Anyone studying chess? Read this post...

Originally posted by wormwood
I find it's very hard for me to get even 1h of daily study in nowadays, I just seem to have other things to do all the time. no doubt it's a motivation problem though. I wish I still had the energy to pull off 4-5h a day, but I simply don't have it. I don't expect improvement either unless I shape up...

I remember ronen har-zvi talking about the teenage akes. I simply lack that kind of drive. I should probably waste less energy here as well...

This video illustrates just how deep your passion must be in order to be willing to study 5+ hours every single day in order to master something.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8269328330690408516


In summary, that man absolutely had an enthralling passion for mathematics. He threw his life to the subject. He spent days on end locked in his room trying to figure out a secret of mathematics...and, trust me, after he reached 10,000 hours of working at mathematics, he cracked probably the most difficult theorems ever presented (he was in his room for hours per day for several years)

Thus we see 1 necessary component of becoming a master of chess: you must possess a love and passion for the beauty and secrets of the game.

Originally posted by Ramned
This video illustrates just how deep your passion must be in order to be willing to study 5+ hours every single day in order to master something.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8269328330690408516


In summary, that man absolutely had an enthralling passion for mathematics. He threw his life to the subject. He spent days on end locked in his r ...[text shortened]... g a master of chess: you must possess a love and passion for the beauty and secrets of the game.

yeah, I've seen that documentary before. great stuff. but 8h a day is just a normal workday for a mathematician. 🙂

our math professor at uni used to say all math up to PhD level is just mechanical training. anybody can get it, you just need to sit down and grind it until you have it. the real math begins when you start exploring things that have never been done before, and until that point 'talent' is irrelevant. I tend to agree with him.

You've got to have some talent, but it need not be exceptional. You can't lack talent completely and still do well with math even with trying to grind it out.

I would imagine that's true for just about everything, including chess. But I can see where people who haven't taught the general population could come to that conclusion. Until you've seen what is really out there and the difficulty some people have, you just don't know.

Originally posted by Ramned
In this post I will give the serious player who wants to go the distance some recommendations and some significant advice on how to study the game itself.

I know I'm no chess master, but I hope my post is brandished by the fact that I did a [b]TON of research on the effects of deliberate practice on your chess game. In fact, I spent 20 required hours d ...[text shortened]... still a minor who didn't have to sustain myself, I'd play everyday![/b]

I agree with you 100%. This is why I've not progressed much past the mid 1500's. I'll go 2-3 weeks where I'm really into chess, and study and play a lot, and 3-4 weeks where I'd rather do something else, and don't study at all. It's very difficult to be consistent with one's efforts. 😏

I believe that even with lots of hours of hard work and a lot of will power, many people still "don't get it" in certain areas of their play. Maybe it's because much of their learning succeeds in adding to their knowledge/skills but yet fails to sufficiently correct some underlying fundamental faults. It's a bit like extending a building when the foundations are shaky, the growth will always be limited unless some significant reworking of earlier effort is scrapped and redone, and that can be very difficult to do. Ironically, many hours of practice can then make the unlearning process harder.

Bill Gates said something to the effect that if anyone is ever going to be a good programmer, then they will be in the initial years or not at all. After that many habits are fixed. I think this can apply to chess to some extent too. Ok, I know there will always be exceptions, but I agree with the general message: once you do something automatically for years, it's harder to realise it may be wrong, let alone correct it.

Maybe the biggest hurdle is that many players don't realise what their biggest weaknesses are. They may think it's tactics. They may think it endgames. But no book can tell them for sure. Here, a good coach may be able to help highlight reality from illusions. And it probably won't amount to something as simply as "do more tactics" or "study more endgames". Instead, there will be some core thinking processes that are subtle, automatic, hard to identify, and wrong.

I believe the reason that players like Carlsen are so good is due to getting the fundamental thinking habits correct from a very early stage. Is this talent? Or due to good coaching? Certainly both, but I'm not sure how much of each. With a very good foundation to start with, then the hours of study/playing could be extended to a large degree. Meanwhile the rest of us keep adding bricks while other parts of our play are crumbling around us, and usually without us realising it. Hours of work and much will power may only make this "build and crumble" cycle go round faster if the root causes continue to evade us.

There is talent or aptitude if you like. I've seen it with my own kids. The younger one had the
chess talent. After a while he just came up with stuff, working it out at the board. He had
some coaching but only the same as his older brother who was good but not to the same degree.
Neither still play but the younger one now has got into coding and shows the same kind of flair.

Now he works on coding and the like: XHTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, MySQ, Flash (actionscript
2/3) etc. etc. for two, sometimes four or more hours a day. He learned Java from a book and
created a calculator. Last New Years Eve he stayed up all night and created a text
editor in Java....just 12 years old at the time. (www.sam.uk.net). So he is heading for the
10,000 hours - but would he do this if he didn't have the aptitude?

It seems like the aptitude is feeding the enthusiasm. The aptitude is what make its so fascinating to him.

Although I have wondered where he might be with chess if he'd stuck with it, but then
thinking about it objectively, the coding skills are probably more valuable to him and it's what
he's wanted to do.

Analyse and annotate your games.
Read well annotated master games.


Grow.



Repeat.



-GIN

Originally posted by Nowakowski
Analyse and annotate your games.
Read well annotated master games.


Grow.



Repeat.



-GIN

Ahem.....ahmen to that.....

Originally posted by Varenka
I believe that even with lots of hours of hard work and a lot of will power, many people still "don't get it" in certain areas of their play. Maybe it's because much of their learning succeeds in adding to their knowledge/skills but yet fails to sufficiently correct some underlying fundamental faults. It's a bit like extending a building when the foundatio ...[text shortened]... uild and crumble" cycle go round faster if the root causes continue to evade us.

That's a great post. It is, in fact, critical that your study-plan is ACCURATE or you will fall into the trap that many players have where you achieve expert but can't seem to get any further. That's where a personalized plan really can save you.

My only training (since I no longer play OTB) is studying tactics at http://chess.emrald.net/ and playing games against gnomes chessprogram in linux (there is no taking back option).
I always lose but its not that important. Sometimes I play threw a game in a book (mostly 1.e4e5 or sicilian). Works for me.

Originally posted by Vincearoo
they say club players could reach a grandmaster rating with 1 year of old solid dedication

not on this planet though.