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Chessville
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Can "old" players improve all that much?
It is all very well for a 49 year old to announce an ambition to become a very strong chessplayer, but is it even possible? There are plenty of examples of very strong players who retained their strength into their 50', 60's and even beyond ... Lasker, Korchnoy, Smyslov, Najdorf, but these are all people who were already outstanding as teenagers, or even as children. Where are the examples of players making huge leaps in ability in middle age and beyond? Are old folk are past it - if they ever had it?The society we live in would have us believe that what I am trying to do is NOT possible, that if you haven't 'made it' in your chosen field while you are still young then you never will. In chess if you were not a child prodigy, or at least a precocious teenage talent, you will never amount to anything. It is not often put that bluntly, but it is the unspoken belief of the general public, most chess players, and even a lot of chess coaches. I used to share that belief. "Obviously" my chess "talent" was only modest, otherwise I would have shown more promise as a teenager. Now it is too late. I no longer think that way. I do not expect it to be easy, but I am not so stupid that I would announce an impossible ambition to the world. There is work to do, and character defects to be overcome. But I do believe that it is possible. Why? What has changed? How can I justify that belief? Self-inflicted damage is not natural ageingDoes getting older inevitably give us slow, inflexible minds? Adequate at what they already know, but resistant to anything new? If our minds are actually diseased that may be true, but as an inevitable result of being of a mature age? I don't think so. We spend 12 years or more in an education system that professes to educate us, but in reality turns off our natural hunger to learn, we spend 30 years or more eating the wrong stuff, getting too little exercise (with the occasional guilty and injurious binge of too much), commuting for hours every day, stressed by the system in which we have to make a living, harassed by officialdom, running a permanent sleep deficit. Too tired to do anything better we slump zombie-like in front of TV for hours. No wonder that by the age of 50 so many of us are worn-out, damaged, too weary to make any intense mental effort ... if not actually incapable. We should not mistake self-inflicted damage for inevitable effects of ageing - whatever they might be! Our physiology is deranged because we don't feed ourselves properly, muscles get weak because we don't use them, our posture deteriorates because we use our bodies badly, our flexibility declines because we don't put our limbs through their full range of movement every day. All of this can be put right and the deterioration can be reversed. Why should mental abilities be any different? Lack of belief guarantees failureMy first attempt at a chess comeback should have discouraged me. About 1996-97 I had not studied for years, played only a handful of games each year, and my chess had hit rock bottom. I started to take lessons with Nigel Davies. After a personalized assessment and a couple of individual lessons the rot was stopped. I enrolled on his correspondence course "Power Chess" (Since published in 2 volumes by Batsford). I started enthusiastically, but dropped out after only a few months. Nigel and I became friends, and enjoy each others company, but as a chess student I must have been a terrible disappointment. His assessment was brutally honest. Too many other interests, not enough focus, misplaced perfectionism, insufficient desire to win. It is true that I was trying to do too many things at once, but at the back of my mind there was always that nagging voice: "This is stupid, you are too old now, you should have stuck with chess 20 years ago". Chess master at any ageA year or two later I stumbled on Wetzell's book, "Chess Master at Any Age" in which he describes how he improved from a reasonably strong player to a US National master. Wetzell has some interesting theories on the nature of chess skill, and the relative importance of study and play. The "components of chess skill" that he identifies are a very handy framework for thinking about the game. Despite the book's title, and the author's own success, I could not help feeling that in his heart Wetzell himself believes that age is a serious handicap. I ended up thinking that some of his learning techniques are crutches to compensate for lack of a deeper understanding. All the same he got me thinking that my ambitions were maybe not so unrealistic. I am grateful for that. NLPMore influentially, in 2001 I met a remarkable man who uses NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) to help people make changes in their lives. I was completely skeptical, and ready to dismiss it as yet another piece of fringe, pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo. But it works! I had a problem at the time. I was employed on a well-paid IT contract, but couldn't concentrate, hated the work, and was idling away hours every day. After just one two-hour session I was able to apply myself with full concentration and, though I still knew it was not what I wanted to do forever, I was able to enjoy it! Over the next few sessions what I learned with him allowed me to make many other changes, and to face other challenges I had put off for years. I saw how what often holds us back is not any absolute limitation, but our false belief about what is possible. That does not mean that simply believing that something is possible makes it possible. But it does mean that believing something is impossible makes it so. (You may need to read that slowly a couple of times!). False limitsIt is foolish to limit yourself without good reason. Most of our beliefs on what we can and cannot learn to do are in any case based on flimsy evidence and irrational arguments. "You have never sailed a boat before therefore you will never be able to". "No-one has ever run a four minute mile, therefore it is impossible that anyone ever will". What kind of arguments are those? They are equivalent to the old logical fallacy, "I have only ever seen white swans, therefore all swans are white". Similarly: "I do not know any older people that have dramatically raised their chess skill, therefore it is impossible". I am sorry, that argument makes no logical sense. Once you have realized that it is our beliefs that limit us, examples appear everywhere. The classic example is of course the 4-minute mile. For years it was thought to be beyond human limits, but in the 1950's a bunch of athletes realized that it was actually within reach, and Roger Bannister (with the help of his pacemakers) was the first to demonstrate it. In the early 20th Century the 800 metres run was thought to be too demanding for women. Now the top women regularly run marathons in well under 2hrs 30m. We even see thousands of fairly ordinary people running sub-3:00 for the marathon. It is just as hard as it has ever been to run a 3-hour marathon, but we now believe that it is within the reach of any normal person that does the training, not just those who are "athletically gifted". Swimming is supposed to be a young person's sport, yet master swimmers in their 40's and 50's are posting times that would have won most Olympic games. The 60 and 70 year olds are fast too. And a 67 year old has even swum the English channel. Expectations of mediocrity"They do not want you free, and they will not make you strong, There is one very pernicious influence to disregard: Social pressure. Once you are a well known player, and the chess world has become used to you performing at a particular level, it likes you to stay there. If you do improve, or get unexpectedly good results, there is subtle (sometimes not-so-subtle) pressure to put you back in your rightful place. Young players are exempt. They are expected to improve by 80 or more Elo points a year. But try improving by 200 or 300 points when you are already an adult, and everyone is used to you being just one of the crowd. Sure you'll get compliments and congratulations, but also jealousy and resentment, and snide comments to overhear ("Just beat so and so, quite an upset, not likely to happen again", "Who does he think he is", "Of course it won't last", "Playing above himself", "Just a flash in the pan", "What did you say his grade was this season ... never!"). You'll pick up the hidden message that you are somehow upsetting the natural order of things, and the sooner you return to your "normal" level the better for everyone. It is a test. What do you prefer, cozy acceptance, or excellence? What is "natural talent"?But surely achievement in chess depends on "natural talent". Surely if I'd had sufficient talent it would have shown up much earlier? Well no. I don't buy that argument either. Talent is over-rated. In fact it is very difficult to pin down just what it is. When you look closely, what looks like inborn ability is nothing of the kind. A better explanation is that what look like inborn abilities arise from two things: hard work, and making a good start. A 'good start' can be a matter of accident. Did an opportunity present itself? Were your early experiences fun? Did your childhood world allow or encourage that particular skill? Did it get you respect? Was there anyone available to be your mentor? Or more deeply, at a conceptual level, maybe a lot of playing with building blocks is what pre-adapts your mind to chess? Or perhaps it is being spoken to a lot as a child? Or perhaps listening to the right music in the cradle sets up patterns of neurons that are also good at recognizing patterns on the chess board? We still know very little about the early development of the brain. What is Genius?The common view of a genius is of someone to whom what most of us find difficult or impossible comes very easily. But that is another illusion. It might be to the advantage of a genius or prodigy to have us believe it, but it is a false belief, and is dispelled by Michael Howe in his book "Genius Explained" (published by Cambridge University Press in 1999). When we see a skillful performance, what we do not properly appreciate is the thousands of hours of study and training that lie behind it. Howe studies several great geniuses from child prodigies like Mozart to the later developing (but still young) Einstein and convincingly makes the case that geniuses are little different from the average except in their capacity to persevere. It is not inborn talent that makes great skill possible, but work and practice ... lots of it. As for child prodigies, they have that capacity for sustained, painstaking work, and just happened to started very young. So by the age of five, or six, or seven had already devoted more time to their chosen skill than most of us devote to anything in a lifetime. This, along with the good fortune to have good early guidance (as Mozart was taught by his father Leopold) is all the explanation that is needed. It is just about doing the work!We do not know any intrinsic reason (physiology, biochemistry, developmental biology) why intense study must take place in childhood to be of any use. There is a lot of speculation, but little hard science. Nothing we know at present about brain structure or physiology prevents us embarking on intense and effective learning later in life. Howe goes further. He reckons it takes about 10,000 hours of well-directed study and practice to reach a good professional standard, and the age at which you do it makes little difference. 10,000 hours represents 5 years full-time work or study. Why do we not see big improvements in middle aged players? Because none of them is prepared to make that much effort! My experience fits Howe's hypothesis. From 1966 to 1999 I have spent about 7,000 hours on chess. In just three or four years a dedicated child could do as much study, gain as much experience, reach a similar standard, and be thought a prodigy! My most intense period of study was from 1980 to 1984. In that period I clocked up over 3,000 hours of play and study, an average of 2 to 3 hours a day, and improved from a middling club player to a strong expert. At other times in my life I have devoted similar amounts of effort to other pursuits: the oriental game of Go, playing the piano, learning to program ...and in each case the lesson is clear. An undisciplined and uncommitted approach leads nowhere. Sustained hard work pays off. Over months and years it makes what was once impossible seem easy. Prodigies have it easy!Right now Magnus Carlsen is the chess prodigy that everyone is talking about, and there is no doubt that he has become a fine player at a very young age. But is that because of exceptional innate talent for chess? Maybe not! Imagine yourself in young Magnus's place. You play in your first tournament aged eight, do well, and get noticed by GM Agdestein, who decides to help teach you. Immediately you believe that you are special, that you have "talent", that you can really shine. This encourages you to work very hard at this game that gets you such agreeable attention. The expert tuition helps you avoid getting misconceptions about the game. It helps you learn what you really need to know, and avoid being sidetracked or diverted. The hard work and quality tuition pay off with more tournament success, and more media attention. They encourage you to work even harder. At first you work at it for 2 or 3 hours a day. By the time you are ten years old it is more like 4 or 5 hours a day. You don't have to worry about earning a living, washing your clothes, preparing your meals, or arranging hotels and transport when you play in tournaments. Your supportive parents do all that for you. When you reach IM strength they sell their car, rent out their house, and travel the world with you for a year so that you can play in chess tournaments. Microsoft hears of you and gives you sponsorship. With that kind of early start and support wouldn't almost any of us have been a much better player than we are now? Of course he still had to do the hard work. With the same advantages many would not make such good use of them. Start now !!So can an older player scale the chess heights? There is a Native American proverb: "The best time to plant a tree is 40 years ago. The next best time is now". We cannot go back to being eight years old. But we can reject limiting beliefs, simplify our lives, get ourselves in good physical shape, and make a real commitment to study chess properly for a few hours every day.
POSTSCRIPT:In the first week of May 2004 I played my first tournament:
the Open section and Somerset championships at the pretty town of Frome in
Somerset, England. Result: +1 =3 -1. The win was against my highest ranked
opponent, the loss against the lowest! A 2040 rating overall. OK but not
great. Some good things, but some serious deficiencies too. There is a
long way to go! The tournament was won by GM Matthew Turner with 4.5/5 and
IM James Sherwin (now resident in England) took second with 4/5.
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