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It is a long time since I wrote (aka ranted) for Chessville. I have had e-mails from readers, and enquiries from the editor. Excuses for absenceWhat has happened? Have I given up on my quest for chess mastery? Yes. Was I wrong about its acheivability? Who knows? I am still a 2000-rated player (FIDE/Elo) that occasionally turns in performances at master level (2200-2500) for the whole of a tournament, but is equally capable of losing to a beginner!! So Where have I been?So what has happened? It is very simple. I have re-discovered an earlier love than chess. The piano. Studying music and practicing piano now takes all my 'spare' time. There is not enough time to do chess and piano, and do them both well. Why do I prefer playing piano to playing chess?So why piano and not chess? Surely it is just as difficult to make great progress as an adult pianist as it is as an adult or ageing chess player. Perhaps it is even more difficult. The great majority of the world's top-class recitalists were child prodigies, even more so than is the case in chess. Most top chess players showed talent in their early teens, or at most two or three years earlier. The exceptions (Reshevsky, Capablanca) are very rare. In contrast, many of the top pianists were already superb at their craft as 5, 6 and 7 year olds. Can old people improve all that much?Generally speaking, developing any complex skill to a high level of competence requires much the same kind of approach, and provides many of the same challenges and difficulties to be overcome. And I believe that most of what I wrote in my earlier Rants about improving at chess at a mature age also applies to improving as a musician, and in particular as an executant pianist at a similar advanced age. It is possible. But it is not easy. Not that it is easy at any age. For the older learner there are, as with chess, additional (or at least different) mental barriers to overcome. They include both your own self-limiting beliefs and the expectations of society and the company that you keep. These are far more significant than any slight deterioration in mental or physical powers or in capacity to learn.
It is true, just as in chess, that you will never be as good as if you had started in childhood, done all the right things, and never stopped. All the same, if you have ten or twenty years of life ahead of you, and you are not senile or otherwise incapacitated, then you can still become very, very good indeed, at chess or piano playing, or something else entirely. So just what are the ingredients of success?The basic recipe is very simple: a little talent + the right kind of work (and lots of it). More talent and the right childhood are bonuses, but working with whatever you have got is the most important. Over and above that, however, you must have an intense desire for it, and that intense desire must be fuelled by a love of what you are doing. The difference for me is that I just did not love chess enough. I realized this one day a little over a year ago while sitting at the chess board at a tournament in Delft. It was a well-organized event with a decent prize fund and superb playing conditions. I had a promising position, yet as I sat there all I could think was " Why am I doing this? I would rather be practicing the piano!" I don't regret the time I have spent on the game. I enjoyed playing chess. Now and again I still enjoy a game . . . like when the piano practice rooms are closed for the summer holidays! I can make an immense effort at the board, and sometimes pull out a top-class performance. And I have always enjoyed playing over master games for pleasure, and solving tactical puzzles, both of which have some effect on your chess strength. But when it comes to the sustained hard work of learning endgame theory, cataloguing and comparing middle game themes, internalizing positional ideas, meticulously preparing an opening repertoire, practicing calculating variations in real-game positions to the point where they can be made fast enough and accurately enough under time pressure, I just don't enjoy any of these activities enough for their own sake, and I don't have a strong enough ambition in chess to force myself to do them regardless. As for analyzing my own games to root out the flaws and identify strengths to build on . . .
But with the piano there are no such problems. I love the instrument and everything about it. I love its sound, its touch, its smell, its feel. I love the "repetition with precision" of a handful of notes in practice as much as I enjoy performing some well-rehearsed sonata. I will happily repeat a phrase 100 times to get it right. Would I go over a point of endgame technique 100 times to burn it into my mind? No way. Technical exercises and etudes are a joy and full of interest, as are: exercises in rhythm and ear training; background studies in theory, harmony, counterpoint and musical form; the application of psychology to the problems of performance; and background research into musical history, the lives of the composers and the musical instrument. I repeat: You have to love what you are doing for its own sake.But perhaps the most important thing of all is that at the piano I love what I am doing for its own sake. And that was not the case in chess. In chess I was after status and adulation as much as enjoying the game itself. And I very much more enjoyed the fact of winning a game, and showing off a fine game or a nice idea after I had played it than I enjoyed the actual playing of it. In contrast, with piano it is the process that I enjoy. Of course playing in public (despite its stresses), and taking applause, is a great experience, but it is not only that, but everything else that precedes it and makes it possible that gives enjoyment. In fact, with the piano I love what I am doing so much it doesn't really matter whether I improve or not, nor whether I perform frequently with success, or rarely. The perverse thing about all this is that, as a result, I am actually much more likely to reach a very high standard than I ever was in chess. Probably the only stronger motivation to achieve excellence would be to be starving, and to only have one worthwhile skill with which to earn a crust! In conclusionI am still going to play chess from time to time. For fun, but with no serious effort to raise my standard to the next higher level. And to sign off, here is my demolition of one of the young prodigies and rising stars of Dutch chess. K T Rose v Jan Van Overdam
Thanks, everyone, for reading. I hope my ramblings might have inspired someone, whatever field their ambitions might lie in. I wish you all happiness and fulfillment. Look out for my CDs when I am famous!!
Tom Rose Tom, we hardly knew ye! Best wishes from Chessville!
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These are all things that would
have to be done to move out of the Expert category, and into that of Master.
