Improving At Chess Is Hard
Improving at chess is hard. It's especially hard for an adult, lacking as we are in time to dedicate to such frivolities with the intensity required for improvement. There are tactics to practice, strategic ideas to study, openings to learn, and books to read.
Worse, you have to actually play the game in order to improve! Who'd have thought?
The consensus is that you should play slow chess games to improve. Slow chess online usually means somewhere from 15-30 minutes per side, with additional time added after each move. Individual games can take 30-60 minutes, or more, and there is no "pause" button.
Obviously playing the game is the point, but sometimes that gets lost in the shuffle. When you only have 5 or 10 or 30 minutes, it's easier to sit down and do a few tactics problems, or read a few pages in a book, or spend a few minutes reviewing openings, than it is to commit to playing a full game of chess. There's also no punishment for getting interrupted in a tactics problem. If you walk away from a game of chess, you lose magic internet points.
You know what else makes you lose internet points? Losing.
That's right. Every game you play is an opportunity to lose (or win) rating points. Everyone knows that your rating in an arbitrary pool of players is an accurate measure of self-worth, and so loss aversion can be a powerful incentive to not actually play the game. Doing tactics is safe. Playing a real game can actually be a little nerve-wracking if you let it. The less often you play, the more nerve-wracking it becomes!
Any participant of e-sports is familiar with this at some level. It's a significant enough effect that serious online gamers have been writing about it for years. See: Ladder Anxiety
Ironically, the games you learn the most from are the ones you lose. Being afraid of losing is actively detrimental to progress, and not just because it prevents you from playing. Embrace the losing! Learn!
So, as part of my continuing efforts to improve at this silly game, I've decided to commit to playing at least one game every day after work. By making it a part of the routine, I hope to lose faster, and therefore learn faster.
This blog is mostly for my own record keeping, but feel free to read on if you so choose.
Worse, you have to actually play the game in order to improve! Who'd have thought?
The consensus is that you should play slow chess games to improve. Slow chess online usually means somewhere from 15-30 minutes per side, with additional time added after each move. Individual games can take 30-60 minutes, or more, and there is no "pause" button.
Obviously playing the game is the point, but sometimes that gets lost in the shuffle. When you only have 5 or 10 or 30 minutes, it's easier to sit down and do a few tactics problems, or read a few pages in a book, or spend a few minutes reviewing openings, than it is to commit to playing a full game of chess. There's also no punishment for getting interrupted in a tactics problem. If you walk away from a game of chess, you lose magic internet points.
You know what else makes you lose internet points? Losing.
That's right. Every game you play is an opportunity to lose (or win) rating points. Everyone knows that your rating in an arbitrary pool of players is an accurate measure of self-worth, and so loss aversion can be a powerful incentive to not actually play the game. Doing tactics is safe. Playing a real game can actually be a little nerve-wracking if you let it. The less often you play, the more nerve-wracking it becomes!
Any participant of e-sports is familiar with this at some level. It's a significant enough effect that serious online gamers have been writing about it for years. See: Ladder Anxiety
Ironically, the games you learn the most from are the ones you lose. Being afraid of losing is actively detrimental to progress, and not just because it prevents you from playing. Embrace the losing! Learn!
So, as part of my continuing efforts to improve at this silly game, I've decided to commit to playing at least one game every day after work. By making it a part of the routine, I hope to lose faster, and therefore learn faster.
This blog is mostly for my own record keeping, but feel free to read on if you so choose.
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