ChrisL64

There’s been a long¹ discussion on the Chess Dojo public Discord² involving, among many other topics, the perennial favorites of practice and training vis-à-vis playing, aka consolidation of knowledge into skill.

Today, one of the central participants described an acquaintance’s “problem”:

This is true [that one’s primary reward should be grown, not winning or losing] but playing matters and so if you end up in this container of studying, it becomes relatively more appealing than playing

I say this bc this happened

A guy enjoyed studying more than playing and then didn’t play

[…]

Like this guy studied good stuff but never wanted to play If he simply played Guy would have skyrocketed And he enjoyed studying for the sake of studying

[…]

Like when he did play, he demonstrated very clearly that he learned stuff

So it showed up It’s just he found it stressful And he had no incentive bc studying by itself was satisfying

I was struck by the rueful tone, describing this poor guy who fell into the trap of enjoying studying and learning as if he’d been saddled by an addiction or something.

And I get it! Chess is a game, and the most popular goal for most people with most games is to win³. But I would argue not only that this isn’t the sole goal, but that any emotionally healthy approach to a game necessarily includes enjoyment and fulfillment in addition to⁴ winning.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying studying more than playing, even to the exclusion of playing altogether. Chess is a game to be employed in whatever ways make us feel the best. No one reading this is, or is ever going to, rely on chess for their livelihood. My number one question when I see people expressing significant, non-transient anguish over their rating or their lack of progress as measured in wins and losses is: do you enjoy playing? And my number one suggestion, if they do not, is to stop, take a break, and find a different, better⁵ game. If the break becomes permanent, that’s fine!

Chess players seem particularly prone to persisting in playing a game they’ve stopped enjoying. This powers the obsession with ratings, which is the fuel for all kinds of toxic garbage fires, both psychologically and for the community. There are all sorts of reasons for this, many of which exist in other games, but the effect seems more widespread, more painful, and more common than the rest. I suspect this is the hellish confluence of:

• The explosion of online chess, which has popularized modes of chess that were mere diversions (blitz), if not practically impossible to play (bullet, hyperbullet), for most of its history.

• The integration of video game mechanics that are particularly suited to those modes, including a baked-in emphasis on ratings.

• The understandable embrace of chess by video game enthusiasts, and those communities' cultures and expectations.

• The deeply insinuated (and deeply mistaken) conflation and association of chess skill with general intelligence.

It’s wild to me that despite ratings systems existing for only 15% of the game’s long history (and being excellent at just one thing: matchmaking), a chess world without rating⁶ is inconceivable to many. I don’t mean just the creeping toxicity of the quantification, mistaking the number as a measure of worth (self- and otherwise), or the ratings shaming, or the use of rating as a cudgel or (inaccurate) barometer of accuracy or authority. I don’t even mean people mystified by the mechanics of tournaments and other competitions organized without rating as we understand them today. I mean people who are astonished by the notion that people would still play if there weren’t a visible, public rating.

At any rate, my point is that all of these things conspire to rob so many people of the pleasure and fulfillment of studying the game, of doing calculation work, solving puzzles, playing over incredible games, mastering an endgame technique, speeding through a tactics set, staring slack-jawed at the beauty of a combination or the mesmerizing geometry of a sequence…closing, for no good reason, a door that opens onto a whole world of enjoyment and satisfaction.

It’s maddening and saddening. Because the truth is altogether simpler: the best path—the only perfect path—is the one that satisfies and fulfills you, regardless of how many games you play. And the reverse is true as well: if you only like playing and competition with others, that’s great too! Some of the happiest chess players I know are those who just have fun playing (often obscene numbers of games), not caring about their rating other than being happy that the number does its job, matching them with folks with whom they can reasonably compete.

Which isn’t to say finding one’s own path is simple. I’ve fallen prey to this dynamic many times in my life, letting a spirit of competition or level of mastery steal my sunshine from a wide range of pursuits⁷. It’s been such a common difficulty in my life that a central point of therapy for me has been finding a way to be a happy amateur at something and not measure my worth by my place in some hierarchy of achievement. But that’s the goal, and I can attest there are few things that rival the feeling of finding, and walking, that path.

Photo by Sebastian Unrau on Unsplash