KMKY 8: Nasty, brutish and not short

Do you want to get better a chess but find yourself at a loss for what to do because nobody agrees how to adults get better at this game of ours? If so, this post is for you.

Archbishop of Banterbury

We might not know what an effective programme of improvement is, but that doesn’t mean we can’t say what it isn’t. We just need to employ a bit of logic and or, if you want to be a bit less of a ponce regarding your terminology, "common sense".

Significant sustained improvement at chess for an adult is rare.

Some time back my friend Tom improved his English Chess Federation grade from 163 to 186 within a year. That was roughly the equivalent of 115 points on an elo starting around 2060 or thereabouts.

It might not sound like a huge payoff for a year’s worth of effort, but it put Tom on a list of the top-20 most improved adult players in the country.

That so few people achieve such gains shows that improving your chess ability as an adult, even over an extended period of time, is really hard. Which tells us something about how to bring that improvement about.

First: it’s not going to be fun stuff.

If it was fun - dicking around on the internet, say, watching Banter Blitz streams and playing hours of bullet - then everyone would do it and everyone would be improving. But we’re not, so it isn’t.

Second: it’s not going to be easy stuff.

If it was easy, then a lot of people would do it even if it wasn’t fun. I mean, why wouldn’t we, if it’s not going to put us out too much. We might not enjoy the process itself but then at least we get the pay-off without too much sweat.

But it isn’t so we don’t.

Third: it’s not going be quick stuff.

Even if it wasn’t fun, even if it wasn’t easy, if it was over quickly, then there’s still be some people who would put themselves through the process. If I was to offer you a turgid miserable time for six-months or even a year but at the end you’d be guaranteed to be Master strength (or IM, or GM or whatever 'currently out-of-reach standard' means to you), a lot of you would take it.

But it isn’t. So hardly any adult chess players truly improve their game.

laugh riot

It might not seem that helpful to know what doesn’t lead to chess improvement, but actually I think that it is. If we know what doesn’t work we can do something else and give us a better chance of success.

Which means, when it comes down to it, that if we really, truly, want to raise our game we should look around at what most chess players do … and not do that. Because it ain’t working.