Knowing Me Knowing Yusupov 4: On trying to improve

 

@saychess1

At the beginning of August SayChess asked twitter this deceptively simple question. It looks straightforward enough, but the more I thought it the more I found it impossible to answer.

So I’m taking on the Yusupov Challenge. On a scale of 1 to 10 how hard am I trying to improve my chess by doing this? I really don’t know.

It’s not that the question is inherently subjective. Our absolute effort rating is always going to be much lower than when taking into account what else we have going on in our lives.

The difficulty I’m having is this word "improvement". What does it actually mean?

A few years ago I mentioned on the EC FORUM I found it curious that in chess in contrast to, say, tennis or golf, there isn’t much of a culture of adults seeking out regular coaching. Somebody replied saying that he didn’t need a coach. He regularly attended lectures by the club’s top player, he said, and this was more than enough to greatly increase his understanding of the game.

Testing a hunch I checked his rating. As expected, it hadn’t moved for the last 5 years.

There’s nothing at all wrong with setting your goal as trying to develop your understanding of the game. If that’s how you want to live your life in chess then good luck to you.

It’s just that this kind of 'improvement', though, doesn’t interest me in the slightest.

For me, your over-the-board classical rating goes up or nothing meaningful has changed. Everything else is bullshit. Your belief that you’ve got better; your feeling that you’ve improved; your certainty that you’re under-rated; your tactics rating on some server or other and, yes, the amount of points you scored on the last Beat the Masters position. It’s all bullshit at the end of the day.

Your over-the-board classical rating goes up or nothing meaningful has changed.

That’s it.

My current ECF Grading Card: no chance of it changing any time soon.

 Since I haven't played for Southampton University for nearly 30 years I should probably get that changed at some point.

Given that I’ve no plans in the immediate future to play over the board chess - not to mention that there aren’t going to be many opportunities even if I wanted to - where does that leave me? Can I say I’m even trying to improve?

I would like to get better at chess. I would like for that improvement to be demonstrated in a higher rating, but it’s not going to happen for a while yet.

So I guess I have answered SayChess’s question. I’m not trying to improve just now. I’m a 0.

I am trying to finish the Yusupov series, though. I know that for sure. One book, one chapter, one position at a time. I’m trying to finish Yusupov.

Progress report:

I've had the last week and a bit off work so I've been able to get quite a lot done. Things will get much slower from tomorrow.