David's Dojo Journey - Installment 9

Here are some highlights from the week:

Focusing on the Mental Game

I'm starting to believe that the mental game is as important as technical skills in chess. To that end, I'm layering in mental training into my routine. I found this site that lists some of the top sports psychology books and am going to start working through some them as part of my routine:

https://bookauthority.org/books/best-sports-psychology-books

I have started to go through the first book on the list, Mental Toughness for Athletes: How Professional Athletes Train Their Minds to Win the Game Before it Begins by J.J. Million. I have been really enjoying most of the content and the starting quote from Muhammad Ali is inspiring:

"Impossible is just a word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is potential."

For us adult improvers, there are many voices screaming "impossible." Many experts say it is impossible for people who don't start at the age of 5 to reach certain levels at chess. I reject that. Many experts say that it is inevitable that your chess skills will decline as you get to certain ages. I reject that. Sure, I accept those are trends and that the vast majority of existing empirical evidence supports those positions. But to say that the existing evidence supports a trend and to say that something is impossible are two very different things.

The reality is that we don't know what is possible for adult improvers in today's environment. The speed of learning, access to information and technology, depth of effort and intentionality that many adult improvers are experiencing today is simply different than previous generations. My thesis is that this generation of adult improvers, of which I am proudly a part, is going to redefine what is possible. Let's get after it and prove the experts wrong (and have a good time doing it!)

I will layer in some insights from my journey to grow in the mental aspect of chess in future installments.

Finding Joy in Chess

I wish I could remember where I encountered the quote and the exact phrasing, but it was from some GM and went something like this: "We should all strive to enjoy life at the board." Enjoy life at the board. What a wonderful way to express the underlying reason why we should all play this game - the pursuit and experience of joy. Not rating gains, not wins, joy.

For most of us, this is a game. A hobby. A sport. Real life is hard, demands much of us and pulls us in many directions. At the board, whether we are training or playing, we can push pause on life and truly lose ourselves in this beautiful game.

There are many voices out there that emphasize discipline over joy, hard work over enjoyment and grit over fun. I get it. If you want to get better at chess you have to be disciplined, work hard and have grit. But, I think these voices miss the point. Those things should be natural byproducts of the joy experienced at the board.

If you find joy in something, no one will tell you that you have to practice/play every day. You will do it because you want to experience the joy that you feel when you practice or play. I don't believe you find joy through discipline, hard work and grit. I believe a focus on those things will lead to short term gains and burnout. However, I do believe that kindling joy in the game will produce discipline, hard work and grit.

My journey with golf evidences the truth of this thesis. When I discovered golf at a young age, I dug two holes at different sides of a field and used one of my dad's clubs (which was the wrong hand and way too big) to hit the ball back and forth to the holes all day long. Finally, my dad got me a left handed club that was cut down to my level. My obsession only increased.

I had complete joy when playing the game and my obsession grew. Every moment that I could, I was playing this game. My mom would even drive me to the course before school so that I could sneak in a couple holes before school started. There would be many days when I would have my golf glove in my back pocket during school without realizing it:)

No one had to tell me to practice. It was all that I wanted to do. No one had to tell me to play, I was begging them to take me to the course. During the summer, my mom would drop me off at the course at sunrise and come pick me up at dark. It was all I did. It was all I wanted to do. I simply loved the game.

Then came my senior year when I went to IMG academy in Bradenton, Florida. I was sure I was going to be a pro and the training program there was legendary for making strong athletes in many sports. However, what I found was that the emphasis on grinding squeezed the love of the game from me and I have never been able to recapture it. I played D1 golf through college but didn't even enjoy the game all that much. I played, but was more afraid of a poor performance than simply being thankful for the amazing opportunity that I had to play.

Don't let that happen to you with chess. Cultivate joy!

Polgar Puzzles

One of the mysteries of the Lichess studies to me is that they cap each study at 64 chapters. That said, there are some mysteries that I don't try to solve and just live with. With that said, here are 5 Lichess studies that I created while going through the Polgar Mates in 2 for those interested. These took a lot of time to make, but I plan on going through them in the spirit of the Woodpecker Method at some point in the future when I have gone through them all (I have to get to 800 in my current Dojo cohort and have a long way to go!):

Some Interesting Games From the Week

This first game is a draw against a significantly higher rated player where I had 92% accuracy and he/she had 89% accuracy. I was happy with the draw even though the computer told me that I had an advantage throughout a good portion of the game:

This second game is a game were I fell for a trap in the opening (one of the downsides of playing new openings with zero knowledge of traps or theory!), but I came back for the win! I think this game really evidences some improvement in my mental aspect of the game as I didn't give up and I kept trying to make the best moves that I could, slowly improving my position:

Dojo Booklist
Given the number of books that I am going through in the Dojo, I thought it would be helpful to create a list, so I can quickly recall that part of the journey!

• Completed
  • Giannatos, Everyone's First Chess Workbook (completed)
  • Polgar S., Learning Chess the Right Way (Vol. 3) (completed)
  • Brennan and Carson, Tactics Time (completed)
• In Progress
  • Polgar; Chess:5334 Problems (in process)
  • del Rosario, First Book of Morphy (in process)
  • Chernev, Logical Chess Move by Move (in process)
  • Chernev, Most Instructive Games (in process)
  • Silman, Complete Endgame Course (in process)

Until the next installment!