 2 so I saw the company grow from nothing. When I decided to come back to Poland I just wanted to be a freelancer. But this quickly led me to a situation where I had too many clients. I was working in that programming niche – Ruby on Rails – I’m still in that niche today. I asked 1 friend to help me. Then I hired another programmer. Both are still working with me, already >10 years! Then I realized that I actually run a company.
I never considered myself a business person, but I found some fun in learning about business (having some business DNA thanks to my parents helped too). Now I enjoy all the different aspects of running a business. I know enough about sales, marketing, branding, finances, taxes to feel safe 😉
Q: How did it happen? How did you decide to do it? How difficult was it to decide to quit your job and go in the entrepreneurial waters?
A: It was mostly an accident, however, given my background, my childhood, my personality – it was probably going to happen anyway, sooner or later. I like the freedom of deciding what to do and how to do it. Even now, when we have clients, it’s us dictating how things are done – we’re software experts, we know how to do stuff, the clients need to adjust.
I did have my time at big corporations, but I wasn’t enjoying that, at all.
I like smaller organizations, there’s only 14 of us. I surrounded myself by programmers who are better than myself. It’s similar like with chess, it’s better to play against those better ones – then you improve.
Q: We have mentioned your wife is a chess player? What is her name? How did you two meet? Did you start dating immediately? Or did it take some time for you to „make the first move“?
A: Malgorzata (Gosia) is a great chess player too. She has a different chess personality than me, but I would worry playing against her. She’s very solid and calculates very well. We obviously met at a chess tournament. Once we met, it was a very quick “combination” – for both of us it “clicked” quickly.
Q: We have already mentioned you have two children. What are their names?
A: Antos is now 7 years old, Franek will be 5 soon.
Q: You have said your kids inspire you because they learn fast and they are proud of your achievements. Do they play chess? Do you plan to teach them?
A: They’re playing chess for fun sometimes. No tournaments, though. We’re not pressing on them with this. I suppose they have good genes for chess. I’m pretty sure they will play tournaments some day. However, I don’t believe in this whole “competing as juniors” thing. I don’t care if they get medals as juniors.
Chess is this wonderful thing, which can be with you for the whole life, the age doesn’t matter. I try to show them the “fun” part of chess. It’s easy to pressure too much. I know enough of my chess friends who played as juniors, enjoyed the game, but were pressed by parents too much and after getting over 18 they just hated this game and never came back.
Q: Do you have any parenting hacks? What would be your secret for successful parenting?
A: Oh, I don’t really feel competent to advise on this topic.
I’m trying my best to be a good father, but I know you can always be better. Both kids are different, very different. We spend time playing chess, but also computer games – in my generation computer games were considered “evil”. There are so many great games, inspiring, educational that you can play together, having fun and learn at the same time.
The technology has changed the world. What we were doing as kids is now totally different. It doesn’t make sense for them to memorize so much. In a way, I’m one of those people who move the technology forward – I’m not treating this as a danger to the next generations, but more like opportunity. I try to prepare my kids for life together with technology. We live in exciting times overall, our kids will see more of it.
Q: Apart from programming, fathering, husbanding, chess and physical exercise, what else do you do in your free time (I know, I know – What free time?) 😀
A: Books, movies, music, computer games, board games. I try to find inspiration in all mediums. I like philosophy too, I enjoy looking “for the answer”.
There are two things which give me more free time (as compared to my past):
- no politics/news in my life – that was a life-changer, I used to be addicted to recent news, but gave up on it completely and it changed my mood totally. No TV news and I blocked all people who posted recent political news to my social media
- I don’t commute to work – working from home probably gives me an hour or two every day, not spent in the car/train etc.
I consider reducing social media from my life. I enjoy posting my chess updates, or programming updates, but it’s getting harder and harder to find useful content to consume. Too easy to get distracted too. While I consider social media overall as a great step for humanity (so easier to communicate), it’s a difficult skill to get it right and not waste time.
When it comes to music, I have an unusual taste. I enjoy death metal, recently I’m also into black metal too. But also, electronic music, like acid techno, goa, minimal, even dubstep. I also find hip-hop fascinating – recently I’ve been rediscovering Wu-tang clan.
In my past, I’ve had times where I was focusing on the negative aspects of the world. It took me some time to change this attitude. Now I enjoy the positives. We live in such a great time in history. I’m lucky to live in those times. I’m lucky to live in my beatiful country, among fantastic people.
The technology is amazing too. We can create so many new things nowadays. The tools are here. That’s how I spend parts of my free time – enjoying what we get, thinking what other things we can “build”.
Q: Do you read? Which book can be found on your bed table at this moment?
A: Oh yes, that’s a big thing in my life.
I read like 7 books at the same time. Usually, they belong to different categories. For example, now, I’m reading the biography of Walt Disney – I love reading about the futurists/visionaries. Elon Musk is one of my big idols here.
Homo Deus is another book, which represents the futurism aspect of my life. I like to predict future.
Just recently I finished reading a sci-fi trilogy, Three Bodies Problem. Oh, how great it was. The best sci-fi I read ever!
There’s also one fantasy book – The First Law of Magic, by Terry Goodkind.
This year I started listening to audiobooks more often too. I listened to Deep Work recently – very relevant to chess players, I think.
There’s usually something about programming too – I have a book on Domain Modeling made Functional which is a book about how to represent real-world problems in software.
Another book I’m reading is Spark which is about the impact of exercise on the brain.
Q: Do you watch movies or TV shows? Do you have a favourite movie or a TV show?
A: OK, I’m a big fan of The Office (US version). I like the Black Mirror series and loved the Stranger Things. Apart from that I don’t watch series that much. They’re huge time-sinkers and I prefer to use that time elsewhere.
Q: If you could invite three persons to dinner, whom would you invite?
A: Elon Musk, Garri Kasparov, Gary Vaynerchuk
Q: Do you think chess players have typical shortcomings? Which ones?
A: It’s always a problem with generalization. There are so many chess players in the world. I think we represent more the “introvert” group. Some chess players seem to hide in the chess world. Chess is an escape world for many people. I’m not judging anyone, but I think in life there’s much more than just chess 😉
Q: What is your life motto?
A: I’m probably usually more oriented towards the future, than about thinking about the past or focusing on the present. It’s just part of my flow, of who I am. I like to discover new ideas in different parts of my life, not only in chess. I love bringing ideas from one world to another. What’s the Hedgehog structure like when you move this into business?
What’s the chess equivalent of functional programming? I like to ask myself those questions and focusing on ideas is kind of my motto.
Q: Last, but not the least – which message would you like to send to readers. To adults who wish to improve their game (or pursue any endeavour), but they think they can’t?
A:
It’s hard to send generic advice. I try to share what is helping me, maybe others can find some parts of it inspiring. Definitely, don’t just try to replicate all of my steps – each of us is different. What I think is helping me:
- Big, aggressive goals
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- where do I want to be with a certain part of my life in 1 year, 2 years, 10 years?
- Surrounding myself with close people who share similar goals
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- I have chess friends who also target the IM title
- I have programmer friends who I work with and we motivate each other
- Don’t be scared about making changes
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- if something doesn’t work for you and you feel sad because of it, try to change it
- you’re a chess player so you’re good at strategies – find our where you are, point A – where you want to B and define the points between
- Look critically at your daily schedule, look for time-sinkings actions
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- in my case, it was cutting out the TV
- cutting out politics/news
- cutting out TV series
- commuting if remote work is possible in your industry
Q: (Phew) Okay, we have finally made it to the end of the interview. Thank you, Andrzej, so much for your participation and for weathering through these questions.
We wish you much luck in the future. We really hope you will recover from the last two setbacks soon and manage to fulfill your chess goals!
A: Thanks for the interview. You’ve put so much work in preparing those questions. It’s amazing! It’s an honor for me to be interviewed. Also, congrats on the whole Chessentials idea – it’s great how you’re using technology to bring value to so many chess players in the world, that’s amazing.
I hope to see you in a chess tournament one day 🙂
Thanks to the readers who went as far in the reading – I appreciate your time spent on reading my story. I’d love to learn your stories too – feel free to contact me anytime you like.
LINKS AND RESOURCES WHERE YOU CAN FIND OUT MORE ABOUT ANDRZEJ:
Afore-mentioned Viral Reddit Thread: I Was ~ 2100 for > 20 years (I’m 38). Last Week I Made an IM Norm
Perpetual Chess Podcast: Episode 76 – Adult Improver Series With Andrzej Krzywda
Andrzej’s Audio Clip: Hard Times – Back To 2100s After A Bad Tournament