My Chess Failure: 12 Months Is Not Nearly Enough

I star­ted to learn chess, but after twelve months, I quit.

After hav­ing watched The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix in 2020, chess caught my interest. Turns out that I was not alone in this par­tic­u­lar fascination.

The pop­u­lar TV show coin­cided with the pro­lif­er­a­tion of stream­ing genres bey­ond gam­ing. Turns out that stream­ing and chess are a match made in heaven.

Of course, I wasn’t the only one who dis­covered chess after The Queen’s Gambit — just as I wasn’t the only one who dis­covered Sudoku after find­ing the YouTube chan­nel Cracking the Cryptic.

Still, I decided to teach myself more about chess.

Here we go:

The Three Parts of Chess

There are three parts to a game of chess. The open­ing, the middle game, and the end game. I didn’t know this. The say­ing goes that you should play the open­ing like a book, the middle game like a magi­cian, and the end game like a machine. I didn’t know any of that, either.

Still, I found these three parts to be good start­ing points. ¹I had the same approach when learn­ing pho­to­graphy as I star­ted my jour­ney by focus­ing (pun inten­ded!) on aper­ture, shut­ter speed, and ISO.

Play the Opening Like a Book

Computers have cal­cu­lated all pos­sible chess open­ings. So, you can play a par­tic­u­lar open­ing to give your­self a favour­able pos­i­tion on the board. If white plays a spe­cif­ic open­ing per­fectly, you must counter it per­fectly to min­im­ise white’s advantage.

You could play an open­ing without know­ing any open­ings by find­ing good moves. However, your oppon­ent will likely gain a sub­stan­tial advant­age from know­ing their open­ing the­ory by heart. There are too many vari­ations for a human brain to cal­cu­late over the board.

So, if you want to play a decent chess game, you must study open­ings. Simple as that.

Play the Middle Game Like a Magician

Both sides will soon run out of pre­pared moves with all pos­sible vari­ations. It typ­ic­ally hap­pens when most pieces are developed. So, when you enter the middle game, you’re left with only your stra­tegic bril­liance, cre­at­ive ideas, and abil­ity to do cal­cu­la­tions. And so is your opponent.

And in the middle game, many pieces are still left on the board. And lots of pieces on the board mean — complexity.

Is there a way to invoke magic? Well, hav­ing played thou­sands and thou­sands of chess games will help. Being a bon­afide geni­us doesn’t hurt, either. If you haven’t had time to play that many games and weren’t blessed with men­tal super­powers at birth, a sol­id under­stand­ing of chess prin­ciples will go a long way.

Play the End Game Like a Machine

Most end games have already been solved. So, if you’ve man­aged to sur­vive until most pieces are off the board and you’ve got the advant­age in terms of mater­i­al or pos­i­tion, the game is yours to lose. It’s like an equa­tion wait­ing to be solved. You need to enter the cor­rect answer — and the win is yours.

Mess up, and you’re hand­ing a draw or a loss over to your oppon­ent on a sil­ver platter.

You either con­vert a win­ning pos­i­tion into a win or defend ideally to increase the odds of hav­ing your oppon­ent make a mis­take. Alas, it would help if you prac­tised how to solve end games, prefer­ably under time pressure.

Chess and Time

Here’s anoth­er crit­ic­al aspect of the game I had nev­er con­sidered before watch­ing The Queen’s Gambit:

Chess is a timed game.

I had seen chess clocks in movies before, of course. But it had nev­er occurred to me that time was a huge factor to con­sider in play­ing the game.

In clas­sic­al chess, play­ers typ­ic­ally get lots of time to think. Players do run out of time. For some reas­on, I thought all chess matches ended with a check­mate or a draw.

Instead, I dis­covered the fant­ast­ic world of bul­let, rap­id, and blitz games. 

And I learned that the clock decides lots of games. You could have a win­ning pos­i­tion, but that doesn’t mat­ter if your clock runs out. 

So, how did I go about improv­ing my game?

Chess Openings

I’m pas­sion­ate about learn­ing new things, but my motiv­a­tion has lim­its. To put it mildly, study­ing chess open­ings en masse isn’t my idea of a good time.

So, I learned about open­ings involving mov­ing the pawn in front of my white king first. I’ve only just scratched the sur­face here. But I prefer to know more about one spe­cif­ic type of open­ing than too little about too many openings.

As for open­ings with black? I’ve picked up a few fam­ous lines, but only a small num­ber of turns deep. Work in progress.

Still, a little know­ledge about open­ings goes a long way, espe­cially if you’re play­ing against people without the slight­est idea about openings.

General Chess Knowledge

But the most sig­ni­fic­ant improve­ment in my chess game was learn­ing a few basic chess prin­ciples. Such prin­ciples won’t apply to every scen­ario, but they’re still good to know.

Here’s a quick run­down of some basic chess prin­ciples that have served me well dur­ing my first twelve months of play:

Watching Chess Streamers

I should also men­tion that I’ve learned most of what I know from watch­ing chess stream­ers play and ana­lyse games. It’s not just about the know­ledge they share, but to hear them think out loud through­out games has helped me devel­op an inner chess voice that speaks to me dur­ing play.

Weird, I know. ²My inner chess voice sounds like Levy “GothamChess” Rozman!
But it helps me find bet­ter moves and blun­der less.

And it’s great entertainment!

Read also: “For Content!”

Why I Will Quit Chess

I don’t know what my chess rat­ing is today. I can com­fort­ably beat the 1300 – 1500 chess bots on Chess​.com. Twelve months ago, I lost three times in a row against a bot ranked at 700. That’s pro­gress, I guess.

I could begin play­ing online against people I don’t know — and get a real online rat­ing. But, I won’t do that.

After twelve months of try­ing to learn chess, I’ve learned this:

So — I quit.

And that’s fine. The endeav­our has allowed me to appre­ci­ate watch­ing oth­er great play­ers more. My respect for their abil­it­ies (and their hard work!) has grown immensely.

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My Renaissance Projects

The Renaissance was a peri­od of sig­ni­fic­ant cul­tur­al, artist­ic, polit­ic­al, and sci­entif­ic rebirth in Europe, last­ing from the 14^th to the 17^th cen­tury, marked by a renewed interest in the clas­sic­al art and ideas of ancient Greece and Rome.

Inspired by lifelong artists and learners, I strive to always devel­op my cre­at­ive intel­li­gence, phys­ic­al strengths, and men­tal well-being. 

This is a list of my “Renaissance Projects”:

• My Chess Failure: 12 Months Is Not Nearly Enough
• 18 Months of Sudoku — Relaxing the Mind
• So, I Blogged for 10 Years to Improve My English
• My Mind Palace (and How It Helps Me To Think Better)
• The Ikigai Test
• The Big Five Aspects Scale Results (My Personality Test Results)
• My Photography Journey: A Descent Into Madness
• The Epic Year Approach: Control Your Life Event Density
• Image Streaming — Unleash Your Inner Genius

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