
How To Think About Chess - FailMore
http://taaalk.co/taaalk/chess/robert-heaton-josh-summers.html
======
cubano
Some diagrams and actual moves would have been very useful to help explain the
concepts he talked about.

As it is, I am left with no idea what "attacking the king in the midgame"
really meant to him. Did it mean sacrificing material for a mate, or a more
standard development?

Most midgame analysis use the concepts of force, space, and time[1], and he
didn't even mention these terms, so I was left confused.

I am not sure what my level is, but pretty much all I did in my two years in
prison was play chess, and in my relatively short stay, I became around the
5th best player "on the yard" and was able to play at the specific table where
only the best players could play.

There were over 1500 inmates at the facility I was at, and at least half of
them played chess as it was one of the only board games readily available, so
playing at that table was no mean feat.

We would play for $1 a game and it became my "hustle" (a hustle in prison is
something that allows you to make money doing something of value, like making
some else's rack (bed), or sneaking food out of the kitchen etc).

Anyway, I digress...I try to play at coffee shops when I can these days but I
find often the existing players seem snobbish and its hard to find a game with
the better players.

[1] [http://chessimprover.com/force-space-and-
time/](http://chessimprover.com/force-space-and-time/)

------
negroni
As a person of color, I really got this:

"At the very very highest levels winning with black is really quite an
impressive achievement, and black will often go into a game playing for a
draw. The advantage of the first move is very pronounced, and sets the tone
for the entire game, with white generally calling the shots. Attempts by black
to generate active counterplay are often very risky. "

"So the aim when black is to survive and make sure you're doing enough
sensible things to not get exploited because of the disadvantage of moving
second."

~~~
nsxwolf
That reminds me of the billiards scene from Boomerang:

"The white ball dominates everything. Knocks the shit out of the yellow ball,
the red ball, right? And the game's over when the white ball drives the black
ball completely off the table."

------
navan
I have an expert level rating. I agree with everything in the content. My
games are very similar to what he describes. I have not memorized many
openings. I just know a few moves in common openings and how to respond to a
few quirky responses to them. I want to get to the middle game or out of my
opponents memory as quickly as possible. I also sometimes deliberately make
some opening weak moves to get out of opponent's memory.

One main thing I found in my experience is, majority of the games in amateur
level are decided by blunders. I am not talking about small positional bad
moves. These loose pieces are get mated in one move. If you are an amateur
first focus on avoiding them by studying tactics before memorizing anything
else.

~~~
sharkweek
I am a terrible player, but I absolutely love playing. One of my biggest
problems is making a move and them immediately seeing the err of my ways. It's
beyond bizarre how quickly I'll realize what a shitty move I have just made
right after I take my hand off the piece.

I'd say I have a few decent tactics that I sort of lean on, but, like you
pointed to, if my opponent does something to break me from that memory, my
game is shot and I'm flailing around trying to recover (which rarely works).

Not sure if I'll ever dedicate enough time to reach "decent" status but I
definitely enjoy the game.

~~~
thret
This. I take my hand off the piece and immediately resign. Allowing a single
'undo-last-move' play would help my game a lot.

------
FailMore
Hi Everyone,

I'm one of the founders of Taaalk and also the person interviewing my
knowledgable friend Robert Heaton on this one.

We'd love anyone who might be interested in being talked with or talking to
someone else (either someone we'd set you up with, or someone you know) to
reach out to us. Please email hi@taaalk.co or hit us up on twitter at
[https://twitter.com/gotaaalk](https://twitter.com/gotaaalk).

Please don't be too modest in terms of getting in touch! We've found that when
someone starts asking you questions you become more interesting than you
realise!

Thanks very much for the chess discussion. Great to learn even more.

Josh

------
ff_
Besides the awesome content - which is great for starters to grasp some basic
concepts of tactics and pay attention to some common patterns on the
checkboard -

I love the format too.

It's really a conversation, a chat, but with solid content and serious people.
So following is really easy, and satisfying. (unlike audio/videos of
interviews here you can go back and reread lots of times a passage you lost -
which is good.)

So Kudos also to the Taaalk team for the great design and format.

~~~
meowface
I like the format and the content as well, but the domain name and company
name seem pretty terrible, if I'm to be honest.

Imagine explaining it to a friend or prospective user.

"Yeah it's called Taaalk, just go to taaalk.co"

"What, talk.co?"

"No, you need 3 As."

 _user types 3 more As_

"Taaaalk.co is giving me a 404."

"Sorry, you needed 2 more As, let's start over."

"Taalk.co?"

"Just google 'talk'. Actually, wait, don't do that..."

And for that matter, what is the official pronunciation? "Talk"? Or do you
have to elongate the vowel? How long should you elongate it for?

Seems like they should decide on a new name before they invest too much into
this one.

~~~
randomnumber53
Yeah, but who shares URLs with their friends by speech these days? In fact,
who really speaks?

~~~
golergka
Filthy peasants.

------
alimoeeny
Speaking of chess, I strongly recommend this youtube channel:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/MatoJelic](https://www.youtube.com/user/MatoJelic)

I have no affiliation with him, but he is a brilliant trainer and he is a very
lovely game narrator. I feel it is appropriate to talk about this channel,
because I have not played serious chess in decades but just watching this guy
go through these famous games, gave me such insight that reading this article
(the on from OP) sounded rather naive.

~~~
chris_b
I would add
[https://www.youtube.com/user/PowerPlayChess/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/PowerPlayChess/videos)
and
[https://www.youtube.com/user/Chessexplained/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/Chessexplained/videos)
to that list.

~~~
Trufa
As much as I enjoy and watch almost every video, chessexplained is not very
educational unless you're pretty high rated, it's very entertaining
nonetheless.

------
toledi
The article's good. However, the comment about experts not getting to the
endgame as often as non-experts is likely wrong. I don't have the data either,
but I'm fairly experienced at chess, and in my experience high level games get
to an endgame moderately often, but amateur games almost always end before an
endgame. Amateurs typically don't even know how to play an endgame, because
they rarely get to it so they don't realize why they should learn. I know a
lot of amateurs focus a lot on the opening because they see themselves winning
or losing in the opening, when that's more due to tactical blunders than
anything essential to the opening.

It'd be interesting to see some statistics for this.

~~~
dfan
Agreed: the higher level the players, the more endgames. Think of two people
fighting on a balance beam. The weaker the fighters, the greater the chance
that one of them is going to slip off the beam (make a blunder that is
punishable) earlier in the fight.

------
bunkydoo
I like this. I've been getting back into chess as of lately and I keep a board
on my desk while I do work on my laptop. Here's my strategy for playing
'solitaire chess' as I call it - I make a move, then I move a poker chip to
the side whose turn it is, I go back to doing whatever I was doing on my
laptop for a while (until I forget the game entirely), then I return and make
another move. Then I rinse and repeat this process until the game is over -
it's amazing how rapidly this improves your strategy compared to playing
against another person or a computer. Because as they say - you are your own
worst enemy... Or most brutal competitor as I like to think ;)

~~~
frenchie091
You'd want to be careful with that, Stefan Zweig has a novella about a guy
playing chess against himself in his head who loses his mind!
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Royal_Game](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Royal_Game)

------
arh68
I have to agree there is a slight bias towards White winning, but it really
isn't a landslide [1]. And it's probably a cliche by now, but I always liked
the saying (apparently by Tarkatower [2]):

    
    
        The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.
    

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-
move_advantage_in_chess](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-
move_advantage_in_chess)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savielly_Tartakower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savielly_Tartakower)

~~~
randomnumber53
The first-move-advantage becomes increasingly relevant the higher the level of
play, of course.

------
taurath
I got really into chess for a bit, but started to find it sort of boring after
a while. Midgames can be interesting but the early games are simply displays
of memorization. Really incredibly good players end in draws more often than
not.

Games like Starcraft are pretty much the exact same - there's a defined early
game, a midgame and endgame.

~~~
ryanx435
>> there's a defined early game, a midgame and endgame.

all things with defined start and finish criteria can be conceptualized this
way.

careers: education is early game setting you up for success, job/career is
midgame, retirement is end game.

relationships: dating is early game, engagement/marriage is midgame,
death/divorce is end game.

software development: envision project/write requirements is early game,
coding/developing/testing is midgame, shipping and bug patching/customer
support is end game.

... I could go on and on, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader

~~~
derefr
I think you've got the parallels for "early game" right, but the parallels for
"endgame" wrong. The endgame is the phase directly _before_ the end of the
game, where two players who have each managed to avoid screwing themselves
over in the early game, and who have each managed to match their opponent's
multiple-front challenges and feints in the middlegame, finally are forced
(usually by the game's increasing resource constraint) to "put all their cards
on the table" and do the interesting and tricky things that make their
playstyle unique.

~~~
ryanx435
right. the end game is before the end of the games. we're on the same page on
that.

disconnect on our understandings is that I didn't define the game ending
criteria for each example. in chess, it's either a checkmate or a draw that
ends the game.

for my examples, my criteria are death for the career, the relationship
ending, and the software product reaching the end if it's supported life.

~~~
mod
The point was that checkmate is not "endgame," it's literally when the game is
over.

Endgame is a part of the game, the late stages. It comes after the midgame.

It doesn't go "early game, midgame, checkmate."

Same for all of your examples, where you note the endpoint, not the endgame.

~~~
ryanx435
look, I get it.

everything has a starting point. (you decide what career you want) then an
early game phase. (you go to school to get a degree) than a midgame phase.
(you start work and collect paychecks during your career) than an end game
phase. (uou live the retired life using the resources you earned during your
career ) than the game actually ends when predefined conditions are met. (you
die or whatever)

got it.

we are literally arguing in circles because we are not conceptualizing the
problem the same way and not communicating clearly.

~~~
derefr
I think the thing trying to be pointed out here is that "retirement" is not
_inside_ what most people consider to be the game of a career. When you quit
your last job, your career is over; that is the checkmate moment.

Retirement, on the other hand, is the equivalent of the time _between_ games
(or after you quit playing games) when you have a static ranking from your
previous play (maybe you're a retired world champion, say), that other people
treat as a milestone in their own development—something to reach or to pass.

Now, if you said _life_ , then sure, the endgame phase of _that_ is
retirement. But the early-game phase of that is when your parents are
providing for you, and only extreme incompetence (or genetic bad luck) can
cause you to "lose."

~~~
ryanx435
again, we're arguing in circles because we are conceptualizing the analogies
differently. our definitions of "career" are different.

oh well.

~~~
mod
ca·reer kəˈrir/ noun 1\. an occupation undertaken for a significant period of
a person's life and with opportunities for progress.

There really aren't different definitions. It's a "work life", it doesn't
include retirement.

------
juanuys
My 2 cents, and somewhat related: everyone should read Josh Waitzkin's The Art
Of Learning [1].

[1] [http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Art-Learning-Journey-
Performance...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Art-Learning-Journey-
Performance/dp/0743277465)

------
JacobAldridge
Good conversation at about my level (read: plays a bit, but not necessarily
well). I've noticed that many new players seem to obsess on their Openings,
while my skills are very much the Endgame (I'm great at holding multiple logic
trees in my head, which becomes an asset late in a game when you can pursue
these to a checkmate). Basically, if I can survive 15 moves against comparably
skilled players, I will win.

But that's an "if". I thrashed a mate in about a dozen games in a row,
including one where I called 'Checkmate in 8' which drove him mad. And then
the following game he 'pantsed' me, drove through to a checkmate without me
even taking a single of his pieces.

Is there a point here? I guess you'll rarely win a match in the Opening, but
you can lose it. And maybe more people should practice end game positions
instead of just playing lots of games from the start and researching Openings
because of the literature volume dedicated to those.

~~~
derefr
Is there a playstyle of chess where both players agree to skip the opening,
just setting up the board as if the opening were played "by the book" by both
players and going from there? It seems like that'd be much better for getting
amateur-level players practice in their middlegames, since they wouldn't need
to worry about perfecting the opening before they could even attempt it.

~~~
randomnumber53
This type of training game is more often used to practice a certain structure
that arises from a specific opening, and thus is a type of practice used more
towards the higher levels of play (International Master+).

The thing is, if two amateurs are playing, neither of whom deeply know
openings, then the starting position (or 4-5 moves in) is essentially new
territory, like what might arise for a Grandmaster 15-30 moves into the game.
Does this make sense?

------
Practicality
I play ridiculous amounts of blitz and bullet chess and I can tell you that
openings dominate faster games. The more bizarre the better.

But you had better know the main openings and a lot of sidelines fairly deep
or you're toast.

Of course, my memory is next to useless, so for me, to really "know" the
openings means I _understand_ them. When my opponents plays weak moves "to get
me out of my memory" that's when I really dominate.

Honestly, sometimes chess strategies are like rock-paper-scissors. Guys with
great memory can sometimes trounce me, but people who use this "play weak
moves to confuse my opponent" oh yeah, I eat that for breakfast.

