Legendary article, Noel. Thank you
Useless article, but not uniquely useless, just the regular amount of useless that you get from regular self improvement content.
If you train something, you'll get better at it. Yes, mostly true as long as your aren't playing a full luck based game like roulette. Chess isn't pure luck though, so improvement is possible. Not a very profound statement though. For one, it's common sense (to a point), but additionally because more total cumulative hours do not necessarily mean more improvement.
No one reaches their full potential. Yeah, probably still true, but also probably no one ever will, so saying "you could be here, but also never will be" isn't very useful.
"Is it possible to achieve XYZ? doesn't bring you anywhere." This question definitely does bring you somewhere. Let's say your question is "is it possible to become a professional sprots athlete?". You've been training your whole life for x sport and nearing the age of 18 and need to decide if you are going to commit to your sport or not. If it is beyond possibility, it hardly makes sense to commit, does it? But if it's possible, or even likely (you're the #1 up and coming player) it might be ridiculous not to. In the same way, committing 3000 hours to chess improvement might be worth it if you could achieve your dream title, but if your dream title is impossible, those 3000 hours may be very poorly spent indeed. Asking "Is it possible to achieve XYZ?" actually dictates how you will spend your future hours, so it does bring you somewhere.
"Am I ready to give what it takes to become the best version of myself?" No one knows what "the best version of myself" is. What is the appropriate mix of goals to focus on?
"If the answer is no, then no goal will ever be strong enough to keep you committed for a long period of time." Well if you have a non-survival based goal (such as chess) your survival goal will almost always be prioritized. So I would certainly say most people aren't ready to give up their survival for some goal. That doesn't mean people can't stay committed for a long time (people might play chess their entire life as a hobby). Should people then have no goals at all if their survival is always more valuable? Goes back to the question "Is it possible to achieve XYZ?". Very useful to ask if you are setting a goal for yourself, but also not willing to compromise survival for it. You can still set goals, still commit to them for a long time, and still even achieve them if you have set yourself a reasonable goal. But to determine if you have set a reasonable goal for yourself or not, you do need to ask yourself "Is it possible to achieve XYZ?".
If you train something, you'll get better at it. Yes, mostly true as long as your aren't playing a full luck based game like roulette. Chess isn't pure luck though, so improvement is possible. Not a very profound statement though. For one, it's common sense (to a point), but additionally because more total cumulative hours do not necessarily mean more improvement.
No one reaches their full potential. Yeah, probably still true, but also probably no one ever will, so saying "you could be here, but also never will be" isn't very useful.
"Is it possible to achieve XYZ? doesn't bring you anywhere." This question definitely does bring you somewhere. Let's say your question is "is it possible to become a professional sprots athlete?". You've been training your whole life for x sport and nearing the age of 18 and need to decide if you are going to commit to your sport or not. If it is beyond possibility, it hardly makes sense to commit, does it? But if it's possible, or even likely (you're the #1 up and coming player) it might be ridiculous not to. In the same way, committing 3000 hours to chess improvement might be worth it if you could achieve your dream title, but if your dream title is impossible, those 3000 hours may be very poorly spent indeed. Asking "Is it possible to achieve XYZ?" actually dictates how you will spend your future hours, so it does bring you somewhere.
"Am I ready to give what it takes to become the best version of myself?" No one knows what "the best version of myself" is. What is the appropriate mix of goals to focus on?
"If the answer is no, then no goal will ever be strong enough to keep you committed for a long period of time." Well if you have a non-survival based goal (such as chess) your survival goal will almost always be prioritized. So I would certainly say most people aren't ready to give up their survival for some goal. That doesn't mean people can't stay committed for a long time (people might play chess their entire life as a hobby). Should people then have no goals at all if their survival is always more valuable? Goes back to the question "Is it possible to achieve XYZ?". Very useful to ask if you are setting a goal for yourself, but also not willing to compromise survival for it. You can still set goals, still commit to them for a long time, and still even achieve them if you have set yourself a reasonable goal. But to determine if you have set a reasonable goal for yourself or not, you do need to ask yourself "Is it possible to achieve XYZ?".
suisS€xX DODELI2.. time is a bank... in your ( .) (. )
a la :0
spiking spanish?
@LanceFairfield your post made me sad.
Not that you just didn't improve, you also lost your passion for chess. I guess, what's often missunderstood is the fun chess can and should be. If training kills it and we just play to fullfill a metric (uscf or other ratings), it can be very harmfull to chess progression and kills the joy.
Like Vincen Keymar said, he had fun to play and train chess as kid so he did eccessivly and got to the top 20 in the world, but if it's not fun, he wouldn't recomment to do it.
As I tell it to the children I train. It is okay, if you just come to our training day once a week and do no chess inbetween, if it otherwise wouldn't be fun and they wouldn't stay long.
My advise would be, play for joy not for rating, like you did in the beginning, but to get back to this state is maybe impossible.
Also no guarantee that you get your rating back, maybe it is getting worse, but at least you would enjoy the game.
Whatever you do, I wish you well.
Not that you just didn't improve, you also lost your passion for chess. I guess, what's often missunderstood is the fun chess can and should be. If training kills it and we just play to fullfill a metric (uscf or other ratings), it can be very harmfull to chess progression and kills the joy.
Like Vincen Keymar said, he had fun to play and train chess as kid so he did eccessivly and got to the top 20 in the world, but if it's not fun, he wouldn't recomment to do it.
As I tell it to the children I train. It is okay, if you just come to our training day once a week and do no chess inbetween, if it otherwise wouldn't be fun and they wouldn't stay long.
My advise would be, play for joy not for rating, like you did in the beginning, but to get back to this state is maybe impossible.
Also no guarantee that you get your rating back, maybe it is getting worse, but at least you would enjoy the game.
Whatever you do, I wish you well.
I think, an elo rating of 10^(1/0) is the answer because there is no known limit of human capacities specially his thinking capabilites
@LanceFairfield
Dude you have been 2599 in bullet. That's at least 2000 otb classical strength. You complain about not improving but then getting that high in bullet. Same thing happened to you in online blitz. Everybody blunders. You can't avoid it, you can only lower the probability of it. You just have concentration or some other problem when you play classical chess. You also play in a limited pool of players. You don't know how much they train. If they prep much and you don't, then you'll be in trouble. You should play other tournaments than just your local ones. And also change your training methods. If doing tactics doesn't work, then just work on openings. Try to memorize exact lines. Review openings before each classical game. For example Jan Gustafsson just worked on openings to improve because he liked doing it.
Dude you have been 2599 in bullet. That's at least 2000 otb classical strength. You complain about not improving but then getting that high in bullet. Same thing happened to you in online blitz. Everybody blunders. You can't avoid it, you can only lower the probability of it. You just have concentration or some other problem when you play classical chess. You also play in a limited pool of players. You don't know how much they train. If they prep much and you don't, then you'll be in trouble. You should play other tournaments than just your local ones. And also change your training methods. If doing tactics doesn't work, then just work on openings. Try to memorize exact lines. Review openings before each classical game. For example Jan Gustafsson just worked on openings to improve because he liked doing it.
@wannabe2700 said in #18:
> You should play other tournaments than just your local one
Boy howdy having money and the ability to travel would have been nice. I am very glad these are options for all people. I very much doubt this would have helped though. There was very little person specific prep I noticed and most games. It was pretty obvious once the person was out of prep. The move count when that happened didn't change much.
@wannabe2700 said in #18
> You complain about not improving but then getting that high in bullet.
I started off years ago at around 2400 with peaks around 2500 for bullet on lichess. Simple rating inflation over the course of a half decade accounts for the majority of that, even discounting statistical variance that also states I'd eventually get there.
@wannabe2700 said in #18
> Everybody blunders. You can't avoid it, you can only lower the probability of it.
And yet no matter what I do my probability of it goes up year after year.
@wannabe2700 said in #18
> If doing tactics doesn't work, then just work on openings
As stated, I tried this as well and for every new line learned I'd forget another.
I appreciate the point your post is trying to make, but this kind of mentality of anyone can improve caused me to struggle and destroy my life over the course of years with nothing to show for it. I'm done trying to improve. I'm done trying to believe I ever can improve. And if I wasn't addicted to the point of having opening lichess being my default though pattern every time I have a free moment, I'd be done playing chess. It brings no joy and it hasn't for a long time. I posted that paragraph not to ask for advice but to share my story of how that mentality of there being room for real growth for most people as adults was absolutely toxic for me.
Maybe I am just fundamentally mentally incompetent. Who knows. At this point I don't really care. But after reading article after article and post after post (significant survivor bias here with who these posts and articles come from BTW) about how anyone with even halfway decent intelligence and a functioning brain could improve significantly in their fundamental chess understanding is it any real surprise so much of my ego and self esteem would come to be threatened by this?
> You should play other tournaments than just your local one
Boy howdy having money and the ability to travel would have been nice. I am very glad these are options for all people. I very much doubt this would have helped though. There was very little person specific prep I noticed and most games. It was pretty obvious once the person was out of prep. The move count when that happened didn't change much.
@wannabe2700 said in #18
> You complain about not improving but then getting that high in bullet.
I started off years ago at around 2400 with peaks around 2500 for bullet on lichess. Simple rating inflation over the course of a half decade accounts for the majority of that, even discounting statistical variance that also states I'd eventually get there.
@wannabe2700 said in #18
> Everybody blunders. You can't avoid it, you can only lower the probability of it.
And yet no matter what I do my probability of it goes up year after year.
@wannabe2700 said in #18
> If doing tactics doesn't work, then just work on openings
As stated, I tried this as well and for every new line learned I'd forget another.
I appreciate the point your post is trying to make, but this kind of mentality of anyone can improve caused me to struggle and destroy my life over the course of years with nothing to show for it. I'm done trying to improve. I'm done trying to believe I ever can improve. And if I wasn't addicted to the point of having opening lichess being my default though pattern every time I have a free moment, I'd be done playing chess. It brings no joy and it hasn't for a long time. I posted that paragraph not to ask for advice but to share my story of how that mentality of there being room for real growth for most people as adults was absolutely toxic for me.
Maybe I am just fundamentally mentally incompetent. Who knows. At this point I don't really care. But after reading article after article and post after post (significant survivor bias here with who these posts and articles come from BTW) about how anyone with even halfway decent intelligence and a functioning brain could improve significantly in their fundamental chess understanding is it any real surprise so much of my ego and self esteem would come to be threatened by this?
@LanceFairfield
Obviously if you are incapable of learning anything, then you can't improve in chess either. Learning openings is the easiest way, because you only need to be able to remember moves. If you can't pass that test, then there's no hope. But your mindset was wrong from the beginning. The ones that improve the most are the ones that like chess the most and aren't depressed. Obviously being an adult makes the job tougher, but it's not impossible unless you're already close to your theoretical limit.
Obviously if you are incapable of learning anything, then you can't improve in chess either. Learning openings is the easiest way, because you only need to be able to remember moves. If you can't pass that test, then there's no hope. But your mindset was wrong from the beginning. The ones that improve the most are the ones that like chess the most and aren't depressed. Obviously being an adult makes the job tougher, but it's not impossible unless you're already close to your theoretical limit.