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I have been a serious chess player for over 20 years. Improvement in chess is not directly proportional to the number of games played - that is one factor. Am
by Lordarminius 5y ago
I have been a serious chess player for over 20 years.
Improvement in chess is not directly proportional to the number of games played - that is one factor. Amateur park players and hustlers rack up many hundreds of games per week, and thousands per year, but are usually beaten by masters who have played fewer games for shorter periods of time. Botvinnik famously recommended that a professional chess player should only play 80 tournament games a year and leave himself/herself time to think about chess.
Improvement is a function of directed study of chess : analysing one's games with the aim of eliminating weaknesses in one's play, becoming familiar with common patterns (and anti-patterns) of strategy and tactics, learning the fundamentals (and advanced aspects) of openings, middle games and endings, and conquering psychological barriers.
I say this because we need to take this into account as we study perfomance else we get skewed results.
- toss1 5y agoWell Put Just by playing, you gain too little data - you'd have to re-invent the world's expertise on your own. One must study the vast amounts of data generated by other players, now embodied as knowledge. Not unlike many other fields. Reading and coaching count a lot.
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- nojs 5y ago> Improvement is a function of directed study of chess This is true of so many things. Improvement is proportional to the amount of deliberate, conscious practice, which is more uncomfortable than “game time”. When I used to play chess, I always found short time controls the most fun, but the least useful for long term improvement.
- namelosw 5y agoIt seems to be very true for humans to learn things that require practice. Playing video games, playing piano, sport, etc. My interpretation is even though I love those practices, I would still make myself tired from playing and concentrating for too long - after that my standard is downgrading. If I continue, I get used to those lower standards more than I could gain expertise.
- john61 5y agoThis seems to also be true for piano playing. Basically Friedrich Gulda said he only practices 3-4 hours a day sitting at the piano. The rest of the day he is sitting in the café thinking about music and piano playing.
- mb_72 5y agoAh ... I think you are onto something with this statement. What's the name of the cafe? /s Commenting as I have heard of fellow musicians sometimes performing almost ritualistic steps or 'cargo cult' emulations of 'famous' musicians to try and replicate their success.
- krigath 5y agoThis comment reminds me of the book "Daily Rituals: How Artists Work"
- ternaryoperator 5y ago> he only practices 3-4 hours a day only... Deep sigh!
- injidup 5y agoI spend 6 to 8 hours sitting at the computer thinking about C++. 3-4 hours then sitting in a cafe seems like a sweet deal.
- lordnacho 5y agoThis is very true. I've never played RTS games seriously, so every time I play I just feel naked. I can figure out eventually how to build a base and crawl the tech tree, but I've always felt what I would really need is to just sit there and study what all the units are, common tactics, and videos of other people playing. Of course like with sports the fun thing is playing a game, not practicing for it, so that's what ends up happening.
- tinco 5y agoIn expert level RTS play, if you take even a tenth of a second to think about any decision anytime during the first 15 minutes you will most likely lose the game. After that it gets more interesting but many games don't last that long. The thing is with most computer games (I suppose games in general) is that you not only have to learn the rules of the game to get better, you must also study and practice the current best strategies to even stand a chance.
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- f_allwein 5y agoRelated book: Talent is overrated https://geoffcolvin.com/books/talent-is-overrated/ https://geoffcolvin.com/books/talent-is-overrated/
- borroka 5y ago[I read the book years ago] Anyone who has been able to do anything measurable at a high level knows that talent is underrated. But "Talent is Underrated" would sell very few copies: who wants to have their hopes buried under a ton of reality?
- FpUser 5y ago>"and leave himself/herself" Would it be proper to replace this "himself/herself" with simple self? And what do we call gender neutral person if not?
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- 83457 5y agothemself
- ngomez 5y agoWhether it's proper depends on who you ask but you can use the singular they. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
- FpUser 5y agoThis is interesting.
- unmole 5y agoThemself sounds more natural to me than simple self. Singular they has been in common use since the 14th century. Don't let prescriptivists tell you otherwise.
- IncRnd 5y agoDepending on the sentence you are looking for the reflexive pronoun "oneself" or "one's self" to refer to an unspecified person's self consciousness.
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- CodeGlitch 5y agoI think this is true for many other disciplines, especially programming. You can code all you like, but reading text books on the subject and studying other people's code will quickly improve your skill. This is something I wish I knew 20 years ago.
- sharken 5y agoIt's also something i wish companies would prioritize, you will be more valuable if these activities are supported by the company and not something you must do on your own time.
- jldl805 5y agoThey do. You can take a lower paying job while you earn improve your skills, and then get a new role or raise with the skills earned. If they wanted someone in the role without the skills already in place, they would have hired that person and paid them less.
- BoiledCabbage 5y agoAnd misses OPs point. > You can code all you like, but reading text books on the subject and studying other people's code will quickly improve your skill. Companies need to prioritize this is the point. It's not about low pay, high pay jobs. Or obtaining a role once you have the skills, it's that companies don't prioritize learning/development as part of the role, they focus on output - and they would get more value from their employees of they did.
- _y5hn 5y agoThat flies in the face of the current Lord of the Flies policy and extracting maximum effort from each employee though.
- vjk800 5y agoCompanies have very little interest in investing in their employees personal education, because once they have learned the new stuff, they might just leave to another company and take their freshly acquired knowledge with them. It's the same reason why companies want to hire only experienced people even when the skills they require could be acquired by an otherwise competent person in a few months with proper training. In economic terms, it's a market failure; no-one wants to be the one paying (either in terms of money or employee working hours) for stuff that someone else can benefit from.
- drexlspivey 5y ago> Botvinnik famously recommended that a professional chess player should only play 80 tournament games a year and leave himself/herself time to think about chess. Fun fact: Botvinik became world champion without being a `professional` chess player. He had a full-time job as an electrical engineer.
- Lordarminius 5y agoHe was also the last world champion to have any occupation outside of chess.