Sex, Drugs and 1.d4

Which brings things round to me. I have, for as long as I can remember, been an addict. That addiction has taken many forms. I remember repeatedly labeling it as my superpower and my curse, because I said that once at a party and a girl thought I was cool. So I kept saying it. But it is also true. My addiction has led me, like many others, into some dark places. But it has also been a tool I’ve been able to harness to create many positive things in my life. Not everything I have been addicted to has been something I could get into my body through one method or another - I’ve also been addicted to juggling, which I’ve heard is better for you than most mind-altering substances - a fact I hope revealing won’t affect my ability to attract new chess students, because I know a lot of people simply refuse to hire former jugglers.

In all seriousness, I have a broad array of spectacularly bizarre talents that I achieved a fairly decent level of skill and success with in a short period of time. I didn’t manage this because I am talented or gifted. I managed it because I sunk a lot of long hours into it. Because I became obsessed, or addicted to them. To say I worked hard would be a lie. Because when I get into something, when the addiction takes hold, I don’t need to work, to work hard. Or rather, I don’t feel the hard part of hard work. It feels easy. I once read a year's worth of first year biology textbooks in a month, so I could write an essay on fantasy species as it related to the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. I have written four books, gotten good enough at poker to quit my job for a bit, can juggle five on-fire clubs, climbed Le Cul de Chien, I’ve scored 501 with 11 darts, and had a 55% World of Tanks win rate - and that’s just to name the results of a few obsessions. Not all of these have been savory - I can, for example, also make a bong out of just about anything you give me. The point here is that none of these mostly useless skills were developed with anything other than effortless joy. And again, this is not to point out how great I am or how talented. I know that if anyone else sunk the same number of hours into any of the same things I have done in my life, I am sure they would have gotten just as good, if not better at them than me. But I think most people would find it hard to commit as hard as I do to these random things in the first place. Because most people aren’t addicts.

It occurred to me that whilst Chess Twitter searches through every inch of media for the secret key to adult chess improvement, the answer might be quite simple - intrinsic motivation. Chess is partly a skill, but it is also partly about knowledge (as I have discussed). To acquire that knowledge you just have to put in the time. But with chess that really is saying something. You're not memorising a few rules over a couple of days. You are talking about tombs of information that will take years to acquire. Gathering that information is like grinding to acquire the best equipment in your favourite video game. Once you have it, you still need to actually play the game well, but even the most skilled player in the world will need good gear if they want to become the best.

When it comes to chess improvement, a lot of people talk about natural talent and whether or not it exists. For me, it does. Certain people have a certain predisposition to making better skill-based decisions in chess. That is true of anything, so it must be true in chess. But I don’t think at the amateur level that talent makes much of an impact, if any, on how good you can get at chess. Robin Sarfas said in a recent episode of The Chess Pit podcast that whilst cognitive decline naturally leads to a decrease in calculation abilities, he still believes his best chess is ahead of him because there is just so much other low-hanging fruit to pick. For Robin there is still a lot of basic stuff he feels he doesn’t yet understand about chess and a lot of knowledge he has yet to acquire which will allow him to play better moves based on judgement, even if he can’t calculate well. The point here is that whilst there are many individual aspects that make up the chess player, unless you're at the top level, a slight drop off in calculation ability or a lack of raw decision making talent isn’t going to mean much in terms of your overall play.

I would argue - whether you want to call it a talent or not - that I am at an advantage when it comes to sitting down and doing the necessary hard work because, as I said, it doesn’t feel like work to me. Because I’m completely obsessed with chess. I cannot stop learning about it. I’m addicted to pawn structures. I’m snorting opening lines with my breakfast porridge and I’m inhaling endgames after dinner. I can’t be stopped. And I imagine that, for some people, sitting down to learn these things, might at times feel like a chore. And so yes, I think I am naturally predisposed to learn chess knowledge faster than some people - simply because I am more motivated. But that motivation is intrinsic. The minute there is a twinge of effort required or a touch of discomfort to the process, I have generally moved on from my previous obsessions. But this superpower of mine is something I have come to understand and control. I know it well. As I have gotten older (and dare I say wiser), I understand its dangers and its limitations. I know how to harness it. I know how to maintain the fire when the first signs of burnout appear.

Because of the nature of most of my blog posts, I get a lot of new players messaging me telling me they are studying for many hours a day. I see a lot of these beginners struggle to reign it in sometimes and not completely neglect family, work and other responsibilities in pursuit of the next rating goal. I see you. And I am telling you: you are not alone. The only reason I don’t do this with chess, when I did with every other addiction that came before, is because I can’t.

Becoming a parent has saved me in this regard. I am no longer in a position to binge on anything the way I used to. When I was responsible for only myself, it didn’t matter if I wanted to spend 40 hours over a weekend hardly sleeping and forgetting to eat entire meals so I could get good at a video game. I could do that now with chess, but the importance of my family supersedes that desire. To be clear, the desire to go all-in is still there, lurking in the back of my mind, and sometimes it is still a struggle to not succumb to it. Thankfully, having a relationship to maintain and a child to keep alive and happy has mellowed that aspect of my addiction. And I am grateful for that. It makes me less likely to overdose on middlegame plans.

When I am with my son, I don’t look at him and think, “Well son, if you didn’t exist I’d probably be 200 points higher ranked in Lichess Classical.” I think about other things like, “Wow I have never spent an entire afternoon pretending to be a train.” And I also think. “Hey if you didn’t exist, I would probably have given up chess about a year ago.” My son doesn’t take chess-time away from me, he is the reason I am still playing it.

If you are high all the time, the next hit doesn’t feel as good as it would’ve if you took it sober. If you're high all the time, eventually you become numb to the rush. When I do get to sit down with chess, it feels electric. I’m excited. I’m nervous. I sit down alert and full of energy. The adrenaline courses through me before a game. Because it's the only hit I’ll get that day. I know that, given a free reign, my addiction would see me play many games for many hours a day. I’d be constantly high, and as a result, everytime I went in for a new game, I would feel almost nothing. Eventually chess would lose its meaning. It would just be something I did. Something I survived on. And I know that momentum would eventually fizzle out and die. I’d spend a few weeks lulling about in boredom before taking up something new. So I am no less addicted to chess now than I have been to anything else in my life, but I have a sort of built-in control due to my external life circumstances that is both meaningful and healthy. And I’m grateful for it.

I’d also say that without addiction, I wouldn’t squeeze chess into the time that does still exist for me around these responsibilities. To play chess, I need the addiction. Without it, I’d be too tired. I’d just want to crack a tin and watch Netflix instead of drilling tactical patterns and fighting Stockfish.

One of the reasons I feel so comfortable speaking about this, is because I know that in the chess world I am not alone. I see you guys. Perhaps I’m overestimating our numbers, but I see parts of myself in the chess community all the time, just like I saw a part of myself in Russell Brand all those years ago. He and I are still addicts, only now he is addicted to self-improvement and I am addicted to chess improvement, and together our addictions are probably slightly healthier than they once were.

I see other addicts in the chess crowd all the time. And I wonder if I see them so often, not because the game attracts us - but because it requires us. The obsessive types that just can’t stop loving and learning chess. Because let’s face it, chess requires a certain dedication. It is a brutal pursuit. How do you explain to someone that your hobby involves you spending hours of time, sometimes over entire weekends or longer, doing something the result of which is often total emotional devastation? And when that isn’t the result - well we hardly feel total elation and joy do we? I don’t know if chess could ever be called 'fun'. There is something deeper there though. There is a reason we play. I mean there has to be, right? For me there is a sort of poetic desire to improve myself at the expense of my own happiness. There is perhaps a hint of self-destruction in it, just like there can be with substances - there is an element of self-harm to my chess addiction. But again, better chess than drugs, right?

So, I am addicted to chess. And I know that I need to be. For all the ways it can be framed as a bad thing, it’s not so bad for me. Addiction is my superpower. As long as you can learn to control the dark sides of your addiction - you might as well use it to your advantage. So I say: let the chess addiction grip you. Addiction is a gift. Addiction is your superpower. Use it wisely.

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