> And, this is heresy to many adults, but you don’t actually need to learn that much new information to get better at chess. Mostly, you need a lot of practice. If you review your games thoughtfully and take the lessons to heart, that’s probably enough new information right there.
YES! Why is this heresy to many adults? I believe this, it's quite clear to me.
Is it just because learning feels productive — once you've learned something you've learned it — that's progress!
Whereas practice and games feels like a grind? And when you're done it's not clear what you have to show for it. ?
1) Fear of losing. Want to get good without having to lose.
2) Easier to pinpoint what you've learned (basically what you said). Rowson has a good discussion of types of knowledge. Many players seek know-that, but chess is mostly about know-how.
3) Image of chess as a contest of erudition.
4) Maybe habits from school? I would question whether acquisition of rote knowledge is really a good strategy for any subject, academic or otherwise, but many people seem to have taken this away from their school years.
1. Is a real thing. And it isn’t necessarily because people have massive egos. Playing 20 games a week and losing 19 of them when you’re studying hard is soul crushing. Maybe that’s where kids have the biggest advantage of all…
I think that the idea is, it’s one thing to learn new material “knowledge”, but it’s a different thing to integrate it successfully and make a skill out of it. Reading this article made me see in words what I feel for a long time, thinking that it’s only me who is “afraid” of playing as much as I’d like to.. yes, afraid, adults have seen much challenges in their life, we’ve developed a sort of intolerance to bullshit.. like losing like a dummy in a chess game.. its extra painful to adults.. whilst for a kid, it’s a play.. yes some of them feel the pain of losing.. but they tolerate it much faster than an adult because they’re focused automatically on getting back at it and win.. those little beasts are literally beasts.. no sophisticated internal analysis of “what does this mean ?!”. Adults tends to think of themselves as people who supposed to know at least something in life.. playing chess sends us back to square one. Therefore we tend to avoid it somehow even if we’re clearly in love with the game. Therefore, learning, sounds a great alternative to approach the game. While it is great to learn more, our knowledge must be transformed into skills to be actually useful. This is a challenge adults need to overcome.. I’m writing these words and I’m still guilty of dodging games like Neo in “the matrix” dodging bullets!
I might break the puzzle part into two kinds: harder calculation type puzzles and easy pattern recognition. Opening up the lichess or chess.com rated puzzle trainer gets me the puzzles that require more calculation, and then Chessable books like The Checkmate Patterns Manual and Common Chess Patterns give me practice with fast pattern recognition (I sethe spaced repetition to really drill). My blitz rating basically rises and falls with how much time I spend on these easy patterns. I’m hopeful that the harder puzzles raise my ceiling a bit and help me as I start to play longer games (30+20 is long for me).
There's always a tension between simplicity and optimization. If you want to get a little more complex, it does make sense to split out pattern recognition and calculation.
Nate I think there’s a lot of wisdom to this approach. First it simplifies the work and focuses adults on how to fit those things into their lives. Secondly it gets adults to do what they’re generally afraid of doing - risk failure. It’s a critical hump to get over for most adults.
In strength training there’s two ways to set up training: Defined work or defined time. For me the defined time is easiest to stick with. I think the same would work for chess.
Lastly, I wholeheartedly agree that adding knowledge is necessary but not sufficient to improve. Much of that learning can be done in analysis IMHO
I have a similor schedule as an adult. I do two pages out a book of the Steps Method, do at least one Rapid games (in focus mode) en do a bit of study from a book).
I'm sure you'll learn a lot from a 90+30 game if you can make time and stay focused for the whole game, but that seems like a tough ask for a lot of people, and you can absolutely learn a lot from a 15+10 game as well.
While this seems like a solid plan, didn’t this go alongside 5 classes a week that the kids were doing with Elizabeth. It seems like in her program, this level of homework was used to cement the lessons that they learned.
Thanks Nate for what I consider the best article on chess improvement I have read in a long time. Focused play and review at a decent time control is more important than almost anything an adult improver in chess can do otherwise.
While not in the target demographics here, I do appreciate the sharing of the methodology discussion at large, and I could make my own recipe for my relation to chess... good multiple audience type, even if not designed. (also in my relation to chess I would not mind 20 failed hard puzzles, if I got to see things while doing it, and figured out how my thinking was sub-optimal by myself with the tools at hand, or later keeping all that info, havinhg live discussion with at least more experienced than I chess enthousiast, even very experienced might be informative)....
Thanks for this! I do 30 mins to give me time to think. As I gradually am getting better at processing I will switch to shorter. That’s the plan anyway 😅
Great content as usual! I prefer to do puzzles before playing — it helps me "warm up" my brain and get better results. Lately, I've been trying to play unrated games with friends. This also helps me experiment more and not get too focused on results.
This rings true for me. My own pattern: (1) I play rapid games and do puzzles, without much of a structure. (2) Then at some point I make a leap in my rating, and (3) I get inspired to do a chessable course, or do some other kind of study. (4) My rating tanks, and eventually I go back to (1). I keep wondering why does my rating drop when I do study? I guess because I’m stopping doing the thing that works the most.
> And, this is heresy to many adults, but you don’t actually need to learn that much new information to get better at chess. Mostly, you need a lot of practice. If you review your games thoughtfully and take the lessons to heart, that’s probably enough new information right there.
YES! Why is this heresy to many adults? I believe this, it's quite clear to me.
Is it just because learning feels productive — once you've learned something you've learned it — that's progress!
Whereas practice and games feels like a grind? And when you're done it's not clear what you have to show for it. ?
I think there are a few factors...
1) Fear of losing. Want to get good without having to lose.
2) Easier to pinpoint what you've learned (basically what you said). Rowson has a good discussion of types of knowledge. Many players seek know-that, but chess is mostly about know-how.
3) Image of chess as a contest of erudition.
4) Maybe habits from school? I would question whether acquisition of rote knowledge is really a good strategy for any subject, academic or otherwise, but many people seem to have taken this away from their school years.
1. Is a real thing. And it isn’t necessarily because people have massive egos. Playing 20 games a week and losing 19 of them when you’re studying hard is soul crushing. Maybe that’s where kids have the biggest advantage of all…
I think that the idea is, it’s one thing to learn new material “knowledge”, but it’s a different thing to integrate it successfully and make a skill out of it. Reading this article made me see in words what I feel for a long time, thinking that it’s only me who is “afraid” of playing as much as I’d like to.. yes, afraid, adults have seen much challenges in their life, we’ve developed a sort of intolerance to bullshit.. like losing like a dummy in a chess game.. its extra painful to adults.. whilst for a kid, it’s a play.. yes some of them feel the pain of losing.. but they tolerate it much faster than an adult because they’re focused automatically on getting back at it and win.. those little beasts are literally beasts.. no sophisticated internal analysis of “what does this mean ?!”. Adults tends to think of themselves as people who supposed to know at least something in life.. playing chess sends us back to square one. Therefore we tend to avoid it somehow even if we’re clearly in love with the game. Therefore, learning, sounds a great alternative to approach the game. While it is great to learn more, our knowledge must be transformed into skills to be actually useful. This is a challenge adults need to overcome.. I’m writing these words and I’m still guilty of dodging games like Neo in “the matrix” dodging bullets!
agreed. one needs to characterize the learning target and the words knowledge opposed to skill is a good first split.
I might break the puzzle part into two kinds: harder calculation type puzzles and easy pattern recognition. Opening up the lichess or chess.com rated puzzle trainer gets me the puzzles that require more calculation, and then Chessable books like The Checkmate Patterns Manual and Common Chess Patterns give me practice with fast pattern recognition (I sethe spaced repetition to really drill). My blitz rating basically rises and falls with how much time I spend on these easy patterns. I’m hopeful that the harder puzzles raise my ceiling a bit and help me as I start to play longer games (30+20 is long for me).
There's always a tension between simplicity and optimization. If you want to get a little more complex, it does make sense to split out pattern recognition and calculation.
Nate I think there’s a lot of wisdom to this approach. First it simplifies the work and focuses adults on how to fit those things into their lives. Secondly it gets adults to do what they’re generally afraid of doing - risk failure. It’s a critical hump to get over for most adults.
In strength training there’s two ways to set up training: Defined work or defined time. For me the defined time is easiest to stick with. I think the same would work for chess.
Lastly, I wholeheartedly agree that adding knowledge is necessary but not sufficient to improve. Much of that learning can be done in analysis IMHO
I have a similor schedule as an adult. I do two pages out a book of the Steps Method, do at least one Rapid games (in focus mode) en do a bit of study from a book).
Oh man, I would LOVE to hear you debate this topic with the Chess Dojo guys, a.k.a. "The 90+30 Club".
I'm sure you'll learn a lot from a 90+30 game if you can make time and stay focused for the whole game, but that seems like a tough ask for a lot of people, and you can absolutely learn a lot from a 15+10 game as well.
While this seems like a solid plan, didn’t this go alongside 5 classes a week that the kids were doing with Elizabeth. It seems like in her program, this level of homework was used to cement the lessons that they learned.
Yes, but playing is still the core. It seems like maybe you're trying to circle back to finding a way to make it about learning more stuff?
Thanks Nate for what I consider the best article on chess improvement I have read in a long time. Focused play and review at a decent time control is more important than almost anything an adult improver in chess can do otherwise.
Excellent post..you are on a roll lately dropping some incredible insights and knowledge in your writing.
Thanks!
I'm in the middle of this and finding it really good: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17qFY5w9uEWL4VVyJSTEmSSRyvegh_Y4N6NMSxwCmGaE/edit?tab=t.0
While not in the target demographics here, I do appreciate the sharing of the methodology discussion at large, and I could make my own recipe for my relation to chess... good multiple audience type, even if not designed. (also in my relation to chess I would not mind 20 failed hard puzzles, if I got to see things while doing it, and figured out how my thinking was sub-optimal by myself with the tools at hand, or later keeping all that info, havinhg live discussion with at least more experienced than I chess enthousiast, even very experienced might be informative)....
Thanks for this! I do 30 mins to give me time to think. As I gradually am getting better at processing I will switch to shorter. That’s the plan anyway 😅
I have tried the 15/10 games. I feel like I am playing too quickly. Should I got back to 30m games like previously?
Thank you!!!!
Thank you!
I wonder how many people are in the chess vs machine learning intersection that get the joke in the title @nate. :)
Great content as usual! I prefer to do puzzles before playing — it helps me "warm up" my brain and get better results. Lately, I've been trying to play unrated games with friends. This also helps me experiment more and not get too focused on results.
Actually a good one! Blitzing into the night is funnier, this one is smarter
This rings true for me. My own pattern: (1) I play rapid games and do puzzles, without much of a structure. (2) Then at some point I make a leap in my rating, and (3) I get inspired to do a chessable course, or do some other kind of study. (4) My rating tanks, and eventually I go back to (1). I keep wondering why does my rating drop when I do study? I guess because I’m stopping doing the thing that works the most.