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How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

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Re: How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

#211

Post by jakupovic »

johngossman wrote: post #196
cjonas wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting you put "eat" here as your first item. I don't care much about my rating (I play chess to escape stress; not create more of it), but over the last couple years since I started playing, my lichess rating (fluctuating between 1200-1400) appears to have a very strong correlation with my mental health. Of course it's obvious if you think about it, but it's very odd to have this accurate of an indicator with h…

As you say, you can’t usually “measure” your mental performance. After having this experience, it also explained why I was a more productive programmer in the afternoon (after lunch) and I started eating a light breakfast. My mom wasn’t so dumb after all!

I have learned the same, my mental health strongly correlates with my chess performance. I'm not really good, think 1400 the most, but sometimes I just cruise to my high score and then sometimes I cannot win a game to save me.

Re: How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

#213

Post by david927 »

washmyelbows wrote: post #18

"Only about 10% of players ever gain more than 100 points, and only about 1% of players gain more than 200 rating points given years." This seems like a wild claim. On chess.com I've gone from 500 to ~1050 in a handful of months without any real study, just some light YouTube watching. 500->800 felt like all it took was learning a few openings and not blundering pieces. 800-1050 felt like it came mostly from getting…

I can only speak from my experience but blitz worked for me. I would make occasional, furtive attempts to learn but nothing ever worked. Then one day I started playing a single five minute lichess game with coffee in the morning at work. And when I would make a mistake, I would do a takeback to see what I did wrong and how I should have played it. Sometimes I would play the puzzles.

Doing this and nothing else, I went up about 100 points a year for five years, from 1200 to 1700. (And then I stopped but I also could tell that I would have to start approaching it differently to go further.)

Re: How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

#214

Post by BurningFrog »

3abiton wrote: post #205
johngossman wrote: post #181

Good article. A lot of the comments here give bad advice though, which isn’t surprising because they show a lot of common misperceptions about chess. Jeremy Silman has written a couple of books about what is actually important. Quickly, what worked for me when I started playing on chess.com at age 40 after not playing for over twenty years. My rating at age 17 was 1450. Restarted at 1200, and barely progressed at fir…

The question is, is it worth it getting into chess as an adult? What is the appeal? And what additional value does it bring compared to other "productive"/mentally stimulating hobbies?

One fairly unique thing is that you can play against other humans of equal strength with zero friction over the web.

Re: How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

#215

Post by osigurdson »

3abiton wrote: post #205
johngossman wrote: post #181

Good article. A lot of the comments here give bad advice though, which isn’t surprising because they show a lot of common misperceptions about chess. Jeremy Silman has written a couple of books about what is actually important. Quickly, what worked for me when I started playing on chess.com at age 40 after not playing for over twenty years. My rating at age 17 was 1450. Restarted at 1200, and barely progressed at fir…

The question is, is it worth it getting into chess as an adult? What is the appeal? And what additional value does it bring compared to other "productive"/mentally stimulating hobbies?

Sounds like you don’t like chess very much. Sounds like you think everybody should have the same brain as you and are frustrated why this isn’t the case.

Re: How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

#216

Post by Someone »

Zyst wrote: post #184
Someone wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that’s not surprising at all if you assume every player has a ‘ceiling’ performance they can attain, isn’t it? Higher rated players tend to be closer to their potential than lower rated ones, leaving less room for improvement, in any sport. They also will be more likely to get worse over time because, the nearer to the top, the more roads lead you downwards. You’d have to pick a very peculiar metric to measure pe…

I play competitive games in tournaments. I would disagree with your characterization. Yes, people have a skill ceiling. However, it’s not something you’re ever going to get to by just playing most games. People naturally improve at games when they start playing. Some factors being more familiarity with the game, and making less mistakes. However, people will stall out at different ratings at that point. However, if y…

> However, if you do deliberate practice in the game you will absolutely continue to get better

I strongly disagree. I think that, for a given amount of effort (hours and study intensity) you’re willing to spend, everybody has a ceiling that they can reach. If what you say is true, why hasn’t Magnus Carlsen reached ELO 2900? Lack of deliberate practice? ELO deflation requiring players to get better to keep the same rating?

Ignoring that, the discussion isn’t whether you’ll continue getting better, but whether you’ll keep improving at the same rate.

> Unless you assume the people that go pro are all just more talented, and that their practice doesn’t make a difference.

I don’t see how that follows. I think the top is both extremely talented, extremely motivated, and physically strong enough to do the hours of concentrated practice.

I think it’s easier to see in physical sports. If you’re 2m tall and have enough motor skills to run and catch a ball, you’ll likely be ‘good’ at basketball in high school, even if you don’t practice much or well. To make it in the NBA, you have to be 2m tall _and_ have above average motor skills _and_ be above average robust, so that you can play x games a year without getting injured, _and_ be more willing to exercise than mossy to get stronger and more agile _and_ be above average good at reading the game.

Re: How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

#217

Post by hvs »

mptest wrote: post #165
sph wrote: post #55

Great article. I got into chess recently, and I can only recommend the "Learn chess with Dr. Wolf" app. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/learn-chess-with-dr-wolf/id135... It's got a beautiful UI, and it's a conversational chess tutor that goes over the basics, tactics, advanced strategy and with whom you can play and will point out mistakes and blunders for later review. Perhaps it is too basic for anybody that has a fe…

Can anyone recommend a similar app/site for learning go? That one feels so hard to learn, but it is so fun. the games really feel like a conversation

As low-DDK player, what has helped me most is

1) Playing lots of games (https://online-go.com and https://gokgs.com are good for this). I usually have a few correspondence games going and then try to play a normal speed game daily. Don't worry about winning and losing, just play. Begin to internalize how standard tactics reappear regularly on the board.

2) Do tsumego (life and death) a lot. But don't just try things and see what happens. Try to read out the entire sequence before looking at the answer. (SmartGo One is a good app). Cho Chikun's beginner ones are good [1]. Try to work on a subset of problems (3) As someone who spent WAY too much time reading books about Go strategy and tactics before I could barely play the game: don't do that. Books become much more useful once you are a SDK (single digit kyu) player. Until then, just play and study life and death. Reading books isn't bad, it just isn't that helpful when you can get beat in a game because you don't have the basic tactics down.

[1] https://tsumego.tasuki.org/

Re: How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

#218

Post by jerbearito »

osigurdson wrote: post #215
3abiton wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is, is it worth it getting into chess as an adult? What is the appeal? And what additional value does it bring compared to other "productive"/mentally stimulating hobbies?

Sounds like you don’t like chess very much. Sounds like you think everybody should have the same brain as you and are frustrated why this isn’t the case.

Sounds like they're asking questions and you're making assumptions.

Re: How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

#219

Post by [deleted] »

johngossman wrote: post #181

Good article. A lot of the comments here give bad advice though, which isn’t surprising because they show a lot of common misperceptions about chess. Jeremy Silman has written a couple of books about what is actually important. Quickly, what worked for me when I started playing on chess.com at age 40 after not playing for over twenty years. My rating at age 17 was 1450. Restarted at 1200, and barely progressed at fir…

[deleted]

Re: How to learn chess as an adult (2021)

#220

Post by nevinera »

mptest wrote: post #165
sph wrote: post #55

Great article. I got into chess recently, and I can only recommend the "Learn chess with Dr. Wolf" app. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/learn-chess-with-dr-wolf/id135... It's got a beautiful UI, and it's a conversational chess tutor that goes over the basics, tactics, advanced strategy and with whom you can play and will point out mistakes and blunders for later review. Perhaps it is too basic for anybody that has a fe…

Can anyone recommend a similar app/site for learning go? That one feels so hard to learn, but it is so fun. the games really feel like a conversation

I gained the most from gobase.org, just clicking through professional games. The tool you can review/replay games with lets you try to guess the next move - just let them play the first 10-15 moves and then start guessing. Don't spend a ton of time thinking, just _guess_. Guess over and over, and if you don't guess the move after 5-10 tries, have it tell you, try for a few seconds to understand why that might be a good move, and continue.

You should totally do the tactics and puzzles that you can find (that same site has a bunch), but there's a lot more strategic recognition and pattern-matching in go than chess.

I'm also interested to hear if there are better tools though in the last .. Christ, twenty years? I'm old now -.-

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