Chess is dear to me. I invested a lot of time in it, since the age of 12 until literally 2 minutes ago. In this post, I explain why chess is fascinating and how you should start learning it.
Chess is a game that is incredibly complex. Just with 32 pieces and a 64-square board, it generates a virtually infinite number of possible games. Clearly, this number is not really infinite, but we are talking about something so enormous (~10^50) that it can reasonably be considered infinite. Human beings are fascinated by complexity. Maybe also because we experience it in our everyday life (e.g. weather, economy, psychology, sociology). What I found incredible is that complexity forces you to develop skills to grasp it.
If you think that the chess player who calculates better always wins you are wrong. The best chess players are not an emulation of computers, and playing like a computer is not the goal to achieve to be successful at chess. Computers are indeed incredibly good at chess nowadays; they are stronger than human beings. However, like us, they are not able to calculate all possible chess games. Chess it too complicated also for them. In 2019, the best computers can “solve” chess with 7 pieces on the board (2 pieces of which are the kings). When I say solve I mean calculating backwardly from a checkmate to whatever positions on the board with 7 pieces. That’s all for now.
Once you realise how complicated is chess, you may be astonished to see people of all ages enjoying the game. There should be an army of machine learning engineers trying to unveil such complexity and, indeed, there is. But there are also people of all ages, genders, social extractions and with different ambitions who enjoy the game. Chess is fun because it has a sportive component, and it’s beautiful because is full of geometrical patterns that enrich it also with an artistic component. Educators consider chess a genuine game for children, and I think that one of the points is (or it should be!) that it teaches to cope with complexity in a relatively simple and fun way. Although knowing how to play chess is useless outside the world of chess, chess helps to develop skills that are useful in other aspects of one’s life.
I can’t tell exactly how much chess influenced my forma mentis, but I suspect it helped me on several occasions. I always enjoyed competing and teaching equally. Between my 13-20, I was more active in playing international tournaments than I am now. I was already teaching chess when I was 15 years old, but the ratio tournaments:teaching shifted in favour of teaching only in recent years. Teaching put me in contact with people who wanted to start learning chess at the most disparate ages and that have different expectations from the game. When you are a young player who wants to become a top player, you automatically assume that whoever wants to study chess has the same ambition. Very wrong. I think we are all fascinated by the complexity of the game for different and all valid reasons.
This is why the first thing you should do if you want to learn the game is not to hire a chess teacher, but to pinpoint what is your aim. Then you can consider if studying with someone will help you to get to this aim more easily and faster, but a teacher may be unnecessary. Choosing a realistic, not too long term aim is pivotal, as you will need to measure your progress toward it. It is a bit like when you subscribe to the gym to lose 10 kg. You start with small aims which you can track and that motivates you, and in the end, you will be 10 kg less if you keep working hard.
Another essential thing is that you need to do it having fun. People always think that children are better than adults at learning chess because their brain is more ready to get new information. And it’s true. Yet, I believe that children invest more energy because they enjoy it more. There is some circular reasoning here; we won’t get out alive. In my case, I learned the rules of the game from my father, but I started to play chess with other students in school. I enjoyed competitions, winning, learning new things and improve my skills, and testing myself. You can learn chess at all ages, but you have to find what is that you like about the game and make it part of your study program.
My recommendation is to join the local chess club. Give it a try at least. If other people are going and the club organises small tournaments and lessons, it will be fun to spend time there. If you aim to be the big fish in the local chess club, you need to keep a record of your games (you can learn how to write chess notation in about 3-4 weeks) and go through them several times. Tactical training is greatly beneficial for beginners, and it is slightly more fun that studying openings (thick books of sequences of moves - not what a beginner needs) and endgames (technical manoeuvres to win special positions that may or may not occur during a game). Books by grandmaster commenting their games are inspiring, as we also learn to play chess by emulating the past champions. One day I will provide a list of books I like.
Finally, some books combine technical development with the development of a mental frame work that is important to play better chess. There are not many of those books, but they are usually good reads. By the way, I wrote one of those books, but this is going to be the topic for another post. Another day.
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