Wrong. Source: played chess up to 2100 FIDE in my early teens, can't concentrate for shit 15 years later.
Do you still play chess? maybe it would help regaining your concentration...
Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration
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Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration
#12Here's a link to the game Rowson mentions against Yermolinsky. The critical position ("Yermolinsky offered a pawn as bait...") arises on move 18.
It's not spectacular - I would say mundane, but you can't say that when someone beats a top GM in just 24 moves. What Yermolinsky overlooked is a famously missable type of move - a backwards move to a square that was occupied at the start of the variation - but still trivial for a player of his class.
It looks to me like he did not like his position after move 16 and sought these complications partly as a bluff. The computer says Black's position is not all that bad after 16...dxe5 or 18...dxe5, but he will have to either defend a passive position with a weak d-pawn or sacrifice a pawn in a different way.
Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration
#13Wrong. Source: played chess up to 2100 FIDE in my early teens, can't concentrate for shit 15 years later.
Hm. Maybe Chess has more of a signalling effect than a cognitive one? [1]
[1] https://phys.org/news/2019-07-people-chess-smarter-evidence-...
Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration
#14Chess can be like fucking crack for some of us tho. I personally have went down the rabbit hole of watching one game after another. A binge which lasted for months, that started with watching a few AlphaZero games.
> The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life. ~ Paul Morphy
Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration
#15Wrong. Source: played chess up to 2100 FIDE in my early teens, can't concentrate for shit 15 years later.
Do you still play chess? maybe it would help regaining your concentration...
Past a certain level you don't progress based on brainpower alone but preparation: first your general repertoire of openings, and specific openings against your opponent - because in tournaments you are notified about your opponent the day before and you can look up the games they've played in ChessBase or something. In any case your opponent will do the same against you so you come up handicapped if you skimp on preparation. Having to do actual homework is the thing that kind of disincentivized me as a teen from pursuing a potentially professional chess future and led me to do more normal studies. Now with an actual job and all that I'd hardly find the time to go up that hill again.
So you can see my habit of being distracted in the face of actual work isn't new and the advent of electronic devices was just icing on the cake.
Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration
#16...unless it's bullet
Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration
#17Concentration is indeed a powerful skill for any human to have. It gives one the ability to apply themselves at the task at hand.
One thing that I have discovered is that one can’t concentrate intensely on different hard things at the same time.
The why behind the concentration is also very important.
The blog article here https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/do-not-engage-the-mi... explains this further.
Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you still play chess? maybe it would help regaining your concentration...
Past a certain level you don't progress based on brainpower alone but preparation: first your general repertoire of openings, and specific openings against your opponent - because in tournaments you are notified about your opponent the day before and you can look up the games they've played in ChessBase or something. In any case your opponent will do the same against you so you come up handicapped if you skimp on pre…
You probably don't need to improve, just play. Or you could teach someone.
Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration
#19Wrong. Source: played chess up to 2100 FIDE in my early teens, can't concentrate for shit 15 years later.
The author is a ~2500 GM. I do think it depends on the kind of chess though, bullet is rather different to classical in mental requirements.
Re: Playing chess is a life lesson in concentration
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you still play chess? maybe it would help regaining your concentration...
Past a certain level you don't progress based on brainpower alone but preparation: first your general repertoire of openings, and specific openings against your opponent - because in tournaments you are notified about your opponent the day before and you can look up the games they've played in ChessBase or something. In any case your opponent will do the same against you so you come up handicapped if you skimp on pre…
Chess 960 (Fischer Random Chess) would at least remove much of the opening study and seems to be growing in popularity partly for that reason.