Smithy's Monthly Update: Feb 2024 (Hope?)

In my January update, I hinted I might do very little with chess this month.  I was right.  I did almost zero chess training... but not zero.  I also kept myself vaguely engaged with chess, and that might be pulling me back into training mode ... but we'll have to wait for the March update to see, I guess.

This will be a short one: I'll briefly say what I have done, both in terms of training and non-training activities, and where I predict things will go from here.  I'm optimistic these last two months represent the nadir of my 2024 chess status.

Good vs Evil: Chess as a Story

[Editor's Note: I wrote the first draft of this back in December, well before I started my other writing project. Pure coincidence. Or maybe it was foreshadowing. Anyway, I'm still not happy with it, but it seems appropriate to publish it now... though I reserve the right to re-explore this idea later.]

Everyone loves a good story.  It is part of being human.  Even our grandest and most noble pursuits, from philosophy and science to history and myth, essentially boil down to stories, or explanations for why certain things happen.  Some of the highest paid people on the planet, actors and musicians, simply tell stories.  We can't get enough of them.

Chess has stood the test of time for many reasons, but I imagine a big one is that it has a narrative structure built into its very core.  Two armies face each other in war.  Knights charge into glorious battle, peasants hold the line, the clergy offers support from afar, and even the Royal Family takes center stage.  White and Black, attack and defence, victory and defeat, the stories literally write themselves.

Chess is a game. It is a competition.  It is a science and it is an art ... but more than any of that, I view chess as a story generator.

(Non-Chess) Why I Write

[During my January update, I shared how writing a story has monopolized my chess time.  This explains that in more detail.  It's not chess related, so don't say you haven't been warned.]

I have a love-hate relationship with writing. It's something I really enjoy ... and also something I never voluntarily do. Given the amount of digital ink I've spilled on this blog, I can understand your skepticism.  Allow me to explain.

Have you ever taken a little kid to an after-school activity?  A decent percentage will whine and beg and plead not to go.  It's a real struggle to get them into the car ... and then you get there and they have a great time.  Absolutely love it.  Can't wait to go back ... until the next day, when the struggle repeats anew.

When it comes to writing, that's me.  I'm a grumpy kid.

Source: peacefulparent.com

I never write by choice.  I write because I have to.  Something compels me to do it. For this blog, I literally have time scheduled into my calendar to write something. If I didn't do that, I'd have 1/5 the content, probably less. Without the schedule, my writing doesn't get done.

With fiction, it is even harder.  I never "have" to write.  The scheduling trick doesn't work.  I'll just stare at a blank screen for an hour. I can't force myself to write, and usually I don't.  I have gone years without writing a sentence of a story ... and then I turn around and write something in a single week, start to finish.

Why do I write?  It's because I must.  It's because something demands to be written.  It's because the discomfort of not writing starts hurting more than the pain of writing.  This is why.

Opening Essentials: How to Understand an Opening

Chess players love learning new openings.  The usual process is to look it up online (or to buy one of the endless courses available) and then to study variations.  This, though, has a relatively low success rate.  Sure, if you are lucky enough to get your exact variation in game, great, but if not, you are left high and dry.  Learning raw variations, by itself, rarely works.

2.h3.  Now what do I do?

The canned response is to say you need to "understand the moves" you are playing ... but what does that really mean?  Sure, I'll learn the plans and ideas ... but which plans? What ideas?  How do I know which plans are important, and how do I use those ideas to help me when I face 2.h3?

Here's my suggestion.  Rather than this vague "understand the moves", you need to know three critical things:

1. What do you do if your opponent does nothing? (eg, what is your dream scenario)
2. What do you do if your opponent tries to kill you? (eg, what is the most aggressive option)
3. What do you do against your opponent's main thematic plan? (eg, what is your opponent trying to do)

That's it.  If you can answer these three questions, then you can play your opening against just about anything with total confidence. Conversely, if you don't know these, then you don't know your opening, regardless of how many moves you've memorized or Chessable reviews you've done.  THIS is opening understanding.

Understanding Rating Increases: What +100 Elo Actually Means

Most chess players have rating goals.  We want to gain rating and hit some nice round numbers: 1000, 1500, and 2000 are frequent milestones.  I distinctly remember starting out online and getting a rating of 1400 ...which soon fell to the 1300s. I was young and distraught, so I created a new account ... and immediately fell back to 1300.

I played a bunch of games against the same pool of players and started improving, eventually hitting (and staying) over 1400.  Despite this, I still lost games to those 1300 players.  A lot of games, in fact, and this rankled me.  I've improved, I'm the better player, I have the higher rating, why am I still losing?

Fundamentally, I had a mistaken understanding of ratings, one that a number of people share.  I've written previously how ratings are merely predictions, not objectively statements about you and your chess. Today I want to tackle this from a different angle: what does gaining +100 rating actually mean?

You Are Not Your Rating

In chess, we frequently say, "I am a 1500 player," or whatever your rating is.  When meeting another player, it's one of the first questions we ask.  When we ask questions online, we invariable include our rating.  We celebrate when it goes up and mourn when it goes down.  We place great weight on this number, to the point it often becomes the defining feature of us as a chess player.  "I am a 1500 player."  The very words we use show how we identify with our rating... though everyone also thinks they are underrated.  I may be 1500, but I deserve to be 1800, that sort of thing.

I want to push against this.  Telling me your rating tells me almost nothing about you, to the point that "I am a 1500 player" becomes empty and almost meaningless.

Yes, this is a hot take, and yes, I am exaggerating for effect ... for only slightly exaggerating.  Our ratings certainly tell us far less than we might think, though, and I want to give a gentle reminder that the number next to our name is not the be-all and end-all.  I've written on this topic before, but it deserves a deeper dive.  Let's go.