191–200 of 207 posts
Does learning chess improve other facets of cognition?
Research on this seems to mostly have settled on “no, maybe some accelerated development for kids”. I just know it’s better for my brain to be thinking about chess for 2 hours than to be on Reddit for 2 hours, which is what I was spending the time on before.
"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." - Paul Morphy. I started playing anonymous games on LiChess, and playing without ELO anxiety is way, way more fun. It's a game, this is all I need out of it.
There is also an «unranked» mode, where you can play without showing any numbers, but the big difference is that Dota 2 is a team game, and while some people play unranked to be more relaxed and care less about their rating, a lot of players won't try hard to win, because they don't see a point in winning if they don't see their rating get higher anyway.
It's frustrating that community forces you to play ranked if you actually want to win, but you can't relax when you know you are mediocre.
I have a genuine question. My long time peeve has been that I suck at Chess and every time I play against anyone/anything, I just lose. It demoralizes me and then after sometime I try again, only to have the experience repeat. I have had decent grades, I code for a living and have been told that the quality of my work isn't bad so I guess I'll risk coming across as arrogant when I think that I'm not absolutely dumb.…
Two pieces of advice: 1. Play longer times. This happened to me when I started with 5+3. Play 15+10. 2. STUDY YOUR LOSSES. sorry for yelling. Try to understand what did your opponent that you didn't see, try to understand if it was a tactic you missed or a strategy general loss. (in parallel with those) study endgame (mate with queen, K+R v. K, etc) and the tactics by name. X-ray, what's a fork, what's a skewer, etc. By name only, avoid puzzles. Think of them as the for and whiles of chess.
I think by far the biggest improvement newbies can make is just not hanging pieces and blundering, honestly. Literally the majority of games at I used to be quite good as a kid, winning championships and whatnot, and I'm actually glad my grandfather didn't teach me opening theory so much, so I could be trained to think more than memorize. Sadly at the highest level, you do just have to memorize the best opening lines…
> I think by far the biggest improvement newbies can make is just not hanging pieces and blundering, honestly. Literally the majority of games at This, in fact, exactly what GM Ben Finegold points out. At anything short of Master-level play, blunders define the winner. "Never resign" is something that he drums into his students. My biggest issue with chess is that playing chess isn't "fun"--it's hard work. There are…
Shameless plug: In case you want to track your chess progress and see more statistics on your openings (win rates, etc.), I'm developing a website where you can link your accounts to view stats for all of your games. It's free and currently in Beta: https://www.chessmonitor.com/ Here is an example for the current world champion: https://www.chessmonitor.com/u/kcc58R9eeGY09ey5Rmoj
Shameless plug: In case you want to track your chess progress and see more statistics on your openings (win rates, etc.), I'm developing a website where you can link your accounts to view stats for all of your games. It's free and currently in Beta: https://www.chessmonitor.com/ Here is an example for the current world champion: https://www.chessmonitor.com/u/kcc58R9eeGY09ey5Rmoj
I'm getting major dotabuff vibes from the UI. I assume you drew inspiration from them?
I wish the author had discussed a bit about what worked and didn't at a higher level. I don't have the time to get into chess, but I'm quite curious about how I could translate his learning into other games and domains. One that was mentioned as a breakthrough was in learning to think like the opponent. That's quite interesting. I'm not sure what I can takeaway from the puzzle stuff without knowing more about chess.…
I think from a higher level there are some interesting things, you're right that I should have gone into it a bit. One of those is that raising my ceiling of play, like challenging myself with super tough puzzles, was actually totally unproductive. Raising the floor of my play, however, was hugely beneficial. I imagine this generalizes somewhat to other pursuits. The other takeaway I've had is how different procedura…
I have a genuine question. My long time peeve has been that I suck at Chess and every time I play against anyone/anything, I just lose. It demoralizes me and then after sometime I try again, only to have the experience repeat. I have had decent grades, I code for a living and have been told that the quality of my work isn't bad so I guess I'll risk coming across as arrogant when I think that I'm not absolutely dumb.…
At the beginner chess level, you're likely to face opponents who know a few traps. When you lose to a trap, learn it, and then inflict them upon your opponent!