Learning chess from books: futile or fruitful?
Submitted by
on Tue, 04/14/2009 at 7:41am.
Chess, the ancient game, is still loved and played by many. The digital age has only helped to make it more popular and more interesting. The actual statistics are probably not available, but it is possible that there are as many people who play chess via computer (on one of many chess servers or using computer programs) as there are those who use the old fashioned wooden board. But the true masters of the game are few, as it is not easy to be on the tail of a Gaussian distribution (or to be on the top of that CDF curve). The question that many have asked is: how to improve your chess skills and climb that steep curve?
I for one have asked that question many times. Can you learn chess by playing online and by reading books? I have never met nor heard of anybody who achieved highest education buy studying by himself, that is, without going through well structured and systematic educational process. So, to reach the top 1% or even 5%, you probably need good instructors and a lot of time.
Let's try to determine what is achievable then. I read on chessbase some time ago that some statistics show that on average it took 11,000 hours for people to reach 2,200 ELO rating level. Most of the people do not have that much time on their hands (plus these people didn't just play and read books), so let us lower the goal and try to achieve ELO rating of 1800, or 2000 for very talented ones. Is it possible to achieve that? I do not know the answer as my rating is around 1400, and has not changed in many years. But I will write some of my random thoughts.
First of all, is chess very difficult to master in general? Probably yes, but given the fact that you can find 14 years old kids with rating above 2400, and few geniuses like Stephen Wolfram get their PhD by the age of 20, I would say that mastering chess is not the highest possible intellectual achievement. Why does it seem so difficult to improve your chess skills then? I think there are several factors that contribute to this:
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One can only reach a plateau if he plays and does not study
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Studying from books alone is not very fruitful as you can learn some fancy terms, memorize openings, and recognize tactical devices, but you do not learn how to think and plan your game
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You need an instructor who will point out what your mistakes are and how to develop planning skills
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Last, but probably most important, is the factor of time. Nobody has enough time to invest in what is practically a hobby that makes your spouse look like a chess widow(er).
These are of course all generic problems that I came across over the internet and stuck in my mind as important ones. At the moment of writing this I started reading “How to reassess your chess” by J. Silman, a book that promises to teach you exactly what the biggest problem in amateurish chess is: how to make a plan. So far I am not impressed, but maybe that will change. The reason why I say this is because I read Chapter 2/Part 2, and I went through that game with a computer analysis in parallel, only to find out that what the author considers a good plan makes things actually slightly worse for him until the opponent makes a mistake. Not a great example to illustrate what you are going to show throughout a book.
But I am digressing. Back to the original problem. How much can you achieve just by playing chess online and reading books? Is it an exercise in futility? Personally, I believe it is. One probably needs to go to a chess club and learn from real people, the same way students interact with each other in regular education. Still, I'm willing to give it a try.
If you have different opinion or experience, let me know. If you disagree with what I think I am fine with that as I do not plan to argue with anyone. These are just some random thought about a game I love but do not know half as much as I would like and not a well thought article about the learning process.