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Learning Chess at 40

nautil.us

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Re: Learning Chess at 40

#81

Post by tel »

wslh wrote: post #28
danielvf wrote: post #2

I'm learning the game of Go at near fourty. But I'm not having any of the problems he describes. A great thing about learning and playing online is that you can find an opponent at your same skill level within minutes. Unlike learning in a local club, where every person you will ever play beats you every time, I win slightly more than half my games. I also get this nice increasing graph of my skill level. This is a l…

I tried to learn Go, obviously beyond understanding the rules, and found it very difficult comparing to Chess. I wonder how you dealt with the huge exploration space of just putting one stone in the beginning of the game. In Chess, every movement is very constrained.

I often feel like "learning Go" is deceptively a few steps deep. When one learns Chess you effectively can get to the tactical aspect as soon as you know how the pieces move. When you "learn Go" at the first level you understand the rules and their basic consequences, but you still don't quite know "how the pieces move". This is natural since no rule dictates these things in Go—they're something you learn as handed down from thousands of years of people playing it.

But once you get the "how the pieces move" of Go—essentially, the Haeng-ma and maybe the basic opening algorithm, you can quickly dig in to the really rich tactical and strategic levels just as you can with Chess.

Re: Learning Chess at 40

#82

Post by komaromy »

atoponce wrote: post #76

I played chess religiously as a kid. I attended chess clubs, went to private tutoring, and completed in U.S. Chess Federation tournaments. I even have a few trophies in my room that I'm still proud of. Some time in high school, while studying openings and their variations, I was curious if computers would ever beat the great Grand Masters regularly and consistently. It seemed to me that the key to this success would…

> So, it wasn't surprising to me to learn that the Grand Masters are Grand Masters because of their memorization of opening sequences, the depth of that memorization, and when to use which variation.

This is not true. Opening knowledge is a common deciding factor in games between GMs, but that's only because they're already so good at everything else. A low GM actually probably has a smaller skill margin over other players in terms of openings than in other areas of the game: as someone that's arguably a decent amateur (~2200 USCF) and has played against several GMs, I would prefer my chances in a game where we both have our opening knowledge versus one where neither of us has opening knowledge.

Re: Learning Chess at 40

#83

Post by bgilroy26 »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #47
lordnacho wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish physical sports were like this. Anything online is blessed with this mechanic where you can keep it challenging for everyone other than the people at the top or bottom (based on my experience in CoD where I'm pretty sure I'm bottom). With sports like soccer it's quite noticeable that some people are way better than everyone else, or way worse. And there's no way to improve since you can't just rearrange thousa…

I'm not familiar with your experience to be honest. For example in the Netherlands we have Football right. There's 9 divisions. You get promoted or demoted at the end of the season, such that on average you're roughly in the middle of a spectrum of 5% worse and 5% better teams. Of course there's lots of individual differences and some teams get much better suddenly in one season, and ought to play a division higher r…

Coming from of the United States and hearing about how federated soccer is all across Europe is really saddening.

In the US we have baseball where we have a sane semi-pro system. In football and basketball which are the real money, growth sports, there's the best-in-the-world professionals, the unpaid 20 year old college players and not a lot in-between.

In college, a buddy of mine became close friends do with a semi-pro soccer player out of Austria. He wasn't the best in the world and he was an au pair in the off-season, but he was in tip top shape in his late 20s playing soccer for a living.

It really isn't like that here. On the top end of the average case scenario, you have 3 years to make a living doing what you've been trained practically 20 years to do and then you're out in most cases. The whole employment market for these athletes would be a lot more sane if it were like baseball where you have families coming out to see minor league football and basketball players at reasonable prices.

Re: Learning Chess at 40

#84

Post by billforsternz »

rpgmaker wrote: post #80
billforsternz wrote: post #77

As someone who has lost to a child on national television; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL5GE6S7LEk I can sympathise with the author of the article. The cruel truth is that it is very difficult to improve as an adult. I think the analogy to learning language is a good one - to get really good learn as a child. As far as I know there are no instances of a player learning to play as an adult and reaching grandmaster…

I never knew about chocolate chess. Thanks for posting it!

I wouldn't say chocolate chess was a thing, per se. Just a one-off promotional idea I think.

Re: Learning Chess at 40

#85

Post by thevibesman »

yolesaber wrote: post #30
keiferski wrote: post #11

Probably the most interesting example of someone pursuing chess later in life is that of Marcel Duchamp, the famous Cubist artist. He grew up playing chess for fun, but at age 36 he basically stopped making art and started pursuing chess full-time. "I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art—and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position." "The chess pi…

It's fascinating that people say Duchamp stopped being a practicing artist when he turned his obsessions to chess. I would say he just changed his medium. He wasn't one for retinal works anyway.

> I would say he just changed his medium.

I would agree with this. Another change like the change from Cubism to Dada to 'make your paint' in reaction to production of factory made paint.

Cubism -> Dada -> Chess

Re: Learning Chess at 40

#86

Post by thevibesman »

keiferski wrote: post #11

Probably the most interesting example of someone pursuing chess later in life is that of Marcel Duchamp, the famous Cubist artist. He grew up playing chess for fun, but at age 36 he basically stopped making art and started pursuing chess full-time. "I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art—and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position." "The chess pi…

> Marcel Duchamp, the famous Cubist artist

I always think it is interesting to observe which are movement is used to describe artists who did work in more than one (in this case Cubism and Dada).

Not at all a nit-pick or a correction; Duchamp's writing on Dada has influenced some of my own research/work and so I just find it interesting which labels we choose (of course one label is easier than some label fitting a monarch: Marcel Duchamp, Painter of Cubism, Assembler of Dada, Player of Chess).

Re: Learning Chess at 40

#87

Post by vithlani »

danielvf wrote: post #2

I'm learning the game of Go at near fourty. But I'm not having any of the problems he describes. A great thing about learning and playing online is that you can find an opponent at your same skill level within minutes. Unlike learning in a local club, where every person you will ever play beats you every time, I win slightly more than half my games. I also get this nice increasing graph of my skill level. This is a l…

Hi, what learning sources would you recommend? I am in a similar position...

Re: Learning Chess at 40

#88

Post by Scarblac »

bgilroy26 wrote: post #83
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with your experience to be honest. For example in the Netherlands we have Football right. There's 9 divisions. You get promoted or demoted at the end of the season, such that on average you're roughly in the middle of a spectrum of 5% worse and 5% better teams. Of course there's lots of individual differences and some teams get much better suddenly in one season, and ought to play a division higher r…

Coming from of the United States and hearing about how federated soccer is all across Europe is really saddening. In the US we have baseball where we have a sane semi-pro system. In football and basketball which are the real money, growth sports, there's the best-in-the-world professionals, the unpaid 20 year old college players and not a lot in-between. In college, a buddy of mine became close friends do with a semi…

The guy you're replying to is talking about amateur sports, and you reply by talking about semi-pros and making a living out of something. The divide runs deep.

The people in those 9 divisions have a game every weekend, and training once or twice per week on weekday evenings, as a hobby. Pro sport is something different entirely.

Re: Learning Chess at 40

#89

Post by atoponce »

komaromy wrote: post #82
atoponce wrote: post #76

I played chess religiously as a kid. I attended chess clubs, went to private tutoring, and completed in U.S. Chess Federation tournaments. I even have a few trophies in my room that I'm still proud of. Some time in high school, while studying openings and their variations, I was curious if computers would ever beat the great Grand Masters regularly and consistently. It seemed to me that the key to this success would…

> So, it wasn't surprising to me to learn that the Grand Masters are Grand Masters because of their memorization of opening sequences, the depth of that memorization, and when to use which variation. This is not true. Opening knowledge is a common deciding factor in games between GMs, but that's only because they're already so good at everything else. A low GM actually probably has a smaller skill margin over other p…

Yes that's true. GMs are GMs, because they have full and complete mastery of the game- opening, middle, and ending. But that mastery is disproportionate, which is what I was trying to say (and didn't do that great of a job). You might be able to play a mad middle and end game, but if you didn't open strongly, your game could already be decided.

To pinpoint my gripe with chess, a single tactical error in your opening game can be unrecoverable, and the deciding factor on losing your game. It's too precise. Whereas with some other abstract strategy games, such as Go, you might make a strategical error, but the game might be more forgiving, where you can heal from your mistakes.

Of course, weak players should lose to strong players, regardless of game. I just wish chess didn't depend so strongly on defining a strong player by who has more opening variations memorized.

Re: Learning Chess at 40

#90

Post by Scarblac »

atoponce wrote: post #89
komaromy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, it wasn't surprising to me to learn that the Grand Masters are Grand Masters because of their memorization of opening sequences, the depth of that memorization, and when to use which variation. This is not true. Opening knowledge is a common deciding factor in games between GMs, but that's only because they're already so good at everything else. A low GM actually probably has a smaller skill margin over other p…

Yes that's true. GMs are GMs, because they have full and complete mastery of the game- opening, middle, and ending. But that mastery is disproportionate, which is what I was trying to say (and didn't do that great of a job). You might be able to play a mad middle and end game, but if you didn't open strongly, your game could already be decided. To pinpoint my gripe with chess, a single tactical error in your opening…

An error anywhere during the game can be unrecoverable, that's why it's an error. The opening isn't special, in fact I'm sure an error in the ending is more likely to lead to a loss.

Chess strength _doesn't_ depend strongly on memorization. GMs are often content to take an equal position against IMs and then just outplay them in the rest of the game.

At top top level, they do spend a huge amount of time on opening research, but that is because they can. They can work full time, they know who their opponents are going to be, they have engines and seconds. You can use those resources on concrete analysis of positions that might occur, but not as easily on expanding your generic middlegame knowledge. It doesn't apply to normal GMs.

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