
My Obsession With Chess - gnosis
http://www.scottmccloud.com/1-webcomics/chess/chess.html
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sireat
Chess is a horrible mistress to have, I keep coming back to chess again and
again. At the same time, chess can bring such highs. This high comes not only
from winning, but also from a well played game(even lost one).

Sad thing is, unless you get most of your 10,000 hours of "deliberate
practice" at chess from the ages of 10-18, you'll never get any good. I am
2400 FIDE, but I missed ages 14-16, doing other things. The neural pathways in
my brain are hard wired now, the basic tactical sense will never improve
substantially, no matter how long I practice. I am yet to find a
counterexample, that is someone who started after age 25 and became a GM.

~~~
KC8ZKF
What do you mean by "any good?" I know a lot of twenty five year-olds who
would be thrilled to achieve a 2000 FIDE rating.

~~~
sireat
I might have meant "real good", that is GM strength and up (2500+). However,
if we define "any good" as 2000, then, as you said, even that level is hard to
reach at a later age.

My point is as follows: almost anyone can reach good strength in chess if they
put a lot of deliberate practice at the early age(case in point, Polgar
sisters). Conversely, at a later age, it is much, much harder to progress.

Put a 25 year old on an island for 20 years with only a chess computer and
chess literature, and they are unlikely to make more progress that a 12 year
old would make in 2 years.

Chess is not unique in this regard, in fact, many passtimes/sports/hobbies
have the same limitation. However, I think chessplayers often prefer to ignore
this facet of chess.

~~~
gnosis
Take a look at this chart of USCF rating distributions:

<http://main.uschess.org/datapage/adult_ratings_2007.png>

50% of adult chess players with a USCF rating (who already tend to be more
dedicated to chess than most chess players, who tend not to have a rating at
all) have a rating of only 1400 or below.

With a rating of 2400 you're getting up around the 99th percentile. You could
easily crush virtually every chess player with a USCF rating. Of course, there
are chess players who are even better, but they are the elite of the elite.

(Note: I wasn't able to find the equivalent FIDE rating information, so I have
to use USCF ratings here. But you can bear in mind that a player with a given
FIDE rating is generally stronger than a player with the same USCF rating)

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kqr2
This brings to mind, Arthur C. Clarke's ultra short story _Quarantine_.

<http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/learn/html/e.8.2.html>

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spot
good thing he didn't discover "go" or else we never would have had zot! or
understanding comics!

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kqr2
Scott McCloud also has an interesting TED talk in which he explores making
non-sequential comics:

[http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/scott_mccloud_on_comics.h...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/scott_mccloud_on_comics.html)

He also mentions his father's blindness. Although it probably wasn't true,
Scott's father believed it was caused by looking at a solar eclipse.

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amichail
I don't understand the appeal of chess. Tactical play in this game is better
suited for a computer than a human.

Computer-aided chess though might be interesting: the human would focus on
strategy and get help for tactical play from a computer.

~~~
derefr
Once you're good enough, the tactics melt away and you just think about the
strategy. This is true with any competitive game. It takes a long time, and a
lot of effort[1] to get to the level where you can have this "fairness
epiphany", though. Strangely enough, a good documentary on the process exists
in the form of a manga/anime series, Hikaru no Go, following a Go player as he
is first guided through games, then plays, struggling, himself, until he
finally has the epiphany and realizes he needs no help from a computer (or, in
this case, ancient spirit) to make him better.

[1] <http://www.sirlin.net/ptw>

~~~
jibiki
> Once you're good enough, the tactics melt away and you just think about the
> strategy.

That just isn't true. Remember the famous game where Kramnik got mated by the
computer? It is impossible to play chess without ever searching the game tree.
Different players search it to different extents, but there's nobody who is so
good that they know all the tactics in a game by instinct.

By the way, thanks for linking to that site. I saw that "playing to win"
article a while ago, and was really impressed by it, but then I forgot the
title.

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xenophanes
I was wondering how good he is, since he never mentions a rating, but he
doesn't seem to exist in the US Chess Federation database. Odd.

[http://main.uschess.org/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,...](http://main.uschess.org/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,181/)

~~~
gsastry
In the comic, he said his rating hovers between class B and class C. So
1600-1700 ucsf ish?

~~~
xenophanes
Oh, missed that. B is 1600-1800. C is 1400-1600.

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DTrejo
Powerful.

~~~
sho
And a powerful reminder of the profound differences between the minds of each
and every one of us. I can no more understand this kind of obsession than a
dog could understand calculus.

Not saying it's bad, mind you. Rather the opposite, I enjoyed it immensely.
Just that .. I'm always struck by a sense of forboding by this kind of thing.
I could never be like this, and the fact that someone is .. has implications I
find unsettling. If such variation is possible - who's to say it's not the
norm? Maybe being obsessed with chess is the norm and I was just dropped on my
head one too many times as a baby or had alcohol in my blood-surrogate and I'm
the sub-gamma who is too stupid to see the fascinating brilliance of chess.

~~~
gnosis
Unless you play chess a lot for years, it's hard to really see the beauty in
it.

In that way, it's sort of like mathematics. Few adults would find arithmetic
very beautiful, and if that's all they knew of math they might wonder what
mathematicians see in mathematics. It takes years of dedication and practice
to learn enough math to get to the higher levels, where one begins to see the
beauty in math.

Chess is the same. Playing it after just learning the basics might be fun, but
it's only once you've put in a significant investment of time in to the game
that you begin to get a glimpse of its depth and beauty. Don't expect to see
it after merely learning the rules and playing a few games.

That said, something has to keep you going until you learn enough chess to
begin to really appreciate it. And that something, for most chess players, is
mere enjoyment. For us it's just fun, and that's enough.

~~~
eru
Yes. Strangely even arithmetic can get interesting again.

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lazyant
I used to play chess and I still like it. I thought when I had a child I would
teach him or her how to play early on.

Then I read "In search of Bobby Fisher" and "the chess artist" and I did a
180; I don't want my kid to become obsessed with chess.

~~~
MaysonL
My parents came to the same conclusion when I was about 5 when Bobby was
getting a lot of attention as a real brat of a prodigy. My father had taught
me to play, and after a few months, I beat him. Never played me again. Took me
a long time to understand what had happened, and longer to forgive him.

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zeynel1
Beautiful drawings.

