Update on The Chess Climb
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It’s been a very long while since I’ve written anything and today I thought I’d discuss the beginning and ending point of my work in chess. My obsession with chess lasted about a year give or take while in ARMY ait tradoc training. It helped and was essential to overcoing the monotony of the day. One of the things, I set my goal on was a chess championship because I was curious how far I could go and how far I could improve in terms of my own chess capabilities. Frankly, I had ambitious goals of international master but I underestimated the given work require to attain titles of high competency and again realized that exceptionalism requires a level of work ethic and devotion that requires all and every part of yourself, if you wish to succeed and to become your best self. In this given context, I started around like 1320ish when I arrived in AIT. I used to play chess games in basic training and I ended up making up my own chess board from cardboard and I played numerous games. Throughout the entirety of my training I would estimate I probably played no less than 7000+ games my peak elo rating for bullet was about 1905, highest blitz was 1770 and rapid was 2030. The disappointing thing that I realized which confirmed my lack of talent despite obsessive commitment. My rating increase was maybe 400-300 elo which is quite pitiful considering the insane time that I committed to the given task. The elo rating challenge I experienced was quite significant in that my improvement slowed down dramatically almost to a halt around 1700+ ish and I did not improve anymore. Around this time I started working on tablebase, worked in an FM, NM and even a GM even despite it’s exhorbitant price I went over game analysis and focused on trying to implement their feedback while working on improving my pattern recognition as much as possible but the improvement I found was fairly minor. Thus the first principle I eventually discovered was the principle of diminishing returns of high levels of capability. As you approach your latent capability limits you will find it very very hard to improve or get any better. As you increase and work on your own capabilities you will find improvement to painfully slow almost to the point of being depressing. I would find days where I would review some games, go over lines and study the nuances but simply find my play to often be getting worse or no better. The order of magnitude of improvement was focused on the preconception of tempo gain, focusing on square control, learning lines of the ruy lopez, italian game, guiccio piano, learning new lines in the london system but at some point I came to the conclusion it just was not worth the time cost in order to acquire the latent capabilities of what I was trying to intrinsically develop within myself.
The latent pursuit of high capabilities that you have never developed within yourself are often never scarcely developed precisely because the effort an the time that is often required in order to developed those capabilities almost never develops themself without having a borderline obsessive type of focus dedicated to the given task at hand. Therein lies the issue with the simple fact that most adults simply never have enough time to dedicate to a hobby or activity to really develop a capability of a true master. Thus, the cost of being an expert or a master is a high opportunity cost that is best paid at the earliest possible time such that one can broaden there knowledge rather than deepen there knowledge. Depth of knowledge is preferred vs breadth of knowledge on average. It’s also worthy of noting that the underestimation of expertise is far more endemic than I realized. The concept of expertise comes down to the time investment x obsession = extraordinary level of capability. In the context of chess, the training required has been on average roughly 4-6 hours per day, studying end-games, studying master-games and obsessive analysis for a possible mere class B rating of about 1650-1700 which in my opinion is totally laughable in terms of raw capability levels. In this given context, it’s important to realize that the level of capability from 1700 → 2200 I would estimate is probably 10x harder than the climb from 1000-1500. In fact the effort and the resistance that I experienced from this given level was so much so that I often experienced an intense desire to quit.
The other issue that I believe that tends to develop is the issue of lack of sustainable incentives to justify the given time investment towards the given task. Without some type of sponsorship or anything to compensate you towards the level of training you will find yourself in a net negative in terms of time relative to reward amount. For the vast majority of great chess players are made from a very early age when the child can develop a single-minded focus and obsession towards the given task at hand. Hence, why it is no surprise that the majority of people have not been successful in acquiring high chess capability. Lack of incentive, lack of reward and high levels of responsibility along with a great level of maturation tends to promote low level of GM’s. In this given context, the climb for the majority of chess players will likely stop around the level of 1600-low 2000’s simply because the amount of time investment is disproportionate requiring one to neglect the vast majority of ones responsibilities without any start nor end. Thus, at some point I realized that the climb for 2200+ is simply not worth the effort simply because the expense had become disproportionate, the effort required for high capability would likely require in the realm of 20,000+ games and a neglecting of other aspects of your life. In this given context, the lessons I’ve learned is the following:
High level of capability requires deep analysis
High top 1% to 10% competency requires a mentor/coach on average
Development of mastery takes years but can be sped up with an obsessive focus
Mindless routine and repetition of an activity does not equal improvement
Consistency without analysis does not yield improvement
Incentives must exist to justify high levels of capability and competency
In conclusion, for the vast majority of people considering pursuing e-sports or something that is of great deal of entertainment. If you do not posses a vast amount of capability, time investment and talent then it’s probably not worth pursuing. If you are pursuing some of great time investment, great effort and desire then it is necessary that you have a definite goal, objective that you need to pursue in order to justify the high time commitment cost. In doing so, your high non-refundable time investment can then be justly compensated accordingly. In the cases of e-sports and other things like chess it is best seen as a hobby and a profession only for the absolute elite who can trade from the young ages of 5-6. I will leave a quote once said by Paul Morphy “The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman, the ability to play chess well is a sign of a wasted life.” I will only add that it is not to say it' is not enjoyable nor a waste of time but in the process of mastery we must be mindful as to why we are pursuing mastery otherwise it is unclear what the end is. If the end is unclear then it is best not to start the journey at all without understanding the price you must pay to get to the ends. The ends do not always justify the means if you do not know why.