The Superman Guide to Restart Your Chess (Part.1?)

...Who am I..? ...pffft, that doesn’t matter right now. Just read this, I promise you after... Listen, I promise you after you finish this you will feel like Superman. Did you like the last version? Awesome, right? Like that, hope for the future and all that. Yup yup...

But for that you will have to listen to some stuff you might not like. Seriously. I know you’ve been struggling with this thing, that ten-thousandth disappointment when you lose a game you thought was won; yeah yeah, I’ve seen it all, all your disasters in the openings, your confusing back-and-forths in the middle game, your ignorance in the endings, all your pieces falling like the flat-earthers were always right. I know, I know, but oh my god, please...! You have to let me tell you some stuff...! Because I’ve seen you, and it’s painful! I’ve watched you lurking in the forums, asking the same questions again and again, questions that have already been answered, sometimes getting terrible misdirections, but of course... how could you know?

How do *I* know? Ohh, my child, do you think you are the first? You think you are the only one who has woken up with the board printed in your mind, who has assigned colors of the rainbow to the openings, or who has suddenly stopped in the middle of a crowd with the impossible thought that somebody in front of you was going to jump like a knight? Noooo, you are not going insane... yes, yes, that will pass. You’re burning through some heavy stages though, but that’s perfectly normal.

Pheew! Right, what a relief, huh? Nope, not crazy: documented. But, I need you to come back... hey! I need you to come back, otherwise you are going to spend your life chasing rabbits instead of playing better chess. What? Snake oil? Ah! (Big, big sigh here.) I understood that reference. I have read it myself. But there is no paywall here, no sleazy marketing tactics. I just want to get this right.

Let’s start with the basics, shall we?

***

Straight to the chase: You are going to lose. A lot. It’s unavoidable. Embrace it. I know you see yourself in your dreams flying with colorful capes and beating everyone, but it’s not feasible, especially because that’s not how we learn. Ohh, you didn’t know, of course. For you to learn, you have to deal with failure. You can’t improve in a vacuum, books can only help so much. You get better stepping on previous mistakes, and understanding why they are mistakes. The accumulation of these moments (patterns) in your brain will create a muscle that will act to your benefit when something remotely similar repeats in front of you: it’s like the ‘don’t place your hand over a burning stove’ moment; if you do it, you might end up scarring.

This alone could be (and is) the subject of many books and studies. But what can you get out of this? Losing is painful, but it doesn’t have to be. You don’t cry if you are going up a stairway -at least normal people don’t. To go up you have to go through steps, like losing, and that is the one thing that will never go away.

So now we have established that you are a loser. Wait, wut. Well, it’s a matter of saying. You are going to lose a lot of games, hence... In fact, that is the thing you’re going to do the most, especially at the beginning. Lots of accumulation of mistakes, one after the other. Never stop. That’s your life now, one cheek, the other one. But, this is not why you play chess, you say? You want to win, to feel that high, right, right.. but you still can. Your problem is not that you will lose games, but what you do with them. They have to become your pride and your shield. You have to become a collector of mistakes. The more fatal, the better. Some of you will gloss over some of those; some of you, the more meticulous, will gather them after each game and create tangible treasures. Recalling them will become a pleasure; avoiding them a triumph, inflicting them upon your adversaries the new flavor of the day. Creating elaborate traps on which your opponents will entangle themselves in the darkest moments of your previous games will become a shining delicacy that you will treasure.

But for that you have to lose, because in the history of Humanity, never has there been, nor will there be one who won’t be taken down at some point of their existence... It’s in the cards, so roll with the punches, the bloody noses, the dark eyes and the broken bones. Learn from them, and say “Again!”. Until the moment you are the one imparting the lessons.

***

OK, one down. Isn’t that a relief? No, of course it’s not my only advice, silly goose. But probably it’s the most important. The most consequential change in your thinking just happened from “I lost, wahh” to “Oh, I lost this game, I wonder which was the mistake and if I can learn from it”, because... okok, you got it, I will stop. I understand, no need to keep repeating the same... What’s next, you ask? Huh. Next..., next you might not like it, Magellan; I will help you remap your brain.

Are you ready?